The governor this week named Pam Patton, of Bayfield, to the PUC, where she joins former Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation chairman Joshua Epel and Republican appointee James Tarpey.
Two very different energy bills were debated in committees today, with one aimed at making dramatic changes to the Governor’s Energy Office and the other proposing a system by which residential and business property owners can finance energy-efficiency improvement through their local electric utilities. House Bill 1312 (pdf), sponsored by Rep. Jon Becker, R-Fort Morgan, calls for the reorganization of the Governor’s Energy Office, the brainchild of former Gov. Bill Ritter and his “New Energy Economy.” It was slated for debate in the House Agriculture Committee, where Democrats promised a fight.
Colorado conservation groups this legislative session are promising to try and hold the line on environmental gains over the past several years while still advancing energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in what they admit will be a challenging fiscal climate.
One of the least-publicized aspect of the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic, which has decimated nearly 2 million acres of trees in Colorado, is the threat it poses to the region’s power grid. Whole mountainsides of dead and toppling trees throughout the state raise the specter of disaster on the scale of the great Northeast Blackout of 2003.
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