COLORADO SPRINGS – Colorado’s Proposition 112, that would have required 2,500 foot buffers between new oil and gas drilling sites and occupied buildings such as homes and schools, failed last week in the state’s general election. Industry lobbyists and campaigners spent $30 million arguing that the grassroots ballot measure threatened to significantly limit the extraction…
COLORADO SPRINGS — America runs on electricity. It powers our phones, turns the gears in our machines, and keeps our homes cool in sweltering heat. The United States consumes around 18 percent of the world’s energy supply, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Only 17 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources.…
GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE — On a Monday morning, stuffed inside a conference room, Fred Bunch took a moment to lean back and bugle like an elk. Then he chuckled. In 1968, Bunch hopped on an old cruiser in Alamosa, Colorado and pedaled through the San Louis Valley until he arrived at…
COLORADO SPRINGS – Nearly the center of the country sits Colorado Springs, a city grappling with the same energy debate the whole country faces. For some Americans, coal symbolizes the country’s position as a global industry powerhouse. For others, coal represents decades of irresponsible energy consumption and pollution that has poisoned the environment. Colorado Springs…
COLORADO SPRINGS – An October 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that in order to minimize drastic changes in Earth’s climate, electricity production from coal must make up less than 2 percent of total electricity generation by the year 2050. Yet utilities around the country rely on coal to produce…
COLORADO SPRINGS – As the implications of climate change grow more dire, scientific reports are encouraging a faster shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy in order to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Some municipal utility officials are beginning to address harm their power plants may be causing to the environment. Colorado Springs Utilities…
WELD COUNTY – Scattered brick houses sit amid tidy farm fields in politically-conservative Weld County, the heart of Colorado’s oil and gas drilling boom. Here, fossil fuel companies regularly tout their adherence to golden rule principles – treating your neighbor as you would want to be treated. The companies claim they want to be good…
COLORADO SPRINGS- As our group of Colorado college students rode up to Colorado Springs’s (CSU) coal fired power plant southeast of the city, CSU’s public relations chief Amy Trinidad waited energetically in front of the plant. She greeted us as we got off our bus, seemingly eager to show off the utilities recent efforts to…
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…
