Center for Houston's Future (CHF)

Program One: Strategic Initiatives (Planning, Research and Action) Center for Houston's Future looks over the horizon at global, national, and local trends that will shape our future, and bring business, government, and community stakeholders together to engage in fact-based strategic planning, collaboration, consensus building and action on issues of great importance to the Houston region. In 2023, the Center undertook strategic work in the following areas: Energy, Energy Transition and Climate: The Center's energy transition and climate work seeks to ensure that Houston, the world's "energy capital," maintains its global leadership role throughout the energy transition. Guided by our theory of change, we have undertaken research, conferences, webcasts, projects, media interviews and thought leadership, and extensive work with many partners to catalyze this vision. As a result, we have identified multiple opportunities in the energy transition to build on Houston's infrastructure base, expertise of energy companies, skilled workforce, research universities and the nascent energy innovation ecosystem. as part of this effort, we are collaborating with the Greater Houston Partnership on its Houston Energy Transition Initiative (HETI), which included five key areas, and the Center is leading one of them, focused on clean hydrogen. 2023 highlights included: * HyVelocity Hub: A key success in 2023 was the Department of Energy's designation of HyVelocity Hub as one of seven regional hydrogen hubs across the country. The industry-led HyVelocity Hub is currently negotiating with DOE for a $1.2 billion grant award and the entire project will total $2.4 billion. The Center recruited seven leading energy companies to participate in the project. - The Center worked with GTI Energy and The University of Texas at Austin to organize the hub. - In addition, the HyVelocity ecosystem included 6 special advisers, 8 major academic institutions, and more than 20 community, workforce, and economic development organizations. * Regional Clean Hydrogen Ecosystem Development: In addition, the Center continued to work on developing a regional clean hydrogen ecosystem. We had 44 Steering Committee members and formed five working groups: transportation sector development, electrolysis manufacturing cluster development, international trade, marketplace standards development, and demand creation. As part of this work in 2023, we: - Led the Center's first ever international trade mission: Supported by the German and U.S. government, we led a Clean Hydrogen Trade Mission to Berlin, Hamburg, and Poland. 32 individuals representing 13 companies accompanied the Center on this mission. - Signed Memorandum of Understandings with Danish and Belgian companies and entities on Transatlantic hydrogen trade. - Worked with the Greater Houston Partnership on site selection for the first of several expected electrolysis gigafactories, which will create new manufacturing jobs across the region. - Participated in a grant application to support inland marine shipping. - Developed a strategy to help the region compete for more than $20 billion in federal clean energy grant dollars that will be coming available over the next year. - Worked with Accenture and GHP's UpSkill Houston on clean hydrogen workforce development, creating a framework and a model to provide jobs and career paths in the hydrogen economy for residents of underserved communities. - Helped create the Texas Hydrogen Alliance, which in turn spurred significant state legislation on hydrogen. * Climate and Energy Education: In partnership with Children's Museum Houston (CMH) and with sponsorship from Chevron and CenterPoint Energy Foundation, we expanded Driving the Future, our out-of-school enrichment program for students in grades 3-8 to learn about achieving a low-carbon future. In 2023: - We collaborated on two WonderWeek programs at the Museum, featuring hands-on activities and demonstrations. - We offered the program at several Houston Independent School District campuses and at Galena Park ISD both as a summer camp enrichment program and an afterschool program at four elementary schools, directly reaching more than 300 elementary students in 2023. Health and Health Equity: Building on our foundational 2020 health care report, the Center expanded its health care and health equity work by exploring opportunities for collaboration between leaders in health care, business, and social services to improve community health and economic well-being in Greater Houston. We continued to identify community health issues, pursued funding to support health equity initiatives, and conducted ongoing research and coalition building. 2023 Highlights: * Business Engagement in Maternal/Community Health: Our earlier health care research concluded that Houston faces a "paradox of plenty:" poor health outcomes rooted in economic and racial disparities despite premier medical resources. We also found that sustainable funding is a challenge to successful upstream health interventions. To address these issues, CHF is piloting a framework to engage employers with diverse stakeholders to support Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) initiatives informed by data analysis and communities. Our goal is to show a business case for SDoH investment and develop a scalable model, including a business engagement roadmap, community assessment and outcome reporting tools, and a "braided" funding structure. During 2023, we made progress on this project: - We secured an employer partner, a manufacturer with 9,000 local employees speaking 27 languages, and partnerships with Harris County Public Health, HOPE Clinic and Healthy Start Houston. - We formed an advisory board, completed a landscape analysis, and designed a pilot project. - We began to identify health care cost drivers and the potential to improve maternal health outcomes and productivity based on employee demographics, sorted by zip code, claims data, and analysis of community needs and assets. We identified a three-zip code target community. * St. Luke's Health Collaboration: In 2023, we launched a collaboration with a St. Luke's Health. CHF executives appeared in two videos - one on health care workforce challenges and one on partnerships as a key to enacting change - that are part of St. Luke's ExamiNation series on health equity. St. Luke's is also supporting two research papers. The first is focused on the intersection of climate change and health, looking at health challenges, and what hospitals are doing and should do to lower their carbon footprints. It was slated for release in 2024. The second topic is yet to be determined. * Conferences: - The Center organized and moderated a panel focused on health equity at the Health Benefits Nation conference in Houston in Fall 2023. - We co-hosted and co-organized, with the Houston Business Coalition on Health, a conference in the Medical Center entitled: Health Equity: A New and Necessary Frontier in Employee Benefits. Speakers included St. Luke's Health CEO Doug Lawson and Episcopal Health Foundation CEO Ann Barnes. Immigration: Our immigration work continued to focus on guiding business and community leaders to develop greater understanding of how immigration is integral to the region's economy. In 2023, we co-hosted a town hall discussion on immigration reform and its impact on children with Rice University's Baker Institute Center for US and Mexico, Children at Risk, Rational Middle, and Lorelle Media. We helped sponsor the National Immigration Forum's annual meeting, held for the first time outside of Washington, DC, and hosted their business roundtable meeting at Partnership Tower. Vision Project: In 2023, under the leadership of incoming Center Board Chair Cindy Yeilding, the Center piloted a "listening tour" to ask stakeholders about their opinions of the major issues facing Houston in the future as well as what they believe to be the strengths of the Center to address these and other issues. Overall, there was a sense that a shared vision and better collaboration/integration of efforts would have a positive impact. The Center's record and history of research, convening, and consensus building, along with our reach into the community through the Leadership Forum, would seem to put us in a good position to tackle this work. This work was basis for a possible project in 2024.

