Around here I hear local leaders say “we’ll never be Austin.”
Well, Austin may be letting San Antonio pass Austin as far as rooftop solar
and the jobs that generates.
It’s not a matter of size or pre-existing advantages.
It’s a matter of political will.
Do we have that will here?
TexasVox
wrote a white paper in February 2012,
Solar Austin: Rooftop Solar & Job Creation,
…the most direct route to attracting and encouraging the
development of clean energy industries is through the
the scale of future development will be orders of
magnitude greater than what has occurred to date.
mass deployment of local rooftop solar, which is probably why solar has
by far the most significant presence of any clean energy generation
technology in Austin.
But the paper’s point is that Austin is falling short.
Look at the graph:
Austin seems to have settled for linear growth in solar power,
while San Antonio gets it about
compound growth.
As San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro
said in 2011, solar power is in