Ambiq Micro, an Austin-based maker of ultra-low power integrated circuits, announced Tuesday that is has secured $10 million in Series B financing.
Austin Ventures led the round along with participation from existing investors including ARM, Mercury Fund, Huron River Ventures and other investors.
Ambiq Micro makes technology that lets semiconductors operate at low power levels.
“As more and more markets are demanding devices that are mobile, portable or remote, batteries and low power ICs become essential enablers for business,” Mark Foley, CEO and President of Ambiq Micro said in a news release. “With this investment round, we will proliferate our SPOT platform-based products to these emerging low-power markets and applications. AV is a perfect partner for us as it shares our vision for the rapid growth of the Internet of Things.”
The company’s technology can be used in batteries for smart watches, wireless sensors, smart cards and medical devices.
“Austin Ventures expects Ambiq Micro products to have a major impact in many high-growth applications. Long life will be the driving factor behind consumer acceptance of new networked, battery-operated devices. Ambiq Micro is forging a path to change the market. We are very excited to join its investor group,” Clark Jernigan, Venture Partner, Austin Ventures, said in a news release.
Category: Austin (Page 236 of 318)
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Techstars will introduce its inaugural class in Austin Monday night, August 19th at 6:30 at Capital Factory. Announcing its first Austin program in May, Techstars has reviewed applications from more than 850 companies and chosen ten.
- Filament Labs build patient tracking and compliance software around mobile health, behavior tracking, and behavior change. One of its consumer products, HealthSpark, was 1 of 30 hand-selected apps within Aetna’s CarePass initiative.
- MarketVibe (founded by the Whoosh Traffic team at Capital Factory) uses customers web analytics and shopping cart data to teach companies how to get more traffic, leads and sales.
- Fosbury is a cross-platform digital wallet solution for designing, managing and analyzing campaigns on Apple Passbook and Samsung Wallet. Fosbury ensures retailers and other that their customers always have loyalty cards and coupons with them and provides a new way to interact with customers.
- Atlas Wristband takes a new approach to wearable technology in the fitness industry. Atlas combines top talent from Johns Hopkins University, Phillips Healthcare and Maxim Integrated Products.
- AuManil helps Online Retailers identify, manage and grow their most valuable customers – and create more of them. It enables shopper-facing agents to engage high value customers based on behavioral profiles and predictive insights. These targeted, personalized engagements lead to increased revenues, high retention rates, and better customer satisfaction.
- Ube: controls lights and appliances from a smart phone, inexpensively. The company’s Wi-Fi enabled Smart Dimmers, Smart Plugs and Smart Outlets are competitively priced, easy to install, and provide the convenience of controlling your lights from your smartphone from anywhere in the world.
- ProductGram: allows online sellers to extend their store from one outlet to many. Currently in development for Etsy sellers, the mobile app will push an attractive listing, not just a third party link to drive more product views to increase sales via other channels, with checkouts happening wherever engagement happens.
- Testlio: opens a network of mobile testers to developers needing every last bug uncovered. The company has created tools for software testing that use real time chat, integrate issue reports into their existing systems, and do daily/weekly testing based on the customers own release schedule.
- Accountable: streamlines and simplifies HIPAA compliance by providing a suite of tools and resources for firms, from necessary agreements and policies to risk assessments and employee training. All required pieces are tracked for completeness and time-sensitive expiration, with monitoring and alerts maintaining compliance. Audits are as simple as printing out a report and all requested information.
- ProtoExchange: is a cloud-based network of professional 3D printing services that allow businesses to source the production and material capabilities of the network in a scalable, cost-effective, and time-efficient manner.
Brandon Marker, analyst with Techstars Austin, said the accelerator went through every one of the applications and wound up sitting down with 40-50 teams either in person or on a video call. Techstars has a very specific list of criteria. For example, Marker said, they tend not to accept single founders because “It’s very difficult to control and manage everything going on in the TechStars program while you’re growing, building and managing your business at the same time.”
Matt Ford, a spokesman with Techstars said the criteria boils down to: “Team, team, then idea. We’re looking for talented, passionate co-founders with a nice balance of skills.”
Techstars is a 13 week program with a demo day at the end of October.
