Every morning, we send you a free email packed with Austin news, business, and entertainment. Join 16,000+ readers who wake up to Austonia's newsletter.
Featured
austonia newsletter
Most viewed
CompTIA's annual Tech Town Index is out and the results do not disappoint. For the second year in a row, Austin was named the top tech town in the U.S.
The report is based on tech-sector job posting data over the last year in 20 metropolitan areas with populations over 250,000, then ranked based on cost of living, number of postings for open IT positions and projected job growth over the next year, as well as the next five years.
Texas is giving the rest of the U.S. a run for its money, claiming the top two spots: Austin at number one followed by Dallas in number two.
On top of Austin's stellar leap into becoming a tech leader, the city also ranked number one for one-year and five-year percent job growth.
What moved Austin to the top?
A stellar past few years.
Austin is quickly becoming a preferable alternative to the Bay Area and New York City due to a culture that allows businesses of all sizes to grow.
According to the Austin Chamber of Commerce, 58 tech companies relocated to Austin in 2019, which created almost 5,000 jobs, a step up from the 46 companies that moved to the city in 2018.
Now, the Austin-Round Rock area is home to around 5,500 startups and tech companies that raised $1.84 billion in venture funding in 2019, giving it the nickname from outsiders, "Little Silicon" and "Silicon Hills." Big companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and Atlassian have offices in Austin.
Even though Austin was named one of the most expensive cities in terms of real estate, the city is still 4% below average cost of living when compared to the rest of the U.S. Only Columbus, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia and Huntsville, Alabama ranked above Austin in the same category.
Austin is growing at lightspeed and according to CompTIA, "it's no surprise that the city has been named the fastest-growing major metro area in the U.S.—and is the reigning No. 1 Tech Town."
- Tesla files site plan for Austin Gigafactory - austonia ›
- Elon Musk's Neuralink startup is hiring in Austin, Texas - austonia ›
- SpaceX job ad reveals early stages of Texas space resort - austonia ›
- Austin is the No. 2 best college town in the country - austonia ›
- Wall Street Journal dubs Austin a "magnet" for new jobs - austonia ›
- New to Austin? Here are 9 things to know about your new home - austonia ›
- Austin-based company displays upcoming 'flying car' - austonia ›
- Terradepth completes unmanned submarine trial in Lake Travis - austonia ›
- How many people leave Austin and where do they go? - austonia ›
- Blockcap, a cryptocurrency company, moves to Austin with plans for growth - austonia ›
- Inc. 5000 list highlights over 100 Austin businesses - austonia ›
- Game on: Retro gaming sees a comeback in tech-savvy Austin - austonia ›
- Tech jobs are in hot demand, both benefitting and hurting job seekers - austonia ›
- Austin companies pay six figures for coveted roles - austonia ›
- Could the hybrid model be the best of both worlds for tech industry workers? - austonia ›
- Austin vs. Pittsburgh: How the two cities compare in tech - austonia ›
- Huston-Tillotson President named Austinite of the Year - austonia ›
Popular
UT is developing technology targeted at power, steel, cement and other industrial plants to lower emissions. (UT Austin)
The ruling was brought after a challenge to a lower court opinion brought by Texas and more than a dozen other states.
Vaibhav Bahadur, an associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin called the SCOTUS decision significant, noting that Texas is the biggest energy producer in the U.S., and produces more energy than the United Kingdom.
“Power generation accounts for a significant fraction of U.S. carbon emissions, and the EPA loses its ability to control what's happening in about half of that sector,” Bahadur said. “And it's not just the U.S., I think people and environmentalists on pretty much anywhere on the planet will be disappointed because this is going in the wrong direction. We know we want to be decarbonizing, and this is essentially putting a roadblock on progress toward decarbonization.”
So, we’re going to need some insurance, Bahadur says. He’s carrying out work that’ll act as such through his research on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), the process of sucking carbon from the air and burying it.
For the past five years, he’s been working on a novel approach to storing carbon. It involves supercharging the formation of carbon dioxide-based crystal structures and storing billions of tons of carbon under the ocean floor.
“If all of this is successful, then we will have another option for safely and responsibly storing carbon at the bottom of the seabed for essentially eternity,” Bahadur said.
Still, Bahadur talked about a different approach to responsibly cutting down emissions in the next decade, and doing so in a meaningful and substantial way, then the environment will eventually heal itself and we might not need CCS.
But that’s not the path we’re headed down.
“We're already starting to see temperature records being shattered this year, and we're still to hit peak summer,” Bahadur said. “All of this just makes me think that we need CCS to a larger extent, and possibly sooner than what a lot of scientists anticipate, especially if we can't keep our emissions in check.”
Gary Rochelle, a professor in the department of chemical engineering at UT, thinks CCS was ready to be deployed in 2010 and those 12 years have made a difference.
“But now we've emitted all that CO2,” Rochelle said. “And unfortunately, unlike other pollutants, when you emit CO2, it's there. It's not going away.”
Gary Rochelle and Vaibhav Bahadur are both researching technology to address carbon emissions. (UT)
Still, the delay is good in that now researchers like him have had time to learn about and improve the technology, allowing for fewer problems once it's deployed.
In December, UT announced a licensing agreement with advanced technology company Honeywell. The technology from that is targeted at power, steel, cement and other industrial plants to lower emissions.
Rochelle has been working on the technology since 2000 as part of an international collaborative effort. When he talked to Austonia on Thursday, he had just had calls with collaborators in Germany and Norway. Currently, he’s working with some Ph.D. students on addressing a chemical reaction that can happen with the technology known as oxidation that could lead to ammonia emissions and cause problems for a large-scale commercial unit.
Rochelle says he’s driven to this work because he wants to make a contribution.
“We're trying to develop this technology so that we can make a difference,” Rochelle said. “It's a nice problem to work on. The students are motivated and those are the primary things which drive us.”
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the high court’s decision which acted as a blow to President Joe Biden’s plan to reduce emissions.
“Today’s landmark victory against an out-of-control administration is also a big win for Americans who worry about skyrocketing energy costs due to expensive federal regulations that threaten our energy industry,” Abbott said. “President Biden cannot keep attacking the energy industry and the hardworking men and women who power our nation.”
- UT reports three students bitten by raccoons - austonia ›
- UT athletes racked up over $2 million in NIL deals in first year ... ›
- UT-Austin's 'Frack King' has a vision for clean, geothermal energy ›
- UT Austin debuts new hologram program amid pandemic - austonia ›
- UT admits the most diverse class in the school's history - austonia ›
- A peek inside UT's new $338 million Moody Center - austonia ›
