The wave of green advocacy sweeping Colorado’s rural electric associations (REAs), especially in more progressive mountain resort areas like Aspen, Vail and Telluride, didn’t quite make it to Steamboat Springs.
Colorado’s environmental community wasn’t exactly singing the praises of the Senate version of clean-energy legislation passed by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee Wednesday.
Environment Colorado issued a release saying the American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 “does little or nothing to spur renewable energy in this country. The proposal risks sensitive coastal ecosystems [in Florida] to pollution and spills from off-shore drilling, while worsening global warming by opening the door to high-carbon fuels such as liquid coal, tar sands and oil shale.”
The director of sustainability for one of the state’s largest ski companies says there is a quiet revolution going at the state’s rural electric co-ops, where previously ignored and under-publicized board elections are seeing some real upheaval.
A mineral royalty rights meeting that turned ugly in Grand Junction earlier this month is just a small taste of what’s coming for local and state Democrats running for re-election in 2010 on Colorado’s Western Slope, according to one lawmaker.
Clean-burning fuel made from corn! Ethanol, a once-sparkly futuristic product, now conjures visions of doomed dot-matrix printers, music cds and newspapers! Which is why nearly 2000 members of the ethanol industry have assembled this week in Denver.
Four Colorado projects that convert wood waste, or biomass, into energy received a total of $1 million in federal stimulus funds Thursday, but a state with more than two million acres of dead and dying lodgepole pine forests could use a lot more.
Despite an exemption from a proposed cap on greenhouse gas emissions, Big Agriculture has declared war on clean energy legislation making its way through Congress.
Grist has the details on what it describes as a sop to large agribusinesses to continue its old, polluting ways:
At least one Colorado rural electric co-ops is leaning greener this week after a pro-renewable candidate, former Telluride Mountain Village Mayor Rube Felicelli, beat out incumbent Tony Forrest for a board seat on the San Miguel Power Association.
Using some rather pointed language aimed at Bush administration energy policies in general and former Vice President Dick Cheney in particular, Colorado Rep.’s Diana DeGette, D-Denver, and Jared Polis, D-Boulder, Tuesday introduced the FRAC Act aimed at closing a natural-gas drilling loophole in the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Officials for the natural gas industry are quick to point out that a process called hydraulic fracturing has been in use for more than 60 years without a single documented case of groundwater contamination by the chemicals used to make gas flow more freely from wells.
But U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette is just as quick to respond that it’s hard to document contamination when no one outside of the industry knows exactly what kinds of chemicals are being injected along with high-pressure water into wells to force open rock formations thousands of feet below the surface.
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
rss