“The difference (between Techstars and other programs) is going to be our approach to mentorship and growing community within Austin,” Marker said. “The mentors have a very natural, organic connection to the company. There’s no pay, no incentive. It’s just do you want to meet with them? Do you want to take any of them on beyond the initial meeting?”
Techstars recruited 90 mentors among serial entrepreneurs, investors and others. Each of them met with Jason Seats, managing director of the Techstars program in Austin, during the selection process. The companies’ goals vary depending on where they are in the development of their companies.
“They’ll have focused long term vision,” Ford said.
“We’re pushing them to a stronger, more meaningful business model,” Marker said. “When they’re done, they will clearly know what their business is, who their client is and how they want to push that growth.”
By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
The Austin tech scene wouldn’t be complete without a few game studios – all of which are trying to find a place in a competitive market. Developer FoxySoft is working to carve out their own niche with the their adult Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game Venus Rising, which lets gamers fight, buy property, and find love in a virtual Roman city.
FoxySoft was created in September 2012 by 15-year MMORPG developer Alex Allen, who has worked on other titles such as D.C. Universe Online. Tired of the hectic schedule and constant layoffs in the game industry, Allen decided to create her own niche game that combined elements of MMOs and Adult titles.
Venus Rising will work similarly to MMORPG juggernaut World of Warcraft – allowing players to work together to kill enemies and find loot. Additionally, however the game will allow users to buy property, throw parties, chat with other players, and even have virtual romantic encounters with those players.
The startup will use the increasingly popular freemuim business model that allows users to download the game at no cost and then make in-game purchases, or microtransactions. Such transactions will mostly be for cosmetic items, such as clothing, but may also include weapons and items with rare game play benefits. To access additional content, including the adult content, users will have to purchase a subscription.
FoxySoft contracts two developers on a regular basis and other help as needed. It is currently bootstrapping on a budget of $100,000 and looking to crowdsource another $5,000 in the short term. Allen hopes to eventually raise around 1.2 million, which will help her hire more artists and programmers to flesh out the game further. Venus rising is scheduled to release an alpha product this fall and plans to release the full game in late 2014.
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By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News
Illustration courtesy of Disciplined Entrepreneurship
That’s the key message from Bill Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and a serial entrepreneur.
And he aims to teach as many people as possible.
Today, 20 percent of young people want to start their own company, but it’s not possible to scale entrepreneurship education, Aulet said.
“When you teach entrepreneurship you have to do it,” he said. “It’s experiential. It’s mentor intensive and the mentoring requires a lot of effort.”
Aulet spoke Tuesday morning to a group of entrepreneurs at Capital Factory, a technology co-working site, accelerator and incubator in downtown Austin.
Historically, business schools have focused almost exclusively on meeting the needs of large companies, Aulet said. And while lots of books have been written on different aspects of founding a company, Aulet found a need existed to craft a handbook, or how to manual, for startup entrepreneurs.
So Aulet created a toolbox and a common language to share knowledge in his book: “Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup.” The just released book provides a roadmap with key steps founders should take to become more successful in their ventures.
Right now, entrepreneurship is so ill defined, Aulet said.
“It’s easy to fake,” he said.
He fears that stories and myths generate a spirit of entrepreneurship without providing the necessary skills.That’s why education is so essential, Aulet said. He predicts every school in the country will be teaching entrepreneurship.
In his book, Aulet dispels three common myths including the focus on the lone entrepreneurs. It’s often teams that found companies and the more founders the greater chance of success, according to Aulet. He also dispels the myth that all founders are charismatic and that is a key to their success. That only goes so far. The most important traits to success are the ability to communicate, hire good people and sell the product and company. And lastly, people are not born entrepreneurs. They are taught to be entrepreneurs.
“What the book is not – it’s not everything you need for startups,” Aulet said. But it’s a start.
The reason he named his book Disciplined Entrepreneurship is to make it clear that successful entrepreneurs have incredible self-discipline. Often stories told about them make it look easy and effortless.
“We have not defined a discipline of entrepreneurship,” Aulet said. As a result, he fears a backlash against entrepreneurship that the country can ill afford.
That’s because entrepreneurs create jobs. The Kauffman Foundation analyzed 2007 Census data and found that “young firms, those one to five years old, accounted for roughly two-thirds of job creation, averaging nearly four new jobs per firm per year. Of the overall 12 million new jobs added in 2007, young firms were responsible for the creation of nearly 8 million of those jobs.”
