This week’s Austin Next Podcast we’re moving towards energy abundance with Christy Cardenas, Managing Partner Grit Ventures

Infrastructure is one of the key issues impacting Austin’s rapid growth. Whether it’s water, roadways and transit, or power, we must ensure that we have the resources to handle our growth. Today, we focus on power… Joining us is Christy Cardenas Managing Partner Grit Ventures. Grit Ventures focuses, in part, on new energy sources, distribution systems, and transportation. We talk about the current energy situation, how we make a transition to new sources while working together with traditional producers, what does innovation look like with abundant energy, and finally where does Austin fit into all of this.

We need the lights on to see…What’s next Austin?

Episode 37 Highlights

· Deep tech is a growing field for venture capital being driven by horizontal technologies like robotics, AI, and energy that really span across the industrial value chain

· They are looking to energy solutions, that allow us to repurpose the enormous legacy oil and gas infrastructure

· The EIA projects that by 2050, we still will be using natural gas and coal for half of our power generation

· To achieve any sort of decarbonization we need to build bridges to the legacy energy industry

· Nuclear is an underappreciated asset for this future and some cool stuff like the big fusion laser at UT is happening here in Austin

· Texas has a huge potential as a leader in advanced manufacturing with our cheaper land, cheaper electricity, huge engineering talent, expertise in structuring capital intensive projects, and building sophisticated industrial infrastructure

· 30%-40% of the Texas state budget comes from direct tax from oil and gas receipts

· What’s next Austin?

o “The Texas Technopolis…” a step into the future and I think Austin is at the helm of it

Catch us on your favorite podcast catcher or on our website at:

https://www.austinnextpodcast.com/37