Might Oh Be Joyful be the highest megawatt-scale solar project?

Crested Butte pushes ahead toward decarbonization goals. This project took a team effort.

by Allen Best

With just a skiffle of snow on the summit of its name-sake mountain, the ribbon got snipped last week at Crested Butte for what may be the highest elevation larger-scale solar installation in the continental United States.

The Oh Be Joyful solar array is located slightly above 8,900 feet in elevation near the town’s southern entrance. It has generating capacity of 1.125 megawatts of electricity.

Crested Butte, the town, originated the idea of the solar project while working with the local electrical cooperative, Gunnison County Electric Association, and a variety of community members, including the Gunnison Valley Climate Crisis Coalition.

Electricity from Oh Be Joyful will be used in Crested Butte but also in the sister municipality of Mount Crested Butte, which is located at the base of the ski area, along with Vail Resorts, operator of the ski area, and the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory and various others.

Oh Be Joyful — the name comes from a nearby mountain — is a result of ambitions adopted by the community in years past.

About 15 years ago, Crested Butte along with hundreds of other towns and cities across the country signed onto a pledge to reduce emissions. Such pledges were well intentioned but without immediate effect. Nobody knew exactly how to move forward. Even so, prices of wind and then solar had begun to tumble and utilities had learned how to integrate far higher levels of renewables while keeping the lights on.

In 2018, Crested Butte began to get more serious about decarbonization. It set a five-year goal of reducing community greenhouse gas emissions by 25% and within municipal operations by 50% (as compared to a 2017 baseline). It also authorized creation of a Climate Action Plan that was competed in late 2019.

Jim Schmidt, then the mayor, wrote the cover letter for that plan. For Crested Butte to achieve its goals, he wrote, the community would need to “work together through innovation, breaking down barriers, and igniting change” across Colorado, the United States and the world.

“As a local government, by implementing this plan with new projects, policies, and investments in green infrastructure, we will provide our community with the tools to effect change and inspire local action.” Solar was mentioned 61 times in that document.

In coming years, under leadership of Ian Billick, Schmidt’s successor as mayor, Crested Butte has been doing that. A seminal event was in 2022 when the town adopted a requirement that heat for all new buildings be electrified. The goal was to begin eliminating natural gas — a very difficult task ahead in meeting greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Like most New Year’s resolutions, Crested Butte fell short of its goals. The 2030 Climate Action Plan that was adopted in 2025 lays out the progress — and the still significant work to come. Community greenhouse gas emissions, instead of falling 25%, had grown by 5%. Energy use in buildings represented most of the town’s emissions, strongly influenced by a 23% increase in natural gas use.

What that 2019 plan did accomplish was to set the goal for what has become the Oh Be Joyful solar project. The solar arrays will not be the full solution, obviously. It will help by reducing importation of electricity from hundreds of miles away, some of it produced as a result of burning fossil fuels.

Oh Be Joyful will, in turn, help Crested Butte advance work on its goals. The new climate action plan calls for reducing energy use in buildings and transportation and advancing electrification of both buildings and vehicles. The plan also calls for pushing Tri-State Generation and Transmission, the wholesale supplier of the local electricity cooperative, to further decarbonize.

The proposal was met with low-level opposition at the start, but the climate activists got it across the finish line.

Crested Butte’s Elk Avenue lies just a hair under 8,900 feet in elevation. Photo/Allen Best. Top: The ribbon for the Oh Be Joyful solar project was snipped last week. Photo/Outshine Energy

Ironically, Crested Butte is relatively new to burning natural gas. Buildings were heated by so many wood stoves that a pall hung over the town in the 1970s and 1980s. Vail and other mountain towns had a similar problem.

Some downtown buildings in Crested Butte were heated by burning propane. The propane system was improperly maintained, though, and the gas leaked from pipes. An explosion in 1990 killed three women and injured 14 others. After that Atmos Energy installed a natural gas line from Gunnison, 29 miles away.

Billick, the mayor, has been a strong voice in pushing decarbonization efforts. At the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, which he directed until March, scientists have been documenting the impacts of the warming climate. One likely impact: more sagebrush and fewer summer flowers.

“We’d analyzed how we might best reduce RMBL’s carbon footprint, and supporting local renewable energy production made sense,” Billick says. The utility-scale solar project is “more effective than rooftop solar or a small array in Gothic (where RMBL is located), since it was implemented at a greater scale.”

The solar project still comes in at a price premium. To avoid impact to other members of Gunnison County Electric Association, the cooperative serving Crested Butte, the renewable energy certificates produced by Oh Be Joyful were sold to various organizations in the upper East River Valley: the municipalities of Crested Butte and Mount Crested Butte, RMBL, Vail Resorts’ Crested Butte Mountain Resort, the Adaptive Sports Center, and Crested Butte South Property Owners Association.

As well, all available federal tax credits were tapped. The project qualifies as being built in an energy community, because it is in the same census tract as the Elk Creek Coal Mine located north of Kebler Pass. Too, it uses a solar racking made entirely in the United States. The solar modules were manufactured by Heliene, which has factories in Minnesota. Tax credits collectively offset 50% of the project cost.

Gunnison County Electric Association, the cooperative serving Crested Butte, had begun scouting out locations for potential solar projects a decade ago. A consultant identified 18 potential sites but many — including several of the best — were eliminated because they were located in conservation easements or land prices were prohibitive. Too, lower elevations in the valley have significant habitat for Gunnison sage-grouse, a species listed as threatened by the EPA.

Oh Be Joyful survived the cut because it is located on five acres within a 71-acre tract owned by Crested Butte, the town, along Highway 135 at the municipality’s southern end. Locals know it as containing the trailhead for the popular Baxter Gulch trail. The site is proximate to an electrical substation, eliminating need for costly transmission, points out Gunnison County Electricity’s Matt Feier.

The addition of Oh Be Joyful along with the Taylor River hydro project that went on line in 2024 and the nearly completed Gunnison River Solar, which will have slightly less than one megawatt of capacity, will together boost the local renewable energy component of Gunnison County Electric to 6.4%, reports Mike McBride, the chief executive of the cooperative.

Expanded production of hydroelectricity on the Taylor River coupled with two large solar projects will result in 6.5% of electricity distributed by Gunnison County Electric Association coming form local renewable souces. Photo/Allen Best

Outshine Energy, a Denver-based company, won the contract to develop the project and get permits. Taylor Henderson, who calls himself the “chief energizing officer” of the company, said he was told by Heliene, the photovoltaics supplier, that it is the highest megawatt-scale solar project, but he had not corroborated that.

This site gets more early afternoon shade during winter than is ideal, he said, but it also uses bi-facial solar modulars to maximize production and fixed tilt to avoid tracker failures when the temperature drops to 25 below zero (Fahrenheit).

The arrays are five feet and more above ground, so snow accumulation will be unlikely to preclude electrical product even in a very snowy winter. “We project snowmelt and the solar albedo from the bifacial modules will help make up any impacts to production,” said Henderson.

As part of his work in Gunnison County, Henderson had the opportunity to meet with the Crested Butte Climate Kids program. There, at the Crested Butte Community School, he read the book, “Running on Sunshine,” with the students.