Tag: energy

One of the ironies of the controversy over proposed Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) oversight of the state’s second largest utility, Tri-State, is that the rural electric co-op arguably most in need of increased state supervision, the IREA, would be unaffected. Eighteen of the state’s 22 rural electric co-ops (REAs) would be impacted by PUC approval of Tri-State’s integrated resource plans — annual documents that detail the utility’s energy loads — but the IREA (Intermountain Rural Electric Association) and three other co-ops don’t get their power from Tri-State.

Four years after Vice President Dick Cheney spearheaded a massive energy bill that exempted natural gas drilling from federal clean water laws, Congress is having second thoughts about the environmental dangers posed by the burgeoning industry. With growing evidence that the drilling can damage water supplies, Democratic leaders in Congress are circulating legislation that would repeal the extraordinary exemption and for the first time require companies to disclose all chemicals used in the key drilling process, called hydraulic fracturing.

Even as some House Democrats moved closer last week to installing first-of-a-kind limits on the carbon emissions blamed for global warming, others are in a full-court press to kill a separate White House effort to curb those same greenhouse gasses.

Most experts agree, the factors shaping the 2010 election on Colorado’s Western Slope – and to a lesser degree the rest of the state – boil down to a version of that old James Carville chestnut: “It’s the energy economy, stupid.”

The push by environmental groups for Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) oversight of rural electric co-ops (REAs) and the utilities that supply them with power is already shaping up as a key campaign issue in the 2010 governor’s race.

Robb Walt, cofounder of Littleton-based Community Power Corporation, says he’s doing a brisk business these days in modular biopower systems, but not in Colorado despite a huge potential fuel load in the form of a mountain bark-beetle epidemic that’s killed millions of acres of lodgepole pines.

Will Sarah Palin, who sort of claimed she can see Russia from her house, say "drill, ребенок, drill" now? The Oil Drum blog notes an Al Jazeera report on Moscow warnings of future energy wars.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette is leading the charge to increase federal oversight of the nation’s natural gas industry, reintroducing a bill that specifically targets a process called hydraulic fracturing. “Fracking,” as it’s known in industry circles, pumps a mixture of water and sand into a well using extremely high pressure in order to force gas to the surface. Some environmental groups say the process can lead to groundwater contamination.

A spike in uranium prices in recent years has sparked a mining-claim rush near a proposed Colorado wilderness area – a situation that would be exacerbated by a federal energy bill that may include nuclear power in a national renewable energy standard.

While praising the Colorado Legislature for passing more than a dozen “green economic recovery” bills in the session that wrapped up Wednesday, conservation groups also skewered lawmakers for failing to require greater energy efficiency of the state’s largest rural electric co-op.