“The jobs are not being created by Chrysler or by Microsoft, the jobs are being created by you,” Aulet said. “It’s not a direct path. It’s like a game of Chutes and Ladders. It winds.”
The first step in starting a company involves defining “who is your customer,” Aulet said. That involves creating a customer persona. He used an example of a Lamborghini owner as a high net worth middle-aged man who enjoys the finer things in life and wants the finest customer service. A repair shop catering to that customer would not service Volvos or Hondas. It’s all about catering to the Lamborghini customer.
“The best place to start is with a customer…great startup companies become one with the customer,” Aulet said.
It’s really important to define that market because if your product is for everyone, it really isn’t for anyone, Aulet said.
“If you want to be a great company you find a targeted group,” he said.
Next comes spiraling innovation. Aulet includes an illustration in his book of the 24 steps that looks like a game board.
“This is kind of the dirty stuff,” he said. “It’s not sexy but it’s essential. How does the customer acquire your product?”
Entrepreneurs must map the process to acquire a paying customer.
They always underestimate this cost, Aulet said.
Next, how do you make money off your product?
“The number one job of a CEO is to make sure you don’t run out of cash,” Aulet said.
The final stages of Aulet’s book deal with designing and building the product and scaling the business.
In brief remarks after his presentation, Aulet said that business accelerators are better than incubators for launching new companies. Accelerators tend to launch successes or failures, but either way it’s a quick process. Incubators can maintain companies for longer periods of time in a comfort zone, often giving them a false sense of accomplishment. Aulet referred to those companies as the living dead.
Video from Aulet’s Disciplined Entrepreneurship Blog:
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Gary Hoover being interviewed by the Austin Business Journal’s Colin Pope
Hoover was interviewed Tuesday morning by Austin Business Journal editor Colin Pope at the paper’s Face to Face event at Whole Foods Headquarters. Pope asked Hoover if any businesses had “blown him away” by their brilliance, innovation or beauty.
“I’m glad you said beauty,” Hoover responded in his gravelly voice. “Because I think that the great enterprises of the world are among mankind’s greatest inventions.” He went on to say that Whole Foods, which he watched grow up in Austin, was one such business.
“I saw people who were lifelong learners, who were committed to being the best,” Hoover said of Whole Foods beginnings. “(John Mackey) so passionately believed in what he’s doing…he’s a health food nut. He was a health food nut 30 years ago. Beautifully crafted enterprises are built to last and it’s a fundamental business, feeding people. It’s a beautiful thing in itself.”
So many entrepreneurs are focused on introducing the latest technology, he said, that they lose sight of the idea of building the kind of businesses people will always want and need. But the latest tech often becomes passé very quickly. Hoover remembered telling people in 1999 that the biggest Internet companies had yet to be invented, a statement met by incredulity: “What could ever be bigger than AOL?” He’d rather have a potato chip company, he said, than a computer chip company.
On the other hand, he acknowledged some of the most disruptive companies are ones the market doesn’t know it wants—like UPS and FedEx.
“One of the greatest American companies is UPS, it’s the world’s biggest transportation company. They were employee owned and they converted to a public company. The drivers make $80,000-to-$100,000 a year. I know a driver who has 13 kids and they all have health care until age of 26,” Hoover said. “And, there would be no Amazon without UPS .”
Since the age of 12, Hoover has studied everything he can get his hands on to understand where trends are going. Though he’s always been a slow reader, he still studies books and magazines…but mostly people. That’s how he decided that tablets were going to be the medium of choice for people consuming information, though his reading style prohibits him from using them for written material.
And it’s what tells him that investment in Mexico is looming huge on the horizon. With the growing Latin population in the U.S., he said “This is going to be a Latin country. It’s a done deal. That train has already left the station.” He leads tours of Mexico City and Monterrey to show people that reports of crime are greatly exaggerated while reports of the area’s economic potential are underplayed.
His predictions don’t always work out of course. One of Hoover’s businesses, TravelFest was a retail store that sold all things related to travel, from airline tickets to luggage to books. Then, one day, the airlines just stopped paying commissions on airline tickets and the business began to plummet.
Hoover had to borrow a million dollars, sell his house and take out a personal loan to make payroll that week.
