Houston's economic diversity Thread .. (Dallas, San Antonio: construction, school, community college)

[Jack Lance]

Here are a couple more articles about companies that are adding to Houston's economic diversity.


NRG wins bid to buy Texas solar farm and more from SunEdison

NRG Energy won its bid of up to $188 million to acquire a massive West Texas solar farm and other renewable energy projects throughout the country from bankrupt SunEdison.
The deal still needs final approval in bankruptcy court, but NRG would acquire the 200-megawatt Buckthorn solar farm in Pecos County. The delayed solar project, which is slated for completion next year, would make the city of Georgetown, a community of 60,000 people, the largest municipality in the nation powered solely by renewable sources. One megawatt can typically power 200 homes on the hottest Texas days.
The $144 million deal, which would grow to $188 million if milestone benchmarks are met, also includes solar and wind projects in Utah, Washington, California, Maine and Hawaii. The discount for NRG is steep because most of the projects remain in development and require additional investment.

NRG wins bid to buy Texas solar farm and more from SunEdison | Fuel Fix


Define Body founder puts his mind to expanding his brand

With 15 studios in the U.S. and abroad and five more coming during the next few months, Henry Richardson is expanding his fitness brand - this time with far less sweat.
Richardson opens Define Living on Wednesday, converting an abandoned Montrose warehouse at 2515 Morse St. into a wellness boutique and adjoining community center with retail, educational programs and classes focused on "mindfulness," or tending to spiritual and mental needs for healthier living.

During the next six months, Richardson expects to open gym locations in Bellaire, the Heights and Memorial in the Houston area, as well as Waco, and Denver and Boulder, Colo. His goal, he said, is to expand to 25 locations during the next year. Those sites will provide potential expansion targets for the Define Living concept, if it succeeds in Houston.

Define Body founder puts his mind to expanding his brand - Houston Chronicle

[detachable arm]

Looks like there will be another 3-4 years of work in petrochemicals to help balance things out. In other words I would expect another 2-3 years of oil and gas slumping.

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by detachable arm

Looks like there will be another 3-4 years of work in petrochemicals to help balance things out. In other words I would expect another 2-3 years of oil and gas slumping.

For the announced petrochemical projects, the construction employment will peak in 2017-18. Then they transition to much lower levels of permanent employment.

Even if the upstream oil and gas sector returns to health, don't expect massive hiring like that which occurred 2011-2014. That's looking more and more like an anomaly. The industry can get more done now with fewer people, and many wells are already drilled but dormant - they just need to be put into service.

[PhilBrown]

Originally Posted by Yellow pool of piddle

Dallas? Isn't North Texas just about the most diverse place in the universe? It even has energy companies. All the cities listed above have become flagship cities for the M-word, (Marxism) but let's not go there.

I think Houston will diversify more when the area GDP falls. The GDP is going to fall as the available amount of easy money shrinks. The easy money is going to shrink as less oil and gas becomes available by natural fracturing. A new energy market is now forming as the United States continues to trasition over from the importation of oil to that of exporting it. The downturn today has less to do witg the price of a barrel of oil and more to do with uncertainty about what the new market is going ti look like. This latest bust isn't a repeat of 2008, but the market is about to change forever.

I was speaking to an oil man about the situation. He says companies are laying off contractors to keep good workers. It is a buyers market for employees. That if every good job gained when times were good would add another three contractor jobs, he says the loss of a good job during bad times will subtract about five contractor jobs.

As long as the new oil market remains a mystery, the economy will remain muddled and companies will hesitate to add new employees.

Yeah, Dallas don't have the ups and downs like Houston does because they are not 100% tied to the oil industry. A huge part of their economy is oil but its not as dominate like here.

[Yellow pool of piddle]

Originally Posted by PhilBrown

Yeah, Dallas don't have the ups and downs like Houston does because they are not 100% tied to the oil industry. A huge part of their economy is oil but its not as dominate like here.

To name some of the energy companies that left North Texas, there is Haliburton, Diamond Shamrock, most of Dressor Industries, Caltex, Atlantic Richfield Company, Petro Fina, and Mobile. I am sure that there are others. One would think such a migration of high paying jobs out of the area would be devestating. Not at all. It took no time for North Texas to shift into overdrive.

[Jack Lance]

A couple more articles, about the ever expanding economic diversity of the greater Houston economy,

A healthy economy
Private development in a once-nonprofit area could transform the Texas Medical Center

PARKING lots and grassy patches are interspersed with nondescript office buildings and medical towers along Old Spanish Trail, one of Houston’s main arteries into the gleaming Texas Medical Center.

