Vote for free market energy policy
We are honored that Channel 4 CBS Denver nominated our free market energy policy blog for the “Most Valuable Blogger Award” in the Local Affairs category. We would be even more honored to receive your vote. If you want to drive the Big Green agenda advocates crazy, click on the badge below! It will be […]
Being "green" isn't cheap for taxpayers or ratepayers
The Department of Energy just announced that Colorado Springs-based Neumann Systems Group, Inc. is one of four DOE grant recipients to study carbon-capture systems in order to fight global warming. Neumann will get $7,165,423 of more than $67 million in taxpayer funds for the “project, located at the Colorado Springs Drake #7 power plant, [which] […]
"The Wind Power Paradox"
A recently released report titled “The Wind Power Paradox” from BENTEK Energy finds that wind energy is neither green nor cost effective. In a radio interview with Amy Oliver Cooke on News Talk 1310 KFKA (Part I and II), BENTEK president Porter Bennett* (a self-described “natural gas guy”) explained that the because the wind blows […]
Renewable energy mandate unconstitutional
In part two of American Tradition Institute’s video series about its lawsuit against the state of Colorado Director of Environmental Law Center David Schnare explains how Colorado’s renewable energy mandate (30 percent by 2020) violates the commerce clause and therefore is unconstitutional.
Colorado's wind energy: neither free nor clean
The American Tradition Institute, where our own Amy Oliver Cooke is a media and investigative fellow, is suing the state of Colorado for its renewable energy mandate. (Check out Executive Director Paul Chesser’s interview on the Amy Oliver Show) Colorado voters approved a 10 percent renewable energy mandate in 2004. Since then the state legislature […]
NREL's fuel fantasies
The Wall Street Journal published published a brief editorial titled “Cellulosic Ethanol and Unicorns” blasting the government’s unrealistic expectations about the commercially mythical fuel cellulosic ethanol, “second-generation fuels made from stocks like switchgrass or the wood chips that George W. Bush invoked in his 2006 State of the Union.” At the time of Bush’s speech, […]
PUC under the microscope
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and the three appointed commissioners find themselves under even more scrutiny. This morning the Legislative Audit Committee voted unanimously to proceed with a full blown audit of the embattled commission. Last month we reported that Senators Scott Renfroe and Steve King, members of the audit committee, sent a letter […]
New energy economy's dirty little secret
Former Governor Bill Ritter and other advocates of Colorado’s “new energy economy” often use the misguided argument of breaking our dependence on foreign oil as a viable reason for their economically unsound energy policy. Just last November Ritter said: ‘Over the past few years, we’ve established a clean-energy template that is creating thousands of new jobs, […]
State Senator cites our work as a reason for PUC audit
State Senator Scott Renfroe (R-Greeley) said in an interview on the Amy Oliver Show on 1310 KFKA that information we published was influential in his decision to request an audit of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Specifically Senator Renfroe cited: Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request for all travel documents for the PUC commissioners that lead […]
Oops! No EPA threat over SIP
Lawmakers (including those in leadership on both sides of the aisle), Xcel Energy, environmentalists, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Public Utilities Commission and any other group that championed Colorado’s needlessly expensive, likely illegal Regional Haze State Implementation Plan (SIP) have A LOT of explaining to do. We were told repeatedly that if […]
Xcel Energy’s Versatile, Profitable Carbon Tax
To my knowledge, Colorado is the only state in which regulators allow utilities to incorporate a carbon tax into the economic models used to make resource acquisition decisions (see here and here). Ratepayers can’t see it in their monthly bill, but the tax is used in the models, and the models dictate spending. It’s the […]
The Whole, Depressing Truth: HB 1291
I travelled to Denver twice in the last 7 days to testify before the Senate State Affairs Committee on HB 1291, Colorado’s State Implementation Plan to meet the Regional Haze provision of the federal Clean Air Act. I told the Committee that HB 1291 is illegal. And I rebutted the distortions peddled by its proponents, who also […]
