A woman’s mind is cleaner than a man’s: She changes it more often.
– Amy Oliver Cooke
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Amy Oliver Cooke is the Executive Vice President and Director of the Energy Policy Center for the Independence Institute, Colorado’s free market, state-based think tank. She manages the Institute’s educational outreach efforts for Kids Are First and Bring In the Vote. She has been with II since 2004.
She hosted the award-winning Amy Oliver Show that was heard on News Talk 1310 KFKA Monday through Friday from 9 to 11 am. In 2008, the Colorado Broadcasters Association recognized her with the Award of Excellence for Best News Talk personality in a major market. She was recognized again in 2011 with the Award of Merit for Best News Talk personality in a major market.
Her collaborative work with the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s William Yeatman exposed Colorado’s phantom carbon tax and how Colorado’s largest investor owned utility and the Public Utilities Commission continue to mislead ratepayers about the real cost of the state’s renewable energy mandate.
Her work led to a full audit of Colorado’s PUC Commissioners with two of three commissioners not returning for a second term. She also exposed shoddy accounting in the Governor’s Energy Office after receiving more than $100 million in stimulus money, which also led to a full audit and legislation reorganizing the agency.
Amy was part of a national team that worked for several months to educate federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle about the consequences of President Obama’s nomination of Colorado’s former PUC Chairman Ron Binz to head up the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. As a result of that effort, Mr. Binz was forced to withdraw his nomination.
She has written numerous opinion editorials, issue papers, and issue backgrounders and has been published in the Daily Caller, Townhall, Denver Post, Pueblo Chieftain, Greeley Tribune, Denver Business Journal, Denver Daily News, Liberty Ink Journal, Wall Street Journal, and on Save Our States. She has appeared on Fox News, NPR, MSN.com, and Power Hour.
Amy earned a degree in journalism in 1985 from the prestigious University of Missouri-Columbia.
She also earned a graduate degree in American History from the University of Northern Colorado.
Author's Posts
Yes Gary, we're thrilled!0
- Energy, ENERGY - Archive
- December 8, 2011
Part three in a series responding to a Denver Post guest editorial titled “Is Colorado addicted to oil?” from Gary Wockner of Clean Water Action. The impetus for Wockner’s column seems to be a comment from Governor John Hickenlooper regarding the recent announcement from Anadarko Petroleum about increased investment in the Wattenberg Field due to
READ MOREXcel's tiered rates penalize families0
- Energy, ENERGY - Archive, ENERGY - Legal
- March 7, 2011
This is personal. I have a big family that includes me, my husband, my three kids, two dogs, a cat and during the last two summers — two additional house guests. In 2009, we hosted two college-aged baseball players for the summer. We had seven people living in a 5000 square foot house. According to our
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Xcel’s Green Energy Accounting: Even Worse than I First Thought0
- Energy, ENERGY - Archive, ENERGY - Legal
- March 9, 2011
In a recent post, I explained how Xcel maneuvers around the 2 percent annual rate cap on green energy spending. In a nutshell, the utility avoids the rate cap with accounting tricks that function to underestimate the cost of renewable energy and overestimate the cost convention energy. Thus, Xcel suppresses the annual “incremental cost” of
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Xcel’s Colorado Energy Plan no cheap ‘first class’ seat to NYC0
- Coalition of Ratepayers, ENERGY - Opinion Editorials
- July 17, 2018
The CEO of San Francisco based Energy Innovation Hal Harvey absurdly compared Xcel Energy’s massive fuel switching scheme called the Colorado Energy Plan (CEP) to a cheap first class airline seat to New York City. Many of us in Colorado know that’s not true; the experience has been more like flying on an abusive airline – you know the one where
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