Colorado’s updated climate projections
How will Colorado’s climate change in the next 30 or so years? Hotter, yes. Definitely. Precipitation? That’s a fuzzier picture.
A heck of a time for a drought conference
Like hard rains amid the Dust Bowl, Colorado has lots of water almost everywhere. That’s exactly the time to talk about what do as hotter and drier inevitably return.
Trustafarians on the Colorado River
In Denver, before a friendly crowd, a scathing description of the upper basin vs. the lower basin. Guess who was compared to ski town trustafarians?
‘Build it, and the generation will come’
Colorado’s Power Pathway is the biggest capital investment in Colorado ever for Xcel Energy. That’s not including the wind, solar and storage that the $1.7 billion transmission line will enable.
Alan Salazar to lead Denver Water
Key aide to top Colorado Democrats for more than 30 years will replace outgoing Jim Lochhead but position is only interim
Guzman Energy snags two more utilities
Steamboat Springs- and Grand Junction-based electrical cooperatives to pick up with Guzman when their wholesale contracts with Xcel Energy lapse in 2028.
Atmospheric C02 hits 424 ppm in May
Carbon dioxide levels measured atop Hawaiian volcanoes show a 3 ppm increase in the last year. The world has more than doubled pre-industrial revolution levels.
What makes these four-corners towns tick?
A study of the economies and cultures of Durango, Cortez and Farmington, three Western towns with roots in resource extraction and processing that have taken different career paths.
Colorado’s ‘transmission developer of last resort’
If nobody else will build the transmission, the new Colorado Electric Transmission Authority has muscle to do so. Where might those wires go?
The declining Ogallala Aquifer
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill into law concerning the Republican River. Where he penned his signature was in a most unusual place.
A hard decision, the end of an era
Robert Sakata reflects on the rewards of growing vegetables on the fringes of metro Denver – and why he decided it was time for change
How NREL and the Nuggets are alike
Finally, the Nuggets are in the NBA finals, but the seeds were planted a decade ago. NREL decades ago helped push solar to where it is today, Now it is looking beyond 2030.
Farmington, a town in need of a jolt
The sky is cleaner now that the coal plants have started closing, but how will that economic void be filled? That answer isn’t clear.
Democrats aplenty gather to celebrate a Republican
New wrinkles in ag program may yield more farmers enlisting in effort to slow Ogallala Aquifer declines — and keep Colorado out of compact conundrums
In Pueblo, a study of what comes after coal
Pueblo will always have chiles. But coal? It’s gone after 2030. A committee is studying energy alternatives. Nuclear is among them.
Nuclear is on the table in Colorado
Can nuclear replace the tax base, jobs and generation of coal plants at Pueblo and Craig? Maybe, but tough questions remain to be answered.
Why an update of Colorado’s roadmap?
The Colorado Energy Office plans to update the state’s greenhouse gas reduction roadmap. Here you can expect the biggest tweaks
Solar + storage at the pueblos
How Kit Carson Electric has worked with Taos and other pueblos in northern New Mexico to develop solar + storage
Bill Gates invests in Pueblo storage project
Breakthrough Energy Catalyst gives $20 million to test iron-rust storage at sites of two Xcel coal plants
Agrivoltaics & aquavoltaics, too
Colorado will probe the pairing of solar panels with canals and reservoirs. Can solar help solve the San Luis Valley water woes?
