On the industrial outskirts of Houston, tucked into a cluster of steel piping and high-pressure test equipment, a 15-year-old startup is trying to reimagine something most people never think about: how natural gas power is made. The company, NetPower, has spent more than a decade developing a way to use gas without the traditional plume of emissions leaving the smokestack. It’s not the kind of startup most Americans are used to hearing about — no glossy apps, no garage origin story — but in the energy world, this slow, heavy, engineering-first path is often the only way big ideas actually become real.
And as the U.S. grid enters an era of explosive demand growth, NetPower is stepping out of the shadows of R&D and into a moment that finally matches its ambitions.
A Big Idea With a Long Runway
NetPower began in 2010 with a partnership between industrial gas scientist Rodney Allam and entrepreneur Bill Brown, who together believed they could redesign the way natural gas plants work. Their invention — now known as the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle — uses supercritical CO₂ instead of steam to drive a turbine. The twist is that the process naturally captures the CO₂ produced during combustion. There’s no towering carbon-capture unit strapped onto the back end. It’s built into the design, allowing the gas to be pressurized, cleaned, and either sold or stored.
For years, the technology lived mostly in theory, then slowly in test runs at NetPower’s demonstration facility in La Porte, Texas. The plant has hit milestone after milestone, including record pressures and temperatures in 2025 — the kind of validation that tells engineers, regulators, and industry partners that the system can actually work at the scale utilities need.
But the energy sector doesn’t move at Silicon Valley speed. Bringing an entirely new class of power plant into the world takes time, partners, capital, and patience. And while the Allam Cycle represents NetPower’s long-game vision, the grid’s needs have shifted dramatically in the last two years.
A Grid That Can’t Wait
Across the country, utilities are staring down a kind of demand surge that hasn’t happened since the early 2000s. Data centers — especially those powering AI — are consuming huge amounts of electricity. Manufacturing is returning to the U.S. Electrification is ramping up. In some regions, demand forecasts are climbing so quickly that utilities are rewriting their plans every few months.
This is the environment NetPower is walking into: a grid that needs firm, reliable power now — not a decade from now. And in 2025, the company acknowledged that the moment required a broader approach.
During its third-quarter update, NetPower announced an expansion of its strategy, revealing that it would begin developing projects using conventional natural gas turbines paired with post-combustion carbon capture (PCC). The Allam Cycle remains central to the company’s identity and long-term ambition, but PCC gives NetPower something the original design could not: a pathway to building projects on a much shorter timeline.
In plain terms, the company added a second lane — one that meets the urgency of the current moment.
A Partnership Designed for Speed
To make that second lane real, NetPower signed a letter of intent with Entropy Inc., a carbon-capture company owned by the Canadian midstream operator Pembina Pipeline Corp. Entropy makes modular PCC systems that bolt onto gas turbines and pull CO₂ out of the exhaust. The appeal isn’t just the technology — though its solvent process is designed to use less energy than traditional systems — it’s the speed and flexibility. Developers can build plants faster, with fewer custom components and more predictable timelines.
For a grid in transition, time is everything. And this partnership gives NetPower the ability to pursue projects that can realistically come online before the end of the decade. It also gives the company a way to serve utilities and industrial customers who want lower-emissions gas power without waiting for entirely new plant designs to mature.
What emerges is a dual-track strategy: one path that delivers a near-term option utilities can build quickly, and another that continues advancing a technology that could one day redefine gas power entirely.
Project Permian: The First Big Test
The clearest example of this shift is Project Permian, NetPower’s first full-scale commercial project planned for West Texas. Originally envisioned as the debut of the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle, the plant is now being redesigned around gas turbines fitted with Entropy’s capture system. Construction could begin during the second half of the decade, with commercial operations targeted as early as 2029.
For a region undergoing massive industrial growth — and for a grid facing unprecedented demand — that timeline matters. It means NetPower’s first utility-scale project won’t just be a demonstration of technical possibility, but a real contributor to the power system during one of its most challenging periods.
If Project Permian succeeds, it could become a template for other low-carbon gas projects nationwide. If it stumbles, the company could find itself running up against the same hurdles that have slowed countless energy innovations before it. But for the first time, NetPower is positioned with both a near-term technology and a long-term vision — a rare dual posture in a sector where startups often have to choose one or the other.
In an industry where “startup” means something very different — and the stakes are impossibly high — NetPower is stepping into a moment that may finally match the scale of its ambition.