High-end development has largely eluded this stretch of road despite its proximity to the densely packed 1,300-acre collection of hospitals, universities and research facilities. Land-use covenants allowed the Medical Center to flourish into the world’s largest health care complex, but they also discouraged private enterprises from catering to the 100,000 people who work there and the more than 8 million guests, patients and family members who use it each year.

“Some of those restrictions made it difficult to provide the amenities for a more complete ecosystem,” said John Kajander, a medical consultant with Houston First and former Medical Center executive.

“The old saying goes, ‘Two things that never slow down are the Port of Houston and the Texas Medical Center,’ ” Cushman & Wakefield executive vice president Jeff Peden said. “That has been true for 100 years now.”

New leadership, headed by TMC president and CEO Dr. Robert Robbins who took the top job in 2012, is pushing for collaboration and change. One part of his idea is a massive innovation campus, on 30 acres that partially hold a parking lot, that would promote collaboration among member institutions and even draw private development. Also crucial is a change to the covenants that will now allow private investment on the property previously designated only for use by nonprofit organizations.

“This shift change for the Medical Center, being able to translate research into profit, that is a dramatic change,” he said.

http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Oli...stonchronicle/

Wow I remember when the Medical Center pretty much stopped at Holcombe

How about environmental research,

CHEMISTRY
A material used for roads could limit climate change
Team says method strips carbon dioxide from natural gas at wellhead

If natural gas producers could find an economical method to separate and capture the carbon dioxide, they would not only reduce their exposure to carbon taxes, but also have a product to sell. Carbon dioxide has industrial uses, including stimulating oil and gas recovery in existing wells.

So Tour and his team at Rice began investigating alternatives.

Two years ago, they published research on aporous carbon powder that trapped 82 percent of its weight in carbon dioxide. Last year, they found an asphalt that absorbed 114 percent of its weight in the greenhouse gas, and then improved its performance. In research published this month in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, Tour showed that the asphalt, Gilsonite, can trap 154 percent of its weight in carbon dioxide.

Better yet, the new material works at room temperature, and at pressures common inside gas wellheads. It releases gas when pressure dips. Tour said companies could add a pipe and some valves at the end of a well, easily clean the natural gas, and capture the carbon dioxide at the same time.

“If you can do this at the wellhead,” Tour said, “then you can just pump it right back down underground, where it’s been for millions of years.”

The Houston oil and gas exploration company Apache funded the research and has license to the intellectual property, Tour said. Almaz Jalilov, a postdoctoral researcher was lead author of the study. david.hunn@chron.com   twitter.com/davidhunn  

http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Oli...stonchronicle/

[Jack Lance]

From little Acorns grow mighty Oaks !

"The Small Business Administration recently gave $50,000 to Houston-based Fannin Innovation Studio as one of 68 winners of its Growth Accelerator Fund Competition.

Fannin Innovation Studio is a commercialization firm that provides integrated funding and management of early-stage life science startups. It will use half of the money to grow and support its paid internship program. The other half will be used to enhance the buildout of a new central innovation and testing room that is under construction and scheduled for completion in mid-October."

SBA gives $50K to Houston entrepreneurial organization - Houston Chronicle

[Jack Lance]

Houston company FlightAware aids in the development of a product that will use 66 satellites to track aircraft

A Houston company is helping create a product to better track planes and, ideally, prevent any from being lost like doomed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

FlightAware announced Wednesday that it is partnering with Aireon to launch Global Beacon, a product that will use 66 low-Earth-orbit satellites to track planes in real time across the globe. Expected to be in operation by 2018, Global Beacon is designed to eliminate dead zones that current tracking methods often encounter. Such zones are created, for example, when planes cross the North Pole or fly from the continental U.S. to Hawaii without proper on-plane satellite technologies.

“It will have a huge impact on the industry and on flight safety,” said Daniel Baker, CEO of FlightAware, a flight tracking data company started in 2005.

PressReader.com - Connecting People Through News

[Inphosphere]

A local Houston car company, Lumen Motors, currently has UH Alums working on designs for an efficient, electric-powered sports car, and wants to "put Houston on the map" in this department:
Local college grads putting H-Town on the map with their electric sports car | abc13.com

[The_Man74]

If Houston put more emphasis on tech I think it would be VERY wise for them..

Not saying that there isn't tech there(HP in Spring area comes to mind), because there is, but more emphasis on it would VASTLY help them..

That's a big reason for the strong, stable economy in Austin and Dallas