Call to Action: Increase Renewables in Colorado

Image courtesy of UCAR

It's been awhile since my last post and I apologize. Much of my free time has been dabbling in worlds of Twitter / Facebook / Google+. How I've neglected you dear Denver Sun Sponge readers! Well, I do have something exciting to tell you about, which came to me through the good people at Alliance for Sustainable Colorado.

Colorado Senate Bill 252 was introduced last week and if passed would require large electric cooperatives (with +100,000 meters) to increase their renewable portfolio standard (RPS) to 25% from 10% by 2020 as well as requiring 1% of retail sales to come from distributed generation (DG) sources. Colorado's current RPS requires investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in the state to generate or purchase enough renewable energy (RE) to supply 30% of their retail electric sales by 2020. In addition, IOUs must have 3% of their retail sales from distributed generation (DG) sources. The current Colorado RPS also mandates that electric co-ops and municipal utilities serving more than 40,000 customers need to generate or purchase enough RE to supply 10% of their electric sales by 2020. There is no DG requirement for electric co-ops and munis in the current RPS.

For more information on the Colorado Senate Bill 252 please check out the Power of Wind's backgrounder (as of this writing Senate Bill 252 was not posted to the Colorado General Assembly website). If you would like to express your support (or opposition) to your Colorado elected officials about this bill then please head on over to the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado website to learn how to contact them. Thanks for reading and supporting a more renewable, efficient, and sustainable Colorado!

Update 4/13/2013:
The Colorado Senate approved the bill. Rural electric co-ops with more than 100K meters and utilities that generate and supply electricity for electric co-ops need to acquire 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Here's more info from the Denver Business Journal. Is this good for Colorado? What say you dear readers?

Update 4/10/13:
In an effort to look at both sides of the issue this Denver Post editorial titled, "Moving too Fast on Colorado's Renewable Energy Standard?" was published this morning and looks at some of the problems with the bill as currently written. (Hat tip to Anna Zawisza at Alliance for Sustainable Colorado for bringing the editorial to my attention.)