TEXAS COULD BE THE WORLD'S CLEAN-ENERGY CAPITAL. DOES IT WANT TO BE?
Time|May 22 - 29, 2023 (Double Issue)
There’s just one problem: politics. While many cities, states, and even countries are fighting for the trillions of dollars in public and private green investments that are transforming the energy industry, many Texas leaders, including a powerful segment of the state’s political leadership, are opposing the new opportunities
JUSTIN WORLAND/HOUSTON
TEXAS COULD BE THE WORLD'S CLEAN-ENERGY CAPITAL. DOES IT WANT TO BE?

Some fear that clean energy will hurt the state’s incumbent fossil-fuel business. But many oppose the energy transition as a proxy for opposing Democrats, another way to prove to the conservative base that they are the reddest around. The result is a raft of measures that could hamper green-energy projects and incentivize carbon-heavy ones.

These divisions are setting up a surprising, high-stakes fight. Tudor’s coalition, the Houston Energy Transition Initiative (HETI), is organized by the city’s most prominent business group, and its members are putting serious cash behind new energy efforts. But some politicians are pushing back, launching efforts to slow renewable energy and publicly vilifying environment initiatives. “[Major oil and gas firms] may have supported us in the past, but they certainly don’t align with us now,” says Jason Isaac of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. “They’re going to go and chase money—and it’s unfortunate.”

The fight in Texas can tell us a lot about the bigger push to address climate change. A well-executed transition would help cut global emissions, create wealth and opportunity for millions of Texans, and set an example for the world. But the unfolding debate also shows why it’s not so simple. Politics and culture are powerful forces everywhere, and despite mounds of evidence about the value of transition, it’s unclear whether long-term economic considerations will win out. We all have an interest in the outcome. “We need to do it for commercial reasons,” says Tudor, but “we have a responsibility to do it too. The challenges of climate change, and the energy transition broadly, are so enormous that they’re not going to be solved without us.”

Denne historien er fra May 22 - 29, 2023 (Double Issue)-utgaven av Time.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

Denne historien er fra May 22 - 29, 2023 (Double Issue)-utgaven av Time.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

FLERE HISTORIER FRA TIMESe alt
Kate Winslet Puts Lee Miller in the Frame - Kate Winslet loves tables. She loves them so much that the Oscar-winning actor collects them.
Time

Kate Winslet Puts Lee Miller in the Frame - Kate Winslet loves tables. She loves them so much that the Oscar-winning actor collects them.

Kate Winslet loves tables. She loves them so much that the Oscar-winning actor collects them. There is nothing fancy about these antiques, but they enchant her. "It's the knots and the whorls, the shape and feel," she says. "They can feel like old friends, and there is something emotionally charging about an old table that comes with a history-I find imagining what that might be enormous fun."

time-read
6 mins  |
September 30, 2024
Alfonso Cuarón Goes Long - The Oscar-winning filmmaker finds pathos in our lonely present in his first TV miniseries
Time

Alfonso Cuarón Goes Long - The Oscar-winning filmmaker finds pathos in our lonely present in his first TV miniseries

A perceptive, generous-spirited child draws on her imagination when she's subjected to the cruelty of a boarding-school headmistress. A lone astronaut, cradled in a damaged space capsule and having lost any hope of returning to Earth, experiences a hallucination that saves her life. A young household servant, abandoned by the man who's gotten her pregnant, miscarries-though his betrayal helps her define what family truly means to her. Loneliness, so universal it has virtually become trademarked the Human Condition, is everywhere in art, and in life: we tend to fetishize it, or at least dab it with a perfume of sentimentality. But Alfonso Cuarón, now more than 30 years into a wide-ranging career that spans pictures like the Frances Hodgson Burnett adaptation A Little Princess, the space reverie Gravity, and the memoir-as-film drama Roma, is more interested in subtle emotional textures, in gradations of feeling that are always specific to the character at hand yet also joltingly recognizable. And now he brings his big-screen, big-story gifts to a limited series, an adaptation of Renée Knight's 2015 psychological thriller Disclaimer.

time-read
7 mins  |
September 30, 2024
TIME 100 NEXT The World's Rising Stars - Innovators
Time

TIME 100 NEXT The World's Rising Stars - Innovators

From the halls of power to recording studios and science labs, these rising stars are remaking the world while defining the next generation of leadership

time-read
10+ mins  |
October 14, 2024
TIME 100 NEXT The World's Rising Stars - Leaders
Time

TIME 100 NEXT The World's Rising Stars - Leaders

From the halls of power to recording studios and science labs, these rising stars are remaking the world while defining the next generation of leadership

time-read
10+ mins  |
October 14, 2024
TIME 100 NEXT The World's Rising Stars - Advocates
Time

TIME 100 NEXT The World's Rising Stars - Advocates

From the halls of power to recording studios and science labs, these rising stars are remaking the world while defining the next generation of leadership

time-read
10+ mins  |
October 14, 2024
TIME 100 NEXT The World's Rising Stars - Phenoms
Time

TIME 100 NEXT The World's Rising Stars - Phenoms

From the halls of power to recording studios and science labs, these rising stars are remaking the world while defining the next generation of leadership

time-read
10+ mins  |
October 14, 2024
TIME 100 NEXT The World's Rising Stars - Artists
Time

TIME 100 NEXT The World's Rising Stars - Artists

From the halls of power to recording studios and science labs, these rising stars are remaking the world while defining the next generation of leadership

time-read
10+ mins  |
October 14, 2024
THE NEW APPRENTICE
Time

THE NEW APPRENTICE

J.D. Vance's juggling act

time-read
10+ mins  |
October 14, 2024
Fear in Lebanon, and a new front
Time

Fear in Lebanon, and a new front

FIRST, ON SEPT. 17, THERE WERE exploding pagers.

time-read
1 min  |
October 14, 2024
The hunt for life on a moon of Jupiter begins
Time

The hunt for life on a moon of Jupiter begins

NEARLY HALF A BILLION MILES FROM EARTH, A WORLD may be stirring.

time-read
3 mins  |
October 14, 2024