“I’ve never had an exit plan,” he said, and he’s not inspired when an entrepreneur brings him an idea that has an exit plan in a few years.
“I’m 62 and students ask me ‘How do you know when it’s time to quit?’ I tell them you have to go talk to another teacher.”
As far as he’s concerned the most crucial characteristic of a successful entrepreneur is passion. The most important and costly investment an entrepreneur makes in a business is the investment of heart and emotion. Without that a business can’t succeed; and focus on making money won’t do it. It has to go deeper. For a real entrepreneur, even if your business fails, it’s worth it to find a new business to put the heart and emotion into.
With respect to TravelFest, he didn’t see the airline’s decision coming. Would he fall into a trap like that again? “Probably,” he said. “I hope so.”
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
The founders at Co-Founders Wanted at Capital Factory Monday night were looking for everything from a biochemist to help develop a beverage that helps Asian people metabolize alcohol, to developers who could help build out an alarm system that contacts police, your neighbors and friends and family if you’re being attacked. All you have to do is knock it to the ground.
About 100 people attended the Co-Founders Wanted meeting and seven presented.
Jennifer Du, a recent transplant from New York, said that about 80 percent of Asians deal with a condition called Asian Glow in which their skin turns red and their eyes get watery every time they consume alcohol. There are pills to counteract the condition, but you have to take two a day starting about three weeks before you intend to drink, and take three the day you imbibe. A pill Du said, “is something you do in secret.” Instead, she wants to create Before Metabolic Drink which can be used as a mixer and helps Asians metabolize alcohol when they drink it. She has advisors and posted her product online as an MVP to see what the response would be. In fewer than 12 hours, she said, they had 361 unique views, 21 likes and 5 people signed up for the product.
Story Press founder Michael Davis, who was featured on Slice of Silicon Hills News, was looking for Ruby on Rails and iOS and Android developers. Story Press lets people upload written or spoken stories and photographs and turns them into movies that consumers can then download. Consumers can also find stories about their loved ones written by other people.
Dave Amis of Strider Labs, who has a background in security and law enforcement created Knockover 911. Amis said a majority of sexual assaults against women occur in their own homes from people they know and there’s no opportunity to get to a phone or to their security system panels to ask for help. Knockover 911 only has to be knocked to the ground and four things happen: Police are called, neighbors are notified, friends and family are notified, and there’s a loudspeaker message that tells the attacker that 911 has been contacted. He was looking for help with engineering, finance, leadership and connections with alarm companies.
Samantha Cabral taught herself Ruby on Rails to create The New Outfit Project which lets women submit their measurements and identify their fashion tastes and get recommendations about clothes to fit their body types and preferences. Customers can create a Mood Board of clothes and accessories they like and a virtual closet of clothes they might want to buy later. Cabral was looking for a more experienced Ruby developer to help her take her project forward.
Srini Raja, cofounder of TPsynergy.com has a supply chain management program created for small manufacturing businesses that can’t afford multi-million dollar custom solutions. The service keeps track of orders, shipments, payments and performance, among other things, all along the supply chain. The cloud based application also provides metrics and a dashboard, starting at $60 a month.
Raja was seeking marketing expertise, contracts in the industrial B2B space and investors.
Zaleit aggregates multi-level marketing sales by having people use their social networks to promote and even sell products. It enables crowd buying in order to push prices lower and offers commissions for people who manage to make sales through their social networks.
Founders Raul Rivero, Jorge Rowe and Jorge Rios were looking for funding to develop a website and a mobile app.
Chris Smith is creating a product that would integrate consumers’ receipts into their bank statements, making budgeting and financial tracking easier and also helping marketers keep track of what products consumers’ purchase. The automatic receipts would cost consumers a small bank fee but would also generate income for banks through advertisements connected to the receipts based on consumers’ preferences as well as the sale of aggregate data on purchases.
Johan Borge, meetup co-founder and co-founder of The TechMap Austin was looking for partners, investors and business developers for his idea, Pitch Deals, which is a kind of Priceline for consumer deals. With Pitch Deals merchants negotiate lower rates for products like a restaurant meal during their slower times.
Turnstone, a Steelcase brand that helps small and emerging companies create great workspaces, has launched a project to find the “Best Young Companies to Work For.”
