Renew My Energy!

3 thoughts on “Renew My Energy!”

1. To catch up on a great conversation about the benefits of nuclear energy, check out “Ritter Gets His Green On”

   http://www.coloradop…

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2. I posted this in Ritter’s green thread, but figured I’d post it here so that I could say to people, not only do I talk to myself in person, I also talk to myself online.
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   To implement the change, you need the political will and we don’t have that in this state.  By change, I’m talking about anything from increasing funding for research to building a nuclear plant.  Most anything that is politically tricky here is shot down.  Why?

   One reason is the diversity of our state.  Republican farmers on the plains are adverse to mandates and to government intrusion on the marketplace.  Democrats along the Front Range would rather build a shrine to Reagan than a nuclear power plant in this state.  The west slope is buried under oil/gas drilling (with permits to drill skyrocketing) and the balance between industry and environment is delicate.

   Another reason is no money. We can create a market for renewable energy in the state, say for cellulosic ethanol, wind energy, solar, but as mentioned above, these are band aids to the larger problem of what to do about fossil fuels, which Colorado’s economy is tied to.

   So we can discuss the benefits of nuclear vs. hydro vs. ethanol but all we have is smarter posters (which ain’t a bad thing in and of itself).  At the end of the day, our politicians need to spend serious political capital to get Colorado ahead of the game, rather than just treading water in the politically safe zone.

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3. A few thoughts on the legislation Ritter mentioned for his first 100 days.

   SB 51 – The bill establishes criteria for “high-performance” state buildings and is a companion measure to the “Greening of State Government” executive orders.

   A decent bill that allows the State Architect, in consultation with the commission on higher education (for some reason), to designate green standards for buildings.  Sounds good until we get into the details where some of these plans make unreasonable demands on local governments. One example, the LEEDS standards are fairly inflexible so using the Green Globe standards would make more sense, but the State Architect is a fan of LEEDS. This affects local governments who wish to build new courthouses, jails, airports…but are forced to design buildings in line with LEEDS, which may not make sense for the area.

   – SB 126 (Sen. Moe Keller and Rep. Jack Pommer). The bill authorizes the appropriation of funds to the Governor’s Energy Office for distribution to the Colorado Renewable Energy Authority for the Collaboratory.

   This allows two million dollars of severance tax money to go to the Office of Energy.  Good idea, bad funding. There is no severance tax money available for funding so where will the money come from?

   – SB 145 (Sen. Ron Tupa and Rep. Dan Gibbs). The bill allows cities, towns and counties to offer tax credits or rebates to property owners who install renewable-energy-producing fixtures on their property, such as solar panels or wind turbines.

   Again, good bill but allows the state to shirk off responsibility to the local governments. I speak of political will, if the state is serious about this, they’ll provide more incentives than this to raise the social will of the populace to install solar, wind… Furthermore, I looked into putting solar on my house and the cost was still too high.

   – House Bill 1087 (Rep. Andy Kerry and Sen. Chris Romer). The bill establishes a “Wind for Schools” grant program.

   This gives $50K to the Office of Energy for $5K grants to school districts. A small amount. A better use of this money would have been to have schools install wood pellet heaters which would have helped another major issue in the state.

   All in all the legislation is good for talking points, but not too good on substance.

   I’m happy that Ritter and the General Assembly are taking steps towards renewable energy. I’m glad that the foundation is getting laid. I just hope these are the FIRST steps of a larger plan. But I don’t think that is so.

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