Tag: mike kempe

The state’s largest rural election association last week once again elected just one green candidate in a bloc of three members looking to reform policies currently geared more toward conventional power sources. Mike Kempe, a chemical engineer and research scientist for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, was re-elected to the Intermountain Rural Electric Association board by a margin of 2,892 votes to 1,870 for challenger John Dendahl. Kempe is often to the lone dissenting vote on the board of the IREA, which has just under 140,000 members in the Front Range suburbs between Denver and Colorado Springs.

Mike Kempe has been an embattled figure on the board of the Intermountain Rural Electric Association the last four years. He’s arguably the only green-minded board member for a rural electric co-op famous for casting doubt on climate-change science and tenaciously resisting former Gov. Bill Ritter’s “New Energy Economy.”

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...

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.

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.