Energy companies in Houston: choosing a power provider, and who the big employers are

This page is for Houston households and businesses choosing who to buy electricity from, for job seekers sizing up the city's energy employers, and for B2B sellers whose customers are power, oil and gas or pipeline companies. Most searches for Houston energy companies come from the first group, so we start there.

Choosing an electricity provider in Houston

Most of Houston is in Texas's competitive electricity market, and two companies stand behind every bill:

CenterPoint's 2025 10-K says Houston Electric's customers are the REPs that sell electricity to metered customers in its service area. EIA's 2025 utility survey (Form EIA-861) counts 2,858,029 customers on CenterPoint's delivery system and 88 retail power marketers selling in Texas, 62 of them to homes.

Not every Houston-area address can shop. EIA's service territory file also lists Entergy Texas and three electric cooperatives (San Bernard, Sam Houston and Mid-South) in parts of Harris and Montgomery counties. Entergy Texas sells and delivers power itself on the MISO grid rather than ERCOT, and NRG's 10-K notes that areas served by co-ops and city utilities that haven't opted into competition sit outside the competitive market. If your bill comes from one of them, that's your provider.

Before you sign with a REP, the Public Utility Commission's residential contract rule (16 TAC §25.475) tells you what to check:

1. The Electricity Facts Label (EFL) shows the average price at 500, 1,000 and 2,000 kWh a month. Compare the line nearest your own usage, not the headline rate.
2. The EFL must say whether the plan is fixed or variable. Indexed plans can't be sold to homes after February 1, 2022.
3. The term, any minimum term and any early termination fee are on the EFL.
4. The EFL lists every fee and whether it's in the average price.
5. The provider must give you its terms of service and Your Rights as a Customer at enrollment.

The Office of Public Utility Counsel, the state's advocate for residential customers, sends shoppers to the commission's Power to Choose website (powertochoose.org). If a problem isn't fixed by the provider, the commission's Consumer Protection Division takes complaints, and it publishes them: in 2025, Harris County customers filed 1,002 about 49 different REPs and 492 about CenterPoint. Statewide, billing was the most common complaint about REPs (1,906 of 3,990).

Houston's energy industry in Census data

For work or business, the scale is different. County Business Patterns 2023 counts electric power, oil and gas extraction and pipeline establishments (NAICS 2211, 211 and 486) in the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX Metro Area (CBSA 26420):

The Census Bureau published an employee total but flagged it as high-noise: the noise it adds to protect confidentiality changed the value by 5% or more. The flag comes from pipelines. The other two segments are publishable:

Average pay is annual payroll divided by employees, our calculation.

In broader bands, 551 establishments have 1 to 19 employees, 161 have 20 to 99 and 70 have 100 or more. The last figure is the total less the smaller bands, because the Census Bureau doesn't publish two of the large cells.

Other county employee counts are high-noise figures. CBP counts establishments with paid employees, not companies, and excludes the self-employed. Head offices are filed under management of companies, and refineries, oilfield services and gas utilities fall outside these three codes; the Houston oil and gas report covers drilling, oilfield services and refining.

A second count comes from the Greater Houston Partnership's Houston Facts 2026, built on Texas Workforce Commission wage records for the fourth quarter of 2025: 14,935 jobs at 164 electric power firms (average wage $155,064) and 34,677 jobs at 374 oil and gas extraction firms. It counts firms, in a later year, so the figures differ from Census; pick one source and stick with it.

Power plants in metro Houston

EIA's 2025 generator survey (Form EIA-860, final data released September 10, 2026) lists 174 power plants in the metro with 30,366 MW of nameplate capacity: 74.5% natural gas, 9.0% coal, 8.9% solar and 6.6% batteries. Harris County alone has 81 plants and 10,251 MW, more capacity than any other Texas county.

W A Parish, which burns coal and gas, is the largest plant in Texas by nameplate capacity. San Antonio's city utility, CPS Energy, operates 2,057 MW in the Houston metro, second only to NRG.

Public energy companies headquartered in Houston

EDGAR shows 57 SEC-registered listed companies in these industries (SIC 1311 and 4910 to 4991) with a metro Houston address. That utility code range also takes in waste haulers such as Waste Management, which we leave out. The largest, each checked on its latest 10-K:

Two are recent arrivals. Devon's and Expand's 2025 10-Ks gave Oklahoma City addresses. Devon completed its merger with Houston-based Coterra on May 7, 2026, and the 8-K announcing the deal put the combined company's headquarters in Houston; its 2025 revenue above is Devon alone. Expand announced in a February 2026 8-K that it would move to its existing office in Spring in mid-2026, and its third-quarter 2026 10-Q lists Spring. Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 file under petroleum refining (SIC 2911), so they appear in the oil and gas report instead.

Checking a company before you apply, partner or sell

Selling to Houston energy companies

Illustrative example. The seller and its rates are invented; the plant counts are from EIA-860.

Gulfway Turbine Analytics (gulfway.example) sells vibration monitoring for gas turbines. EIA-860 lists 39 mostly gas-fired plants of 100 MW or more in metro Houston, run by 29 operators. With three contacts per operator (plant manager, reliability manager, regional asset director) that's 87 people. At a 6% reply rate, about 5 conversations; if two become single-unit pilots, that's a real pipeline from one metro. A list this short rewards research on each plant, which is where Bebop helps: describe the operators you want and it researches each account and drafts the first email. The account research guide lists what to check on each plant before you write.

Subject: [plant name]'s [unit or turbine model]

Hi [first name],

EIA lists [plant name] at [capacity] MW in [county], with [number] combustion turbines from [year].

Plants that size often find a bearing or blade problem at a forced outage rather than in time to plan around it. We add vibration sensors to [turbine model] and flag changes weeks ahead, without a site visit.

Would 15 minutes on [day] be useful to see whether it fits your next outage plan?

[Your name]

Next step: for the statewide picture, including Dallas, San Antonio and the Permian, see energy companies in Texas.