We in Colorado take great pride in being the national leader in transitioning our electric grid to renewables. We recently missed a great opportunity to turn our jog towards clean energy into a sprint, we stumbled.
I'll see if I can tell it as well as I heard it.
Sangre De Cristos and elk, two things I've been thinking about lately
Everyone knows methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. An enterprising energy entrepreneur was working out a deal with a small progressive co-op utility to buy methane that was being released from a coal mine and use it to make electricity for a town with lots of greenies. The clean minded folks would have to pay a little more for the electricity but they were willing to do so. The extra subsidy the people of Paonia needed to push them over the top financially was from the state of CO allowing the methane to be counted as part of the state mandated effort to get 30% of our electricity from renewables.
The greenhouse savings can't be overstated. The potential is huge. One gassy coal mine in Colorado would save as much greenhouse producing gasses as all the solar panels put up to date in the state. And I have to say, next to a Prius, solar panels are The fashion statement in eco conscious Boulder where folks wear their environmentalism on their sleeves.
Currently, as I type, Colorado is burning. Today I saw air tankers taking off from Jeffco Airport headed for the fire in Colorado springs that has reached the edge of the city, other tankers banked sharply west and dropped their retardent over Boulder's iconic flatirons, over 2000 firefighters battle the High Park Fire 40 miles north that has grown to over 130 square miles. I feel global warming in a very immediate sense.
The reason we use renewables in the first place is to reduce global warming gasses, if we have another way to reduce those gasses, shouldn't we do so? Apparently not, local environmentalists raised enough of a stink to delay a vote on the measure and the legislature ran out of time in it's fight over gay marriage. You see burning methane is not renewable.
This morning in Colorado Springs, those are houses burning, the fire has reached the edges of the city.
This is the article that sparked my interest and where I got most of my info It's from High Country News a magazine of the west that often covers environmental issues.