Greeley, Weld Struggle with
$1.5 Million Federal Surprise

GREELEY - Greeley and Weld County will get more than $1.48 million in federal funding to be used for energy efficiency and conservation projects, but city and county officials aren’t sure how they’ll use it.

Last week the Obama Administration announced $3.2 billion in energy efficiency and conservation projects in U.S. cities, counties, states, territories and tribal lands. Of that, Colorado will receive $42.6 million for state, county and city efforts. Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway said the county was unaware of the new money and said commissioners would have to review the funding. Weld is receiving $616,400, according to a press release from U.S. Department of Energy.

“A problem with stimulus money and to some extent this energy money, is unfunded mandates. Some of it requires matching funds, and we won’t accept that if it costs taxpayers,” Conway said.

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Ritter in Aspen: Nation, State Seeing the Green Light

ASPEN — Shifting to cleaner energy will create jobs, though not without some growing pains, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said Thursday, preaching to a choir of environmentalists sipping biodegradable cups of coffee at the Aspen Environment Forum.

Ritter pointed out, even in the recession, he had just spent the week celebrating two new manufacturing plants in Colorado that will produce wind and solar technology — and more than 1,500 new energy economy jobs.

Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, also discussed the Administration’s plans to create clean energy jobs. She claimed the cap-and-trade regulations proposed in the new budget will drive the creation of green jobs.

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Tri-State in Deal for Solar Power Plant

WESTMINSTER - Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
Inc. said it will build one of the world’s largest solar-panel
power plants in northeastern New Mexico.

Colorado’s second-biggest power supplier has entered
into an agreement with Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar to
develop the 30-megawatt solar photovoltaic power plant. Called
“Cimarron I Solar Project,” it will sport 500,000 solar panels.

Xcel Energy, Colorado’s biggest power supplier, buys
power from a 8.2-megawatt solar photovoltaic power plant near
Alamosa that was developed by Baltimore’s SunEdison.

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Experts: ‘Smart-Grid’ System Vulnerable to Hackers

BOULDER — Determined hackers with as little as $500 worth of
equipment and some computer know-how could cripple the
smart-grid technology being piloted in Boulder and rolled out
nationwide, security experts say.

Seattle-based IOActive, a computer security-assessment firm,
says a yearlong independent test of smart-grid technology and
infrastructure plans found that the systems are vulnerable to
the same types of attacks as most any computer system.

But unlike the common PC, the power industry hasn’t spent decades
combating cyber crime, experts say.

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Energy Pipe Dreams - Opinion By Vincent Carroll

As Ken Salazar remembers it, he once told George W. Bush that
“this whole question of energy had the potential to unify the
country.” The Interior secretary is surely correct — so long as
the words “whole” and “unify” are struck from that
sentiment.

Salazar recalled his advice to Bush for a Denver
Post story about his pursuit of “an energy moonshot” — an
appealing plan to speed development of renewable energy on
public lands by fast-tracking permits for wind and solar
projects and power lines. But notice that his moonshot focuses
on a tiny slice of the nation’s energy portfolio, not “this
whole question of energy.” Notice, too, that while most
Americans are indeed united in a desire to expand green
energy’s market share, their genial agreement ends on the
question of how.

Start with where solar plants should go. Last
year at Yale University, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
declared, “If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave
Desert, I don’t know where the hell we can put (them).” It so
happens, however, that many environmentalists would rather not
put them in the Mojave. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,
recently announced that she will sponsor legislation to bar all
such development in the Mojave — and that particular desert is
just one of many flashpoints in the coming wars over green energy.

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