Energy in the 21st Century

An auspicious wind is blowing across Colorado and the West as rural communities begin seizing the opportunities of emerging 21st century economies and technologies. Much of the land that produces the food that feeds America is ideally situated to help meet the nation’s appetite for electricity. Colorado’s eastern plains are ripe with potential for wind and biofuels development, and all of Colorado is a veritable breadbasket of solar energy.

We’ve seen significant progress recently on policies and programs that advance renewable energy development — an effort that will secure cleaner air and water for Colorado, improve energy diversity and security, and provide economic benefits to rural areas to boot.

On this march toward a “new energy economy,” however, there are still stubborn obstacles to overcome and issues to resolve.

One of the biggest is a reluctance by many utilities and power merchants to develop new ways of doing business that take advantage of technological advances allowing them both to integrate economical renewable energy projects and to reduce the financial risks of continuing their business-as-usual approach.

There are currently 150 new coal-fired power plants on the drawing board or under construction nationwide, roughly three dozen of them in the West. Every conventional power plant built, burning pulverized coal to generate electricity, will operate for decades, locking up billions of dollars in capital that could — and should — be invested in clean energy. Similarly, every electron moved by conventional coal plants ties up capacity that could be freed up for transmission of clean energy. More importantly, coal entails significant financial risks due to issues such as future greenhouse gas regulations, rising coal production costs, rail constraints, and rapidly escalating construction costs. Building more large centralized coal plants burdens ratepayers, especially those in rural areas, with the potential for significant rate increases to cover those costs.

But if we begin to plan now, we can protect ourselves from these threats. Instead of investing in traditional coal development, we should direct those resources toward advanced clean-energy technologies. We should follow the example of rural communities that already are investing in renewable energy projects. That path will provide the state and local communities a firm competitive advantage in a new energy economy.

There are signs that the tide is shifting. We are encouraged, for example, that Tri-State Generation and Transmission — the state’s second-largest energy provider — recently announced plans to increase its commitment to wind-energy development and energy-efficiency programs, along with reducing the number of new coal-fired power plants it had proposed building. Tri-State had initially planned three new plants at a cost of more than s~ billion. We believe Tri-State has made important progress in its analysis of supply-and demand-side options and hope that it will continue to more fully analyze the risks of carbon liability and volatility in the price of coal.

However, Tri-State’s plans still leave more than $2 billion invested in construction of a coal-fired power plant in. Kansas plus the 1,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines that will be needed to ship the electricity back into Colorado. Investments of that size into clean-energy projects in Colorado would not only keep ratepayers’ hard-earned dollars in their own backyards, but it also would create jobs and steady, long-term streams of income for local governments and private landowners.

In fact, according to an in-depth study by the National Renewable Energy Lab, the development of new wind energy in Colorado would return far higher dividends back to the community than either coal-fired power or natural gas. The 2006 study found that new wind facilities would have twice the direct economic impact of a similarly sized natural gas plant and more than three times coal, ultimately giving the state, local governments and private landowners hundreds of millions of dollars more than the fossil fuel plants.

We live in a pivotal time for future energy development. Clean-energy projects are becoming more and more cost effective while traditional ways of doing business are loaded with ever more likely economic risks. It is critical that we all work together and set forth on a responsible path, one that ensures clean air and water and a stable climate, as well as contributing to the economic vitality of our rural communities.