Intermountain Rural Electric Association

One is indeed the loneliest number, especially when it comes to reforming a rural electric co-op board bent on quashing clean-energy and conservation initiatives in the name of dirtier-burning coal.

A rift over legislation aimed at making rural electric association (REA) board elections more transparent and fair for challengers has in part spurred one co-op to part ways with the statewide association representing Colorado’s 21 REAs.

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.

Officials for Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest utility, said Wednesday the Minnesota-based company is willing to consider upping the state’s renewable energy standard (RES) to 30 percent by the year 2020, a proposal highlighted by Gov. Ritter in a speech marking the beginning of the legislative session this week and at the center of the first House bill introduced yesterday as the session got underway.

Announcing his agenda for the legislative session that gets under way Wednesday, Gov. Bill Ritter Tuesday revealed a plan to increase Colorado’s renewable energy standard (RES) by another 10 percent by 2020.
In a press release Tuesday, Ritter set this as his first legislative goal:
“Increasing Colorado’s 20 percent by 2020 Renewable Energy Standard to 30 percent [...]

As lawmakers once again try to put the heat on the state’s largest rural electric co-op this legislative session, at least one state senator will be in the Intermountain Rural Electric Association’s corner, even though he may have to recuse himself from key votes.
Republican Mike Kopp, a Gulf War veteran who represents the conservative confines [...]

Efforts to reform the recalcitrant Intermountain Rural Electric Association, the state’s largest energy cooperative, will be more subtle this legislative session. Instead of seeking, for example, to mandate energy efficiency, a Boulder lawmaker and new energy advocates are looking to change the way co-op board members are elected.

A Boulder lawmaker says she’ll introduce a bill next session aimed at cleaning up questionable campaign practices in rural electric association (REA) board elections.Claire Levy, D-Boulder, told the Colorado Independent Tuesday she is still working on a draft of the bill she’ll introduce in the upcoming legislative session in January, but she outlined the basics.

IREA Voices, a citizen activist group formed to combat the climate change policies of the state’s largest rural electric co-op, is pointing its members to a new study conducted by a former biochemist in Colorado who says the nation’s coal supply may run out in the next two decades.
Leslie Glustrom, now with Boulder-based Clean Energy [...]

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.