Patents are often pending on clean energy in Houston

Despite its powerhouse oil and gas, space and medical industries, the Houston area is relatively weak on innovation, as measured by its production of patents. When it comes to clean energy, however, Houston is among America’s star performers.

That’s according to a new analysis by the Washington think tank Brookings Institution, which broke out the geographical distribution of clean tech patents, defined as anything that lowers the environmental impact of energy usage and waste disposal. Houston was the fourth-largest recipient of those patents between 2011 and 2015, while it was the 12th-largest producer of all patents over the same period.

Mostly, that’s due to Houston’s domination of oil and gas research, much of which is geared toward reducing the costs needed to mount drilling operations and keeping fossil fuels viable in a lowcarbon world by lessening their impact on the climate and environment.

Houston produced 27 percent of the clean tech patents granted in the conventional fuels category nationwide, or 1,344 total, between 2011 and 2015, most of them held by oil field services companies like Baker Hughes, Halliburton and Schlumberger.

How much of Houston’s fossil fuel innovation qualifies as “clean tech,” by Brookings’ definition? To get a rough idea, I looked at the types of patents that Houston has generated over the years. Just adding up the categories that are explicitly oil- and gas-related — which likely undercounts the total by a lot, since drilling reaches into manifold disciplines — I came up with 3,538 over the same five-year period. So, Houston is doing a lot that isn’t great for the planet, as much as it tries to mitigate the impact.

Much of the work that does get done in clean energy development is subsidized by or builds upon research performed by the Department of Energy. Nearly 9 percent of all patents granted to major oil and gas companies cited at least one Department of Energy-funded patent, according to an analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte. The Energy Department benefits Texas’ oil industry in other ways, too, such as through its support of a carbon capture plant that will assist with enhanced oil recovery.

Now, the Trump administration is proposing to slash or eliminate nearly every Energy Department program that funds that basic research. The Brookings paper finds that clean tech patents are already on the decline after peaking in 2011. President Donald Trump’s plan threatens to accelerate that decline, at a time when countries like China are dramatically ramping up their own investment in methods of combating climate change.

Houston stands to lose more than most from rising temperatures. Increasingly hot summers could trim America’s economic growth by up to a third over the next century, with effects strongest in states that are already the warmest, according to a recent report by the InterAmerican Development Bank.

For that reason, the more research on clean energy, the better.

Houston was the fourth-largest recipient of clean tech patents between 2011 and 2015.

Analysis by the Brookings Institution