R.I.P., Texas Oil - Here Comes the Sun

R.I.P., Texas Oil - Here Comes the Sun

Inside the plot to make the Lone Star State a solar powerhouse.

By Bruce Sterling

The modern petroleum industry was founded in 1901 in Spindletop, Texas, and the subsequent century of gushers made Texas a byword for oil worldwide. Today the Lone Star State imports more crude than it exports, and 21st-century oil has become a byword for jihad. Thus Austin, a city governed not by oil people but by picky tech geeks, is looking for a better way to live.

Illustration by Scott Menchin

With Texas oil barons ensconced in Washington, the capital of their home state should be free to pollute everything in sight. But that's not happening. Austin's most backward fossil fuel-burning power plant, a noisy, smelly relic, has been a persistent source of controversy. And the Environmental Protection Agency has called the city out for excessive smog, threatening its reputation as a livable high tech mecca. So in December, Austin announced its intention to become the clean energy capital of the world. If the mayor, city council, local power utility, and chamber of commerce have their way, by 2020 Austin will achieve record growth without adding to the atmosphere's CO2 burden.

Austin's gambit is a multidecade plan to pioneer industrial solar energy on only a few million dollars a year. The scheme is speculative, but the idea is to attract a crowd of alternative-energy startups and patent-spewing R&D outfits so as to make some bucks off something-or-other when, and if, it becomes practical. A zero-energy housing subdivision will serve as a demo, creating as much solar as it uses from all other sources, and all over town schools and libraries will be retrofitted with solar panels. If the plan works, 20 percent of the city's energy will be renewable, and 15 percent will come from enhanced efficiency by 2020.

Illustration by Emek

A minute's work on the back of an envelope suggests that Austin's plan is a daring long shot. So far, solar satisfies a whopping 0.1 percent of the nation's energy requirement. It costs five times as much as fossil fuels - though it cost 50 times as much in the 1970s, so the trend line looks good. The silicon needed for solar panels is expensive, though not necessarily for Austin, a town full of vacant chip fabs since the tech bubble burst. But even if the whole city were paved in solar panels, it would take a wondrously smart and nimble utility to shuffle the resulting energy to meet demand. And there's a pressing need for a new business model. When a power company's customers become its producers, too, who pays for maintenance? Who inspects what? Who do you sue?

On the other hand, solar is the one kind of power Austin has plenty of. Texas oil and gas are running out. There's lots of wind power in the state's gusty western hills, but not inside Austin city limits. And solar looks lovely compared with nuclear energy, which was supposed to run Austin ratepayers $160 million and ended up topping $1.5 billion.

Solar has other would-be capitals. Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Antonio, Tokyo, and Freiburg, Germany, have struggled to move solar from niche to mass market. But making photovoltaic cells competitive with fossil fuels is tricky - politically, economically, and technologically. California, once the natural leader in such efforts, boldly deregulated its power utilities, then went so spectacularly bust that it ended up with a new governor whose first impulse was to freeze tax rebates on solar research.

But the challenge isn't about developing hardware; it's about creating a smart support system for tomorrow's smart utilities. Austin is betting there will be a profitable sweet spot at the intersection of energy grids, digital networks, chip fabs, and solar panels. It reasons that developing innovative technology is the best way to find fat profit margins that won't be offshored overnight.

The city has made similar bets that paid off. In software, chips, music, and even movies, the self-styled City of Ideas has enjoyed modest but persistent success. Even if solar fizzles, there's bound to be money in spinoffs. Plus, if you fill the town with greens, the green city council is likely to stay in control no matter what the economy does.

Tech development is always hard to forecast, but any place that loudly calls itself the clean energy capital of the world is sure to attract inventive people who want to tackle environmental crises instead of merely moan about them in some remote global forum, Kyoto-style. Lure them from around the planet, give them a headquarters, polish them up with generous funding and a progressive vision, and maybe you can bottle and sell the sparks.

Email Bruce Sterling at bruces@well.com.