The campaign kicked off last week “and is designed to recognize young businesses that demonstrate excellence in areas like talent retention, positive work culture, forward-thinking leadership, business innovation, community outreach, workplace wellness, effective space planning and design, etc.,” according to Turnstone.
Turnstone is seeking nominations from the Austin and San Antonio technology community. Anyone can nominate a company, but the companies have to be younger than 10 years old and have fewer than 100 employees and they cannot nominate themselves.
The contest is open through August 23rd for nominations. After that, a panel of judges will select the Best Young Companies to Work For.
One of the great things about being a startup entrepreneur in the Austin and San Antonio region is there are tons of resources to help with the venture.
One of those is Lean Startup Machine, based on the ideas from Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup book. The lean doesn’t mean eating ramen noodles and sleeping under your desk. Instead, the book and movement draw from principles gleaned from the Toyota Manufacturing process and other companies as outlined in Lean Thinking, a book by James P. Womach and Daniel T. Jones. The idea is to eliminate waste and to adapt quickly to a changing marketplace.
The Lean Startup Machine is coming to Capital Factory the weekend of Sept. 27-29th. It is a three day workshop which teaches entrepreneurs and innovators how to start a company, said Joseph Lopardo, the event’s organizer.
“We have some amazing speakers and mentors including Joshua Baer, Erica Douglass, Josh Kerr, Jason Cohen, Jacqueline Hughes, Jeff Harbach and so many more,” he said.
So far, Lean Startup Weekend has held 140 workshops around the country, Lopardo said.
“It’s a very hands on workshop,” he said. “It’s a really good way to connect with people in the community.”
The early-bird tickets have already sold out. But readers of Silicon Hills News can sign up and get a 10 percent discount off a ticket price with the promo code “SiliconHills.”
By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News
Crash Test Dummy in the Big Analytics Booth at NIWeek Photo courtesy of National Instruments
“Eventually devices – automobiles and so on – will be able to not just capture information but then actuate or control machines around you based on biometrics coming off your own body,” said Brad Armstrong, National Instruments’ Senior Marketing Communications Manager, East Asia.
For example, a car’s controls could adjust the temperature and music in response to your mood.
That’s just one of the applications of National Instruments’ LabVIEW software that was on display at NIWeek at the Austin Convention Center. NI, founded in Austin in 1976, has 35,000 customers worldwide and annual revenue of more than $1.1 billion. NIWeek, which ran Monday through Thursday, is one of the largest engineering test and measurement conferences in the world. About 4,000 people attended. The exhibits showcased the latest in engineering for robotics, space, automotive, Internet connectivity in Intel’s “The Internet of Things” booth and even sports. NI engineers showed off how its LabVIEW software can be used to measure an athlete’s response time in an obstacle course or a golfer’s swing.
The exhibits showed off the vast range of applications for NI’s engineering tools which companies use to test and measure applications in a variety of industries.
North American Eagle Team, photo courtesy of National Instruments
NI also had its LabVIEW Campus Tour bus on exhibit. The bus and its staff of engineers have travelled around the country to college campuses to educate students about engineering applications.
In a demonstration of NI’s LabVIEW software in robotics, some researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington have created Zeno, a robotic kid, which interacts with children for the early diagnosis and detection of autism. Zeno detects the range of motor skills in kids as early as six months to a year old.
“Ideally people will be able to take this robot home and interact with children on a daily basis,” said Monica Beltran with the UT Arlington Research Institute.
The goal is to get the robot, which currently costs around $2,500, to a price where families can buy one and use it in therapy at home to correct social behaviors. Zeno is currently in clinical trials and is not yet commercially available.
At another exhibit, students from the FIRST Robotics competition showed off their robots and attended NIWeek. NI has a K-12 outreach program to encourage students to pursue degrees in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields. It has been working with the FIRST robotics team to provide the teams with its software for the robots’ controllers.
Astronaut Leland Melvin speaking at NIWeek, photo courtesy of National Instruments
Melvin, a former wide receiver for the Detroit Lions in the National Football League and an engineer, said he asked his dad for a skateboard in middle school and his dad said they didn’t have money for it. So he went to the wood shop and created his own skateboard.
“I became an engineer,” Melvin said.
