Scores of wind turbines, each as tall as a 50-story building, rise into the desert sky. Solar panels, 800,000 in all, cover a patch of scrubland almost the size of London’s Heathrow Airport. Rows of computer servers whir loudly in a chilled cryptocurrency data warehouse that could cover two New York City blocks. The University of Texas System manages the land under all these new projects, which are generating cash for hundreds of thousands of students.

UT has long relied on the money it makes leasing the rights to what’s beneath its vast property in the Permian Basin: oil and ...