Program Three: Community Engagement Community engagement, which includes thought leadership, is the Center's third area of focus. We put on events or programming that align with our strategic initiatives, or those featuring nationally or locally recognized speakers on topics of broad interest and relevance to our region's future. In 2023, we continued our energy conference with Greater Houston Partnership, resumed our Summer Salon programming, and hosted our signature Fall Dinner and Conversation. Highlights include: * Future of Global Energy (FOGE): The 2023 Future of Global Energy Conference was cohosted by the Center for Houston's Future, the Greater Houston Partnership, and the Houston Energy Transition Initiative in June. It spanned three days and drew 1,773 attendees. * Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) workshop: Partnering with D.C. based energy think-tank C2ES, we held a roundtable in Houston focused on catalyzing the clean hydrogen economy in Texas. More than 40 attendees representing business, government, union, workforce, and community organizations participated. The wide-ranging discussion included discussions on market-based solutions, workforce development and community engagement/environmental justice. * Summer Salon: With a sponsorship from energy company bp, the Center held an intimate breakfast and interactive discussion on the topic "Building a Community-Based Approach to the Energy Transition leveraged our work with the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES). * Signature Event: In November, the Center hosted our first Dinner and Conversation since 2019. Mayor Turner was honored with the Eugene H. Vaughan Civic Leadership Award for his lifetime of service. We also recognized former GHP CEO and outgoing CHF Board Member Bob Harvey for his dedication to the Center and enjoyed an insightful and thought-provoking conversation between two leaders of the Texas Medical Center, Dr. Peter J. Hotez and William F. McKeon. There were 10 major sponsors for this event, 17 patron sponsors, and over 300 people in attendance. Thought Leadership: In addition, the Center continued to exhibit thought leadership by appearing at a range of conferences, panels, and events to discuss climate and energy, leadership, and health equity; appearing in videos; and engaging with traditional and social media. All told, Center staff had some 50 speaking engagements.

Program Two: Business/Civic Leadership Forum: Our Business/Civic Leadership Forum, central to our mission and to our strategy since our founding, encourages strong civic leadership by providing business and community leaders with the tools to become involved in the community. The program brings together diverse business and community leaders, informs them about regional issues and inspires them to get more involved in the community. The program, with more than 1,300 alumni, has created a network of community leaders interested in civic engagement and our alumni have run for public office, served on non-profit boards, and launched community projects, among other initiatives. The Leadership Forum program has continued to adapt to changing circumstances. In 2020, due to COVID-19, we switched to a virtual format and used this opportunity to add more high- profile speakers and focused the program on systemic social issues raised by the pandemic, the economy, and heightened awareness of racial injustice. In 2023, we returned to a mostly in-person format, regaining the in-person connections as a key element of the program but retaining improvements implemented during the pandemic. In 2023, we had 47 participants. The program consisted of seven meetings and drew high- caliber speakers from across corporate, nonprofit, and political arenas, including Mayor Sylvester Turner, then-GHP President Bob Harvey and community leaders such as Kinder Institute's Dr. Ruth Lopez Turley and Collaborative for Children's Dr. Melanie Johnson. Class meetings included discussions about racial injustice, the economy, immigration, and other issues. The cohort completed projects on the following topics: energy transition, workforce, education, housing, crime, and health care. The Center continues to expand the reach and impact of the Leadership Forum with alumni engagement activities including the following: * Alumni Committee: The Alumni Committee, which consists of 40+ Leadership Forum alumni, seeks to broaden engagement through networking, access to substantive events, and interaction with a broad range of leaders. * Alumni-driven programming: This includes our in-person Alumni Reunion as well as community partnerships with other leadership organizations, such as Leadership Houston and American Leadership Forum, which align with the Center's strategic initiatives. * CHF Board service: Co-chairs of the Alumni Committee sit on the Center's Board and provide input on the Center's strategic direction.