How the oil capital of the US welcomed a solar power boom

Image source, Steve CargilImage caption, Farmer Steve Cargil is now paid $200,000 a year for hosting a solar farm on his landByNathalie JimenezBusiness reporterPublished3 minutes agoSteve Cargil's family has farmed the flat, dry land around Uvalde, a small city in southwest Texas, since 1953.Cargil, 67, had always assumed that one of his three children would eventually take it over, the way he had from his father.But that assumption took a hit one night in 2018 after a violent hailstorm.Cargil and his son, Ryan, had spent months nursing crops of cabbage and onions to harvest. Then a storm rolled through and destroyed them overnight."I remember my son saying, 'Dad, I just don't know if I can do this. You do everything right, and we work so hard, and you come out one morning and it's all gone'," Cargil says.Cargil's farm was at risk of ending with him, he says, with none of his three children wanting to farm full time. For years, that left him wondering what would happen to the land, and to his own retirement, since farmers rarely have a pension to fall back on.Then in 2001 Cargil signed a deal to lease 600 acres of his land, about a quarter of the total, to a company called OCI Energy which built a vast solar farm."Never in my wildest dreams did I think that a solar project would be on my farm," Cargil says. Looking back now, he calls it a blessing.The lease, which pays Cargil $200,000 (£150,000) a year, has let him keep his farm running through a punishing drought. He has been able to concentrate his water irrigation allowance on the land he still farms, and he has stopped losing sleep over rises in the price of things such as diesel and fertiliser. "It's changed my life."Texas, which remains the largest oil producer in the US, earlier this year overtook California to become the country's biggest generator of electricity from solar farms., externalAnd in March of last year, more electricity was produced by solar in Texas than from coal for the first time, according to the US Energy Information Administration.Image source, AFP via Getty ImagesImage caption, Solar farms can stretch out across the flat lands of TexasOn hot afternoons, when demand for power peaks, solar is now regularly supplying around a third of the electricity used across Texas, says Mark Stover, executive director of the Texas Solar and Storage Association.He says that the solar boom is being driven by two main things. Firstly, it is cheap and quick to connect solar farms to Texas' power grid, which is separate to the rest of the US. Secondly, Texas has a huge and growing appetite for electricity, driven by a burgeoning population.Between 2015 and 2025, Texas's population increased by 15.8%,, external making it one of the fastest-growing states in the nation."We need a whole lot of power in Texas, and we need it quickly," Stover says.Solar has also become inexpensive. James Scott, vice president of project development at OCI, says the technology has had years of small manufacturing gains that brought the price down to the point where it is now the cheapest way to generate power in the state."No one would have believed that 20 years ago," Scott says.Once a project is built, he says, the price of the electricity it produces can be fixed for decades, since the fuel, sunlight, is free."We'll charge you $40 a megawatt hour for the next 25 years," Scott says, adding that large buyers such as Amazon and Apple value being able to lock in a price for that long.By contrast, new coal plants in the US produce power at nearly $90 megawatts per hour, says the Energy Information Administration.Farmers have become central to that growth because solar developers need large stretches of flat land.Stover says the industry is now paying out multigenerational income to families through leases that typically run 25 to 30 years and rise in value each year, letting some retire, set up family trusts, or simply keep a farm solvent.Stover argues solar's footprint is smaller than critics assume. "The industry is utilizing less than 0.15% of Texas land," he says.Image source, AFP via Getty ImagesImage caption, Texas is now the largest producer of solar farm power in the USYet solar has its opponents. In Franklin County, in northeast Texas, a small group of residents has spent the past few years fighting its growth.BF Hicks, a local lawyer whose family has owned land in the county since the 1800s, says he watched neighbours sign 30-year leases with solar companies and bulldozers clear centuries-old oak trees near his property.He describes a summer when smoke from burning cleared land hung over his town for weeks. "It got real personal," he says, when a solar farm was built next to his family's cemetery. His relatives have been buried here dating back two centuries.David Truesdale, a retired federal law enforcement agent who moved to the county to get away from city life, says he became involved after learning that a neighbouring solar project would sit near his home. And that under Texan law no environmental review was required."We're destroying the world as we're trying to save it," Truesdale says of the land clearing he has seen. He also points to the large lithium-ion battery units installed alongside many solar farms, drawing a comparison to fires that have occasionally engulfed similar batteries in electric bikes."If one of those things catches fire, they go off in series, so each one will progressively cause another one to go off," he says.Image source, BF HicksImage caption, Lawyer BF Hicks fights the building of new solar farmsBoth men say their objections are not about politics. Franklin County is solidly conservative, but its residents helped push through one of the state's first county-level moratoriums on new solar construction, before it was later rescinded under legal pressure from developers.Their complaints echo a broader unease that has followed solar's expansion into rural Texas - worries about visual impact, water runoff after land is cleared, and battery storage units that scorch their land.President Trump has called solar and wind power "farmer destroying" and moved to unwind tax credits for renewable projects.Yet Fabrizio Lee and Associates, the polling firm used by President Trump, found back in February that 68% of Republican voters believe the country needs "all forms of electricity generation, including utility solar" to keep costs down., externalStover says he has found broad support in the Republican-controlled Texas state legislature. "There is an acceptance that these technologies bring reliability benefits to the grid," he says.Back in Uvalde, Steve Cargil says that while he has no plans to retire any time soon, he is more positive that the farm might make it to a fifth generation after all, now that the solar farm has put a floor under its finances."You're better off being lucky than being smart," Cargil says, echoing something his father used to tell him. "And this was one of those cases where I was just lucky."Related topicsInternational BusinessWorld of BusinessTexasSolar powerUS economyMore on this storySpain battles climate change on several frontsPublished1 day agoWould you buy branded clothing from your favourite tech firm?Published6 days agoWhy wait? Business grads buying firms to install themselves as CEOPublished3 September