Then his mom gave him a chemistry kit and that inspired him to become an engineer. He mixed up some chemicals, caused an explosion and burnt a hole in the living room carpet. His father gave him a swat on the bottom as feedback on his project, but that didn’t discourage him.
In engineering, it’s about failing, learning, not giving up and going on to succeed, Melvin said.
He knows that firsthand.
Melvin recounted the time his high school football team was down by a touchdown and he missed a touchdown pass during the final minutes of his senior homecoming game. His coach looked him in the eyes, grabbed his face mask and told him he believed in him and told him to catch the ball. He sent him back into the game to run the play again. The second time Melvin caught the ball and they won the game.
NASA selected Melvin to become an astronaut in 1998 but during the spacewalk simulation training underwater at NASA he had an issue with clearing his ears and he emerged from the water with bleeding ears and he was completely deaf for six months. He left the program to do training for NASA. He worked closely with the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia Crew. The shuttle disintegrated in 2003 upon reentering the earth’s atmosphere. Melvin lost some good friends. He promised Astronaut Dave M. Brown’s father that he would not let the work his son did, along with the other astronauts, be forgotten. Melvin got clearance from a flight doctor and rejoined the 17th class of astronauts, nicknamed the Penguins. He completed two missions to space. He served on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis as mission specialist on STS-122 and as mission specialist on STS-129.
“I had never flown an airplane before I joined NASA,” Melvin said.
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
The relationship between clean, abundant water and clean, abundant energy is a lot more complicated than most people realize, according to Michael Webber of the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas. Webber gave a presentation called: Thirst for Power, The Global Nexus of Energy and Water at the Austin Forum at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center August 6th.
Webber explained that water is used abundantly in conventional energy production such as oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear plants, as well as for shipping coal. And energy is increasingly necessary for delivering clean water to people and businesses that require it.
Webber pointed out that opponents of hydraulic fracturing to extract oil and natural gas use the large consumption of water as an argument against the practice. And each well, he said, uses 2 million to 9 million gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals. Efforts to reduce the amount of water call for increased chemicals which doesn’t improve fracking’s acceptance. But hydraulic fracturing accounts for 1.25 gallons of water per million BTUs or British Thermal Units of energy whereas irrigation of corn for ethanol–considered a relatively clean power source– consumes greater than 2,500 gallons per million BTUs.
Water consumption for pulverized coal is .50 gallons per Kilowatt Hour of power, slightly higher than natural gas. Nuclear plants, he said, also require significant amounts of water for cooling. Webber’s slides did not address water consumption by wind turbines or solar, both of which, according the Environmental Protection Agency, are negligible. In areas of low rainfall, for example, water may be used to clean the turbines.
Drilling, Webber conceded, creates huge volumes of wastewater which the industry has yet to figure out how to reuse. Some states, including Texas, allow drillers to re-inject the water into aquifers “and hope it goes away.” Otherwise, water is stored in pits which, if not properly lined, can leak into the water source.
The U.S., Webber said, relies on energy sources for water. Water use accounts for more than 12 percent of national energy consumption. Nearly 30 percent is used for steam injection which extracts heavy oil. Another 29 percent is used to heat water. The rest is broken up into small percentages including water treatment, cooling and appliances. However, the scarcity of water is beginning to result in more energy-intensive water use from such sources as desalinization of ocean water and long haul transfer of water.
There are numerous possible solutions, to turn to energy sources that require less water—such as solar and wind—and to come up with water treatment that requires less energy.
- Desalination consumes huge amounts of energy relative to other kinds of water treatment, plus the water must then be pumped from ocean inland. Mangrove trees, however, naturally remove the saline from water, so more natural alternatives like the use of mangrove trees might reduce the power needed to supply clean water.
- Using brackish or reclaimed water for uses such as power plant cooling and oil and gas extraction also would reduce the consumption of fresh water and the need for water treatment.
- Reclaiming water by various means would increase the water supply, he said. This could include smaller, ‘toilet-to-tap’ treatment options, having the oil and gas industry reclaim the water it uses and using flared gases for on-site thermal distillation of water.
- Agriculture and oil companies could create a water exchange.
- Water treatment plants could create biogas.
- Waste heat from power plants could be used for water distillation systems.
Webber heads the Webber Energy Group at UT which works to find solutions related to energy and the environment, bridging the gap between scientists, engineers and policymakers.