I set out to write a very different book than the one that published last week. It would have been called “Climate of Opportunities,” and profiled innovators who found opportunities for profit while confronting climate change.With classes out for the summer of 2017, I headed to downtown Houston to conduct my first interview.
“Well who the hell is making any money at this?” Michael Skelly retorted upon hearing my premise. The tall and bespectacled entrepreneur had treated me and a former-student-turned-employee to sandwiches in the conference room of Clean Line Energy, the company he founded in 2009.
Clean Line aimed to build power lines stretching hundreds of miles from the windswept terrain of the central United States to cities such as Memphis, Chicago and Los Angeles. Each anticipated line had a clever name befitting the…