April 2013
| Business World Magazine | 221
can profit from sustainable energy. “The fu-
ture is in clean energy,” Hadden says, adding
that the sooner they make the switch, the
better off they will be economically. “Several
years ago we were actually at a point in time
where there were 22 coal plants proposed
in our state. It was extremely excessive and
would have generated way more energy than
we needed.”
“We legally opposed many of those
reactors and over time it became clear that
there was a lot of public opposition, there
were regulations coming down the road, and
natural gas was cheaper,” she adds. “Seventeen
of those plants never got built, and probably
won’t. Some of our coal plants are starting to
shut down and retire.”
Looking ahead to the longer term,
Hadden wants to see massive increases in en-
ergy efficiency programs that will create more
jobs and produce more retrofitted-homes.
Despite recent successes, the SEED Coali-
tion still has a long ways to go to help the in-
dustry meet the state’s energy needs due to
Texas’ warm and dry climate.
“The summers here are typically bru-
tal, and we’re dealing with global warming
impacts,” she says. “That’s important when
it comes to energy because we need electric
generation that doesn’t consume vast quanti-
ties of water.”
“We’re hoping to see a massive transi-
tion away from coal, less use of gas and move-
ment toward more efficiency and solar, wind
and geothermal energy,” she concludes.
Solar looks great on Texas rooftops.
