The mystical problem with wind
Yesterday Complete Colorado headlined a Denver Post story about wind power “Another Bubble Bursting?” The reason for the headline is that in 2012 federal tax credits for wind power are set to expire and, as we revealed several months ago in a post about Xcel Energy’s latest compliance plan, wind power is not economically viable […]
NREL: Energy Sec Chu’s laughable statement on renewables
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu toured the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden on Friday. Fresh from his Thursday testimony on the Solyndra scandal before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, Chu continued to touted the cost effectiveness of renewables despite millions of taxpayer dollars lost on failed investments. The NREL […]
Bad news for EU could be bad news for CO
Bad news for residents of the European Union and possibly Colorado. EU consumers and businesses face more than twenty years of rising electric costs as the region tries to meet its renewable energy goals according to a leaked report. The the working title of the draft report “Energy Roadmap to 2050” examines how the EU […]
Boulder's ballot measures won't stop global warming
Bummer for Boulder — the city’s ballot measures likely won’t have any impact on global warming. Supporters of 2B and 2C hope that they can reduce the city’s carbon emissions and thus help save the planet by establishing a municipal utility that generates power from a combination of renewables and natural gas. But these efforts […]
Boulder's Utopian Utility Effect
Utopian Utility Effect (UUE): a romanticized perception that a group, such as a municipality, can provide reliable, reasonably priced, global warming-friendly electricity more efficiently than its current power provider. Specifically for supporters of 2B and 2C, Boulder’s ballot measures to form its own utility, UUE seems to mean, “a local energy utility can reduce our carbon […]
Dissatisfaction with Xcel should worry lawmakers, PUC
Colorado residential natural gas customers don’t like Xcel Energy according to a recent J.D. Power and Associates survey. The Denver Business Journal reports, “Among large natural gas utilities in the West, Xcel Energy was ninth on a list of nine.” This should worry lawmakers because the investor-owned utility has had its way with the state […]
Obama decision also a rebuke of Ritter admin
President Barack Obama put a halt to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed air-quality standards just before the Labor Day weekend. The Wall Street Journal opined that the president cited the struggling economy as his main reason for not wanting to tighten ozone regulations at this time: Come January 2010, the Obama EPA said it […]
Xcel admits what "clean energy" advocates won't
Normally reading an energy compliance plan is about as exciting as watching low VOC paint dry. But Xcel Energy‘s 2012 Renewable Energy Standard Compliance Plan, filed with the Public Utilities Commission in May 2011, has some pretty powerful stuff in it including admissions about Colorado’s “phantom carbon tax” and the cost effectiveness of renewable energy. […]
"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 […]
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 […]
