Retiring Xcel CEO ‘OK if no more coal’ after investing $1 billion-plus on Comanche 3 plant

“I’d be OK if there were never any more coal,” says retiring Xcel Energy CEO Dick Kelly, who invested more than $1 billion in Pueblo’s coal-fired Comanche 3 power plant. Leslie Glustrom of Boulder-based Clean Energy Action puts the interview “in the vein of ‘I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.’ Burritos are only $3 mistakes and the indigestion lasts for a day. Coal plants are $1 billion mistakes and the ‘indigestion’ lasts for decades.”

Enviro groups seek to intervene in anti-RES lawsuit, get judge to throw it out

Four environmental groups hope a judge will allow them to intervene in a lawsuit filed by a Morrison businessman and the green-bashing American Tradition Partnership challenging Colorado’s aggressive renewable energy standard of 30 percent by 2020.

Xcel Energy says anti-renewable lawsuit likely just blowing in the wind

Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility and a key backer of Colorado’s aggressive renewable energy standard (RES), reacted with skepticism to Monday’s lawsuit seeking to overturn a state law mandating 30 percent of Xcel’s electricity be produced by renewable sources by 2020. “… We understand that [the complaint] was made by a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization,” Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz told the Colorado Independent. “We would be surprised if a federal court would overturn Colorado’s legislatively approved Renewable Energy Standard.”

Senate committee kills three GOP bills aimed at rolling back renewable energy policies

Renewable energy backers today were buoyed by the defeat of three bills floated by Colorado Republicans aimed at rolling back clean energy policies passed largely by Democrats last legislative session.

With Congress gridlocked on climate legislation, environmental groups forge ahead

Despite the Gulf oil spill, a massive pipeline break in Michigan and broad concerns about global warming, ambitious climate-change and energy legislation is likely dead for the year. That poses a conundrum, going forward, for environmentalists: How to convince lawmakers of the need for legislation to sever the country’s decades-long ties to oil and to reform energy policy more generally?

Udall, Bennet add names to revived national renewable energy standard bill

Colorado Democratic Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet Tuesday signed onto a bipartisan bid to pass a national renewable energy standard (RES) modeled after Colorado’s requirement that was first approved by state voters in 2004.

Introduced in the Senate by…

Udall pushes for renewable energy standard over August recess

Proponents of a renewable energy standard, which would require that a certain percentage of the country’s electricity be produced from sources like wind and solar, have ramped up efforts to convince Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to pass such…

Udall ‘disappointed’ in Reid decision to scrap climate bill

Colorado Sen. Mark Udall Thursday reacted with “disappointment” to the decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to pull the plug on a comprehensive climate bill that had been lingering on life support for months anyway.

With nowhere near…

Udall pushes new renewable standard as part of last-ditch climate bill

In a last-ditch effort to salvage climate change legislation before the end of the year, the emphasis now is on a utility-only carbon cap in the Senate, and Colorado Sen. Mark Udall has renewed his push for a national…

IREA members laud Levy bill for power to change electric co-op’s ‘old guard’

Member-owners of the state’s largest rural electric association praised the recent signing by Gov. Bill Ritter of a law meant to clean up REA board elections around the state.

Boulder Democrat Claire Levy’s HB 1098 was part of a