Colorado Senate backs 30% renewable energy target

Senators Schwartz and Whitehead believe a 30% renewable energy goal can be achieved without cost to taxpayers

Colorado’s Senate has approved a Bill proposing to raise the state’s Renewable Energy Standard to 30% by 2020, after a day’s debate.

House Bill 1001 was passed by a vote of 21 to 13 last week, requiring large utilities like Xcel and Black Hills to source nearly a third of their electricity supplies from solar, wind or other renewable sources.

The proposals seek to raise the current 20% by 2020 target adopted in 2007.

The Bill’s sponsors believe the legislation will add 100,000 solar rooftops to the state network over the next decade “without raising energy costs for Colorado consumers”.

One of the sponsors, Democrat Gail Schwartz, said: “Encouraging green energy creates jobs, brings investment, and helps our state remain a national leader in renewable energy. It just makes sense.”

Fellow Democrat Bruce Whitehead, another sponsor of the Bill, described HB 1001 as the state’s “boldest step yet” in moving towards renewable energy.

“Healthier”

Sen. Whitehead said: “Increasing our renewable energy standards to 30% is not only going to create a healthier environment, but also a healthier economy. This bill will bring businesses and jobs to Colorado at no expense to tax payers.”

While stressing that the costs of the Standard will be met by utilities rather than the taxpayer, the senators were risking ill-feeling from some of their residents concerned about their energy bills.

As well as the 30% goal, HB 1001 also calls for 3% of total electricity sales to come from distributed generation systems – smallscale projects like rooftop solar panels.

The Bill sponsors insisted that with more people generating their own solar power, their electricity bills would be reduced, and others’ would face less costs from new transmission system investments. They added that the requirement for DG systems would help drive local market activity.

The Senators cited a new report from the solar industry, entitled “Investing in the Sun”, which suggested that deploying 1,000MW of new smallscale solar systems in the state would create more than 33,500 jobs locally while producing $4.3 billion in economic output.

“This report proves what we already know: the New Energy Economy is creating jobs in Colorado for Coloradans,” said Sen. Gail Schwartz. “By raising our Renewable Energy Standard, we will see thousands of new jobs and prove that Colorado is leading the nation when it comes to innovation.”