Sputtering Wind Energy Prompts Transmission Cost Concerns from Xcel
Growing transmission costs for wind-generated electricity have prompted Xcel Energy to seek approval for rate hikes to smaller utilities using Xcel’s transmission lines to reach their consumers: Xcel wants the utilities to pay for its costs associated with having supplies of reserve power ready to go in case the wind suddenly dies, said Terri Eaton, […]
Solar “Mega-trap” Kills Birds at California Power Plant
Solar power generating facilities in Southern California have been dubbed “mega-traps” for their ability to attract and kill multiple species in a variety of manners including solar flux injury, also known as “singeing,” according to a report from the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory issued in April. “At times birds flew into the solar […]
NREL Employee Threatens Reporter, Issues Internal Email About Threats To NREL
From Watchdog.org: A secret government energy lab here went on heightened alert after one of its employees used Twitter to threaten mass murder against Watchdog reporters, according to internal memos and emails received under the Freedom of Information Act. But the added security measures utilized by the National Renewable Energy Lab weren’t to isolate and […]
Colorado Green Schools
According to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), Chipeda Elementary in Colorado’s Mesa Valley School District 51 is not simply a green school; it is in fact a green model for other schools.
The USGBC promotes Chipeda as a “case study” of what green schools can achieve in a range of areas, including reduction of environmental impact and lower energy use.1 The case study notes the school is more energy efficient and uses less water than other, comparable schools. Utility data, however, tells a different story. A look at the numbers shows the school actually uses more energy than do its peers.
Colorado’s cruel approach to energy policy
By Amy Oliver Cooke “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun,” wrote environmental doomsday prophet Dr. Paul Ehrlich in 1975. That’s a cruel statement directed at people who simply want electric lights so their children can read at night, a refrigerator to keep food from […]
Coloradans can’t rely on subsidy-dependent wind energy
This op-ed first appeared in the Greeley Tribune By Michael Sandoval When Coloradans flip on their lights or crank up their heat, they expect their electricity to be affordable, and at the very least, reliable. But the state Legislature and Gov. John Hickenlooper are forcing the opposite on Colorado — expensive and unreliable wind energy. […]
Fried Birds: Green Energy Involves Tradeoffs Too
The Ivanpah solar plant went online last week, but the cost to wildlife–particularly birds–won’t be known for at least two more years. Reports that the giant solar thermal array featuring more than 300,000 reflective panels and steam-driven turbine towers have been “killing and singeing” birds by heating the air to around 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit near […]
CO electric rates rise along with increase in preferred energy mandate
In 1999 Colorado enjoyed some of the lowest electricity rates in the United States and the Mountain West. In 2004, Colorado voters approved Amendment 37, requiring investor owned utilities to provide 10 percent of the electricity sold to end users to come from the preferred sources wind and solar. Since 2004, the Colorado state legislature […]
HB 1113 Testimony, Bill Voted Down 8-5
Valerie Richardson of The Colorado Observer provides background on HB 1113’s 8-5 defeat in committee, as well as other efforts to deal with last year’s SB 252 impact on rural Colorado. Full text of testimony presented by the Independence Institute: Testimony on behalf of HB 1113 Electric Renewable Energy Standard Reduction, Room 0112 January 30, […]
Legislative Preview: 2014 Energy Bills
Current through January 24, 2014 Reform defeated: SB14-035 Renewable Energy Standard Repeal *postponed indefinitely* Senate Bill 35, introduced by State Sen. Ted Harvey, would have repealed “substantially all of the provision enacted by Senate Bill 13-252” by returning the renewable portfolio standard to 10 percent from 20 percent for rural cooperative electric associations, among other […]
January 23 Energy Roundup: Fracking Dishonesty; Interior Sec. Jewell Boots Press
Periodically, the Independence Institute’s Energy Policy Center will take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in energy stories from around the United States and abroad, and bring the best (and worst) of those stories to your attention. 1. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell may have violated Colorado Open Meetings Law […]
Emails Show EPA’s Denver “Listening Tour” Stop A Collaboration Between Agency, Environmentalist Orgs
Emails published this week by the Washington Free Beacon’s Lachlan Markay illustrate a pattern of coordination and cooperation between the Environmental Protection Agency and external environmentalist groups, including the use of at least one agency event to “pressure” an Xcel Energy executive at the Denver stop of a 2013 “listening tour”: The emails, obtained by […]
