House Bill 1281 to raise the renewable energy standard in Colorado to 20 percent by 2020 sailed through the House of Representatives on Monday. At the time, Gov. Bill Ritter was in Washington, vowing to arm wrestle the new governor of Massachusetts over energy jobs.
“Gov. [Deval] Patrick talks about bringing jobs to Massachusetts,” Ritter told a group of about 200 business, environmental and labor leaders at a meeting of the Apollo Summit, a project organized to develop clean energy and good jobs to go with it. “We’re going to arm wrestle you for those jobs because we want those same manufacturing plants,” said Ritter. “We want to be the vertical part of the industry. It’s a good thing to have two governors competing for those jobs, competing in this industry to build out the turbines, competing to have the wind farms located in their state. That’s the right way for us to think about it.”
Unfortunately, watching the videotaped speeches of Gov. Ritter and Gov. Patrick, it’s impossible to tell, inside those suits and standing behind a podium, who will be the likely winner.
Cara DeGette is a longtime Colorado journalist and a senior fellow at Colorado Confidential. E-mail her at cdegette@coloradoconfidential.com.
