Legislators hungry for power

County delegation focuses on renewable, alternative energy

By John Fryar
The Daily Times-Call

LONGMONT — Northeast Boulder County’s legislative delegation is sponsoring several measures intended to promote the use of renewable or alternative energy sources and energy-conservation practices.

Renewable energy, and the reduction of Coloradans’ dependence on fossil fuels, has turned out to be “kind of a sexy area” for bills being introduced in the Legislature’s 2007 session, Longmont Democratic Sen. Brandon Shaffer told the more than 40 constituents attending his town hall meeting Saturday at the Longmont Public Library.

Shaffer’s own Senate Bill 147 would generally require that as of next year, 75 percent of all gasoline sold in Colorado from November through April contain at least 10 percent ethanol or other non-petroleum fuels.

Louisville Democratic Rep. Paul Weissmann, whose House district includes about half of Longmont, predicted that by the time the four-month-long annual session ends in May, the Legislature will have produced a package of laws to assist in building what Gov. Bill Ritter has labeled “a New Energy Economy” for Colorado.

Weissmann himself is proposing creation of a new budget account for funding energy-efficiency improvements in Colorado’s public schools.

That money would be spent by the state Office of Energy Management and Conservation on assisting schools in making energy-efficiency upgrades to existing buildings, designing new schools with energy efficiency in mind, and increasing the effectiveness of school districts’ utility budget management, under Weissmann’s House Bill 1309.

The source of those funds, Weissmann told the town meeting participants, would be the $1.5 million in additional annual interest income he estimated could be earned by requiring severance taxes on producing oil and gas wells to be paid monthly, rather than quarterly.

Meanwhile, Boulder Democratic Rep. Jack Pommer — whose House district covers the other half of Longmont and who also attended Saturday’s meeting — is carrying one of the bills Ritter specifically cited when the governor called for the “New Energy Economy” in his Jan. 11 state of the state speech to the Legislature.

Pommer’s House Bill 1281 would essentially double the renewable energy requirements that voters originally imposed on major utility companies when they approved Amendment 37 on the state’s 2004 election ballot.

By 2020, under Pommer’s bill, at least 20 percent of the electricity that investor-owned utilities sell to Colorado customers would have to come from wind, solar, hydroelectric or geothermal generation facilities or from other non-fossil-fuel sources.

Pommer’s HB1281 would also set separate renewable energy standards for electricity provided by any rural electrical cooperatives or municipally owned utilities serving more than 40,000 customers. Those utilities would have to provide 10 percent of their electricity generation from renewables by 2020.

Those are just a few of the energy-related proposals that will be considered during this year’s session, the three legislators said.

Shaffer, for example, said he’s preparing a “net metering” bill that would allow farmers and other property owners with small wind or solar facilities to claim a credit on their conventional utility bills, or to actually get paid whenever their facilities generate more electricity than they use themselves and when they “put that power on the grid.”

John Fryar can be reached by e-mail at jfryar@times-call.com.