Editor Outpost
Shale Gas = $Billions in U.S. Savings
Natural gas prices that slumped to a 10-year low this month could save U.S. consumers $16.5 billion on home energy bills over the course of a year, according to a senior economist at the U.S. Federal Reserve. Projected over several years, the savings could exceed any proposed tax cut.
27Jan2012 | admin | 1 comment | Continued
Millions of Green Jobs? Beyond the Fantasy
There is another way of looking at the critical question of how to address the resource constraints, environmental challenges (including climate change) and social issues that are the underlying impetus for all the current noise about creating a new, green economy.
13Jan2012 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
Millions of Green Jobs? Well … NO!
Searching Google for “millions of green jobs” yields over 380,000 references. Every week there’s a new report showing how, if the U.S. plays its public policy cards right, we’ll soon be producing most of our energy from “clean”, renewable wind and solar sources, driving around in electric cars that will deliver power back to the grid, and living in super-energy-efficient homes.
5Jan2012 | admin | 2 comments | Continued
A Cleantech Venture Who is Unconvinced of Man-Made Climate Change
Go ahead — call me a hypocrite. I claim to be a cleantech venture capitalist yet I tell you here and now that I am not convinced of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change (aka global warming). And I will audaciously tell you that my convictions on climate change in no way run contrary to my strong belief in the need for a cleantech revolution.
19Dec2011 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
What Would Adam Smith Do?
There is nothing more dismaying to football fans that a referees call that goes against their team and changes the course of game. The cry goes out: “Hey, ref let’em play.” The battle over energy policy these days has devolved to the same cry of “let’em play” as energy subsidies and tax breaks have become targets for all sides. The feeling expressed by some is that energy sources and technologies ought to compete mano a mano in the open and free market and let the solar chips fall where they may.
1Dec2011 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
Feeling Blue About Green? Reasons for Cleantech Optimism
With the first high profile cleantech company failures, the euphoria of the cleantech bubble has burst creating pessimism about the future of cleantech as a whole. I say, hogwash! History says we have many reasons to be optimistic. Just because things look bad today doesn’t mean the world is coming to an end! We humans have a hard time stepping back and getting a perspective on things that span long periods of time and it’s easy to get lost in the fear and distress of the day. But as a cleantech venture capitalist, I am almost required to be optimistic. How else could I make high-risk investments in early stage companies?
18Nov2011 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
Caution on Local Fracking Policies
We’re not surprised that some Front Range counties are developing local regulations to govern oil and gas leasing as exploratory activity in the Niobrara formation begins to encroach on populated areas. Nor do we necessarily consider all such initiatives misguided. Energy development can involve noise, traffic and other activity that has an impact on a community’s quality of life. Having said that, however, we believe counties should proceed with caution.
7Nov2011 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
Obama Cleantech Stimulus: Bad Policy, Bad Politics and Bad for Cleantech
The Solyndra debacle is no surprise to this cleantech venture capitalist. The inherent conflict between trying to get money out of the U.S. Treasury as quickly as possible to stimulate the economy and, at the same time, have government agencies that are ill-suited at making business decisions do just that was nothing other than a recipe for disaster.
27Oct2011 | admin | 2 comments | Continued
Creating Real Clean Technology Jobs in Colorado
After the failure of solar-panel maker Solyndra, it’s easy for pundits to generalize about the fate and reality of the clean technology industry in the United States. However, here in Colorado, it’s real and it’s here. Solyndra’s failure cannot be used as an argument that the solar industry is a pipe dream, since companies like Abound Solar, Solar City and First Solar are still adding jobs with business plans and technologies that can compete globally. And we’ll know soon if GE’s investment in Arvada-based Primestar Solar leads to successful results.
