[Austin Chronicle, via CleanEdge]: In
a near-complete turnaround from its public position just a week ago,
Austin Energy has announced plans to adopt specific, highly ambitious,
and undeniably expensive goals for adding solar energy to the Austin
electric and economic mix… 15 megawatts of solar generating capacity
by 2007, escalating to 100 megawatts by 2020.
Institute for Local Self-Reliance (my
old stomping grounds) proposed a municipally driven market formation
strategy for solar electricity more than 20 years ago. Kudos to Austin
for driving it foward — and showing that energy policy no longer needs
to wait for the Feds.
Better late than never. 🙂
And a good time to think about the ways that development of
distributed, renewable energy could be as transformative as the
development of distributed information & communications systems —
a la the Internet.