The director of sustainability for Aspen Skiing Company on Monday trumpeted the results of a rural electric association board election that saw the local co-op flip to “a supermajority of progressives who support clean energy and energy efficiency, stable prices and fiscal prudence.”
An unprecedented nine candidates are running for two seats on the board of Holy Cross Energy, a rural electric co-op with 55,000 members on Colorado’s Western Slope. Its coverage area includes two of the biggest players in the nation’s ski industry: Aspen and Vail.
In the end, it may not be NIMBYism or environmentalist objections to producing power by burning trees that dooms Vail’s proposed biomass power plant. It may just be a simple lack of funding.
The board of directors of Holy Cross Energy (pdf), a rural electric cooperative with more than 40,000 members between Vail and Aspen, has officially “flipped” from old-school conventional-energy conservatives to a majority of progressive directors favoring a greater mix…
A rural electric co-op board president who last year riled environmentalists by playing down climate change right before board elections has once again stirred controversy. Holy Cross Energy board president Tom Turnbull wrote a letter posted in the Vail Daily last week in which he backed incumbent board members Bob Starodoj and Mike Glass in an election to be decided Saturday at HCE’s annual meeting in Glenwood Springs.
The latest version of a Vail biomass power plant, which would convert chipped-up, beetle-killed pine trees into electricity and heat, reportedly made the final cut for a $26 million U.S. Department of Energy grant.
Two Colorado companies played a pivotal role in getting Sen. Mark Udall to craft legislation aimed at offering the same federal tax credits individual homeowners receive for installing solar panels to community collectives to build so-called “solar farms.”
Conservationists appear to be taking a more subtle approach to reforming the fossil-fuel-fixated ways of Colorado’s rural electric associations (REAs) this legislative session, introducing a bill that would daylight the co-op’s board of director elections, but not offering much more in terms of transformative legislation.
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.
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.
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