12Oct2011 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
Chu’s Troubles
Fallout from Solyndra’s bankruptcy isn’t the only difficulty confronting the Energy Secretary. Investigations have been launched by a couple of Congressional committees, and several Republicans are using Solyndra’s failure to make the case against green energy financing programs, which they say amount to “picking winners and losers” in the market. On top of this, some critics question whether his laboratory smarts and Silicon Valley background have undercut his ability to operate inside the Beltway. Still, Chu is standing firm in defense of federal investment in renewable energy.
4Oct2011 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
Is Distributed Wind the Answer?
U.S. small wind added 25.6 megawatts of new capacity in 2010, a big number for an industry that typically adds capacity in increments of one to ten kilowatts at a time. What do the big numbers from small wind’s annual report mean? The numbers, just released at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) Small and Community Windpower Conference, showed impressive growth. They also showed impressive resilience with a strong performance in a troubled economy.
20Sep2011 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
What Obama Could Say in His Speech That Would Really Turn The Economy Around
These three little stories—all within the past few weeks, represent the overall attitude of this administration toward businesses that create jobs and revenue. Until the administration decides to work with, and not against, the job creators in the economy, growth will remain flat—or worse.
8Sep2011 | admin | 7 comments | Continued
Learning From Portland’s Attempt
at Municipalization
For all its attitude and quirks, Portland remains a place that pursues the cutting edge of environmental, social and transportation issues — with both successes and failures — which create lessons for ongoing Boulder projects. Take, for example, Boulder’s debate over whether to leave Xcel Energy in favor of creating a municipal utility.
29Aug2011 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
Plug Wars: When Cities Take Back the Power
The City of Boulder is weighing whether to renew its 20-year franchise agreement for electricity with Xcel, or to create its own municipal utility. The rub? The city has pegged contract renewal to reduction of carbon emissions á la Kyoto Protocol goals (greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2012). Boulder officials dismiss recent offers by Xcel (like offsetting carbon emissions with renewable energy) as window dressing to disguise the utility’s heavy carbon emissions statewide.
11Aug2011 | admin | 1 comment | Continued
Colorado’s REAL Cleantech Strength
Brookings and Battelle did a good job of framing the importance of the clean economy and explaining the methodology for the report. But….the numbers didn’t do justice to Colorado’s clean tech industry. When we asked Mark Muro at Brookings to narrow the definition to “cleantech” and not just “clean”, Colorado’s ranking raised significantly to 4th in the country. What does that mean? Well, it means that very few states have the companies creating clean technology products and services that Colorado does.
3Aug2011 | admin | 0 comments | Continued
TABOR Hampers Colorado Education
Partly because of TABOR, Colorado schools rank 40th in spending per pupil and 48th in percentage of income applied to education spending according to a 2007 study by the US Census Bureau. Colorado’s future job market is dependent on well-educated workers that are highly skilled in math and science. Renewable energy manufacturing and design, aerospace technology and computer sciences have a strong presence in Colorado, but if newer generations are not well-educated, the jobs will disappear to other markets that have a better supply of well-educated applicants.
22Jul2011 | admin | 0 comments | Continued-
Shale Gas = $Billions in U.S. Savings
Natural gas prices that slumped to a 10-year low this month could save U.S. consumers $16.5 billion on home energy bills over the course of a year, according to a senior economist at the U.S. Federal Reserve. Projected over several years, the savings could exceed any proposed tax cut.
READ THE FULL POST »
You seem to be ignoring the issue that this wind farm -- Limon II -- was touted by Xcel as ...
Ya know what else could save a bundle of money? A serious investment in efficiency, and unlike shale gas, ...
I read your post and and it's nice to be hear that DU offers new
certificate in petroleum land Management ...
Nice job Graham. It's important to note that what constitutes "green jobs" policy in the US is not the ...
Mineral severance has been in existence for 100 - 200 years. Some of the transfers may not have been totally ...
Great work by the EEBC. Yes consumers need to find financing,but the EEBC is also working on this item too. 
There is already a rule on the books that requires title disclosure for severed mineral rights.
It was done in ...