In the Wild West of ecocapitalism, where billions of dollars are invested yearly into companies that invoke some measure of sustainability, the ideas spawned by start-ups can feel like elements of the sort of dystopian future dreamed up in a sci-fi movie from the sixties: vodka made from carbon captured out of the atmosphere; sneakers made out of recycled chewing gum; a solar geoengineering project that would’ve sent sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere to cool the planet. That’s why Katy-based start-up NanoTech Materials stood out, said Matthew Peña, director of the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator, which supports innovative start-ups—its idea was comparatively simple.
The company produces a particle that, it claims, is extremely effective at rejecting heat. The “Insulative Ceramic Particle,” when blended into common building materials such as coatings or paint, can function as a fire repellent or—significantly for Texans and anyone else experiencing rising temperatures—reduce the amount of regular old heat that can get through. The company participated in the Halliburton Labs clean-energy accelerator in 2020, and it was part of the Rice Alliance’s clean-energy cohort in 2022. Today NanoTech is working with a number of high-profile clients, including the U.S. military and a Fortune 500 big-box store that company reps aren’t quite ready to publicly announce—but it’s safe to say you’ve heard of it.
“We get a lot of start-ups in here where the ‘value proposition’—marketing jargon used to describe what makes a company or product valuable to a consumer—is unclear,” said Peña, but in the case of NanoTech Materials, it was obvious: “It’s reducing HVAC costs, which reduces energy costs and the bottom line for the person who owns the building.”
Mike Francis, the CEO and cofounder of NanoTech Materials, is a self-described “start-up guy.” He’s run a craft beer delivery company and a software start-up geared toward entrepreneurs. Before that, he worked for Halliburton as a business-management director. While he was at that job, in 2020, a Brazil-based materials scientist whom Francis calls Professor C reached out about an early prototype of the particle. In an accompanying video, Professor C coated his own hand in a substance mixed with his invention, then took a welding torch, capable of burning through steel, and aimed it at the hand for several minutes. His digits were unscathed. “When I saw that, my first thought was, ‘This is going to change the world,’ ” Francis said. “First from a fire protection standpoint, and then from an energy efficiency standpoint. If you can stop a fire, you can stop other heat.”
The heat’s been on a lot of people’s minds lately. Through the dog days of summer, made more dogged by climate change, the temperature has become impossible to ignore. This July, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service recorded the hottest day on Earth, and this year is on track to be the hottest, with 2023 the current reigning champion. Texas was not spared; last year Austin clocked eleven consecutive days of 105-plus-degree weather.
With the heat comes the attendant energy it takes to cool ourselves down. Cooling accounts for around 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—compare that to the entire aviation industry, which accounts for 2.5 percent of emissions. It’s a vicious cycle: the hotter it gets, the more we rely on cooling—which creates more emissions.
On hot days, a lot of the heat transfer happens via a building’s roof. By applying NanoTech’s roof coating blended with the patented particle, Francis claims, one can reduce the intensity of the transfer. “We see anywhere between thirty and fifty-plus [percent] savings on the HVAC because that heat is not going through,” he said. Applying it to the roof of one of the aforementioned big-box chain’s stores on a 90-degree day in Dallas, they were able to reduce the 180,000-square-foot building’s ceiling temperature from 112 degrees Fahrenheit to 73 degrees. “By coating their roof, we dropped their HVAC by about 49 percent,” Francis said. Eventually, he said, the company hopes to work with residential customers as well.
In places like New York City, where local law requires sustainable roof solutions—such as coatings of highly reflective white paint—this could also be a game changer. “The first thing that happens to a roof in New York is it gets dirty,” Francis said. “So that reflectivity goes away and you lose a lot of your performance.” He added, “We’re actually creating a physical barrier that stops the heat.”
Many of NanoTech’s investors and customers are based in Texas, which is no stranger to high temps. But the company’s also been working closely with the state government in California, where wildfires are increasingly problematic, providing its fireproof coating for structures like retaining walls. “We’re becoming part of the solution for wildfire safety in a lot of the fire-prone states,” Francis said.
The video of Professor C is not available online, but there’s another that is—one Francis filmed with his kids. Five eggs sit in a line in a makeshift firepit. The egg in the center is coated with two millimeters of the NanoTech Fireproof Coat. For nearly two minutes, they burn. One by one, the unprotected eggs become charred and splinter, their shells giving way to yolks and whites, until they’ve been almost entirely incinerated. The middle egg, slightly bigger than its brothers thanks to the protective coating, barely takes on any color at all. At the end of the video, Francis takes a hammer to the shell. Inside, the egg is still raw.
