Bobby Tudor made a fortune in fracking. The clean-cut financier opened shop in 2007 and spent the next 10 years backing large-scale projects in West Texas, supercharging one of history’s greatest oil and gas expansions. But over lunch in February, even as he predicted that oil and gas would be around for the foreseeable future, Tudor offered a dimmer view of the industry’s role in the region. “Oil and gas is just not going to be the same engine for growth,” he told me. “It will flatten, and then it will decline.”
Which is why Tudor, a consummate Texas fossil-fuel money man, is betting big on green energy.
It’s not hard to see why. The state is already the largest producer of renewable energy in the U.S. Clean-technology startups are flocking to the Houston region, and big energy companies are pursuing hydrogen projects across the state. The city of Houston alone could receive as much as $250 billion in annual investment in the emerging energy sectors by 2040, according to data from McKinsey, thanks in part to its existing infrastructure and skilled labor force. Tudor has started a new firm focused on
