Compiled by Staff

Weld and Larimer Counties: Interest Grows From
Clean Energy Companies

This month Tom Hacker reported in the Loveland Reporter-Herald that a pipeline of employer prospects interested in northern Colorado locations is growing, with multinational energy companies leading the way. The Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp.; its Weld County counterpart, Upstate Colorado; and the Metro-Denver Economic Development Corp. all report an upswing in inquiries from prospective employers looking for expansion locations.

“What we’re seeing, suddenly, is a lot of companies in the clean-energy sector on the manufacturing side,” said Mike Masciola, senior vice president of NCEDC. “We’re not seeing a lot of ‘tire-kicking.’ In this economy, nobody is spending money on site-selection trips unless there’s some real interest.”

The region has emerged as a hub for renewable energy industries with the arrival three years ago of world-leading wind energy company Vestas Wind Systems A/S of Denmark and, more recently, the rise of Abound Solar Inc., a solar panel manufacturer that spun out of a Colorado State University engineering lab.

Both give “comfort,” as one economic development executive said, to other companies interested in joining them.

The flow of prospects begins in Denver, through the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade and the Metro-Denver agency, but it spreads northward to Larimer and Weld counties through referrals.

Louisville: Solar Trade Group Withdraws Opposition to Solar Gardens Bill

Community solar gardens got a boost last week when the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association (CoSEIA)y forged a compromise with Claire Levy, state representative from Boulder, the heart of solar power research and green energy entrepreneurialism in the state.

The Association withdrew its opposition to the solar gardens bill after meeting with Levy and hammering out two amendments aimed at addressing the concerns of local solar installers. Breaking with state renewable energy proponents, CoSEIA opposed the original version of the bill for the negative impact the organization believed it would have on solar installers.

Pueblo: Xcel Tackles Commanche Plant Noise

Xcel Energy has hired a vendor to fabricate and install sound-muffling baffles in the stack of Comanche 3 at a cost of $1.5 million to bring noise levels emitted from the plant to past levels, representatives of the power company told the PUC. The baffles are expected to be installed by the end of April. 

Chaffee County: Geothermal an Issue

“We were not prepared as a state to facilitate the [Bureau of Land Management] lease at Mount Princeton Hot Springs,” declares state Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village. “You have this beautiful little valley and all of a sudden BLM comes in and says . . . we’re going to lease the mineral estate under your homes.”

Schwartz was explaining she’s sponsoring Senate Bill 174, which, among other things, would give local communities more oversight in attempts to mine underground heat to produce electric power. Last month, the BLM was all set to lease 800 acres for geothermal development in the Chalk Creek Valley in Chaffee County near Mount Princeton, but postponed the action in the face of local alarm.

Some residents apparently didn’t even know until recently that the government owns the resource under their land — which the BLM treats as a mineral — much less that the agency was poised to lease it. Still, residents near the hot springs achieved a delay, not a reprieve.