ERIE- Erie resident Amanda Harper stands by the road in front of her house, the sun sinking towards the Rockies, wondering whether voters will help her pass a statewide set back rule on oil and gas next week Her dog circles around her nudging a dirt caked ball. She throws the ball and the dog…
ERIE — Across the plains of Weld County, Colorado, metal towers splinter the blue skyline: oil rigs in every direction. One sits next to a high school in Erie. Another operates in a green public park where children shoot down playground slides. Others extract oil and gas within a few hundred feet of homes. They…
COLORADO SPRINGS — Colorado Springs Utilities officials are embarking on major shifts in the way they are producing electricity for a growing city. With the planned closing of the coal-fired Martin Drake Power Station by 2035, and a wide public backlash to coal, utility officials say they are looking towards renewables. “But we will never…
DENVER– A huge federal government freezer west of Denver holds the nation’s collection of ice cores crucial for analyzing climate change. The ice cores come from Antarctica, Greenland and Alaska. In order to keep them from melting, curators keep the freezer set at around at least as cold as minus 11 degrees Fahrenheit. They have backup generators in…
COLORADO SPRINGS—Colorado Springs Utilities electricity providers still rely largely on coal but say they increasingly will rely on natural gas and solar. “We’re not all the media portrays us to be,” public relations chief Amy Trinidad said during a recent visit. The latest efforts are focused on implementing more solar panels. Solar energy currently costs twice as much per megawatt…
COLORADO SPRINGS–Sitting in the heart of the coal-fired Ray Nixon power plant, a giant blue General Electric generator, spinning at 3,600 revolutions per minute, churns out 225 megawatts of electricity for residents of a growing city. This was state-of-the-art electrical generation when the plant opened. Three decades later, the generator stands out as a relic…
DENVER–Tucked into a maze of federal brick buildings west of Denver, the National Ice Core Laboratory stores some of the most important data in the world. Air bubbles trapped in the ice samples give scientists a glimpse of Earth’s climate stretching back 450,000 years. This ice is crucial, scientists say, for analyzing and addressing climate…
COLORADO SPRINGS — Colorado Springs Utility owns the Clear Springs Ranch on the semi-arid prairie southeast of the city, and operates two power plants — one coal and one natural gas. Nearby, utility contractors have installed 140,000 solar panels. These facilities, along with the coal-fired Drake power plant in the middle of downtown, generate electricity…
ERIE — Sitting on a park bench in Erie, a town north of metro Denver along Colorado’s heavily populated Front Range, town councilman Christiaan van Woudenberg looks out at a 40-foot high beige sound wall surrounding a massive oil and gas production facility. The noise from drilling cuts through the air, foul fumes that drift…
DENVER – Scientists studying ancient air trapped in ice cores in the federal government’s minus-40 freezer say there’s no doubt human air pollution is causing global climate change. But U.S. politicians, especially at the federal level, are failing to lead the shift away from fossil fuels that scientists say is necessary to avoid environmental catastrophe.…
