Posts Tagged ‘coal’
Xcel’s Municipalization Offer: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose

Two weeks ago, Xcel made a set of 11th hour electricity provision offers to Boulder, a so-called “partnership,” and a buy-out option. Readers should understand that Xcel’s offers are not what the city asked for; they are only what Xcel is [...]
Going Down With the Xcel Ship

As the Boulder City Council considers the merits of municipalization and Boulder’s carbon reduction goals, it is essential to recognize that there are opportunities and risks with EITHER path going forward—establishing a muni or establishing a [...]
InsideClimate News | U.S. Carbon Emissions From Fossil Fuels Rose in 2013 as Coal Use Ticked Up

West Virginia coal plant/Credit: John E. Amos When all the data is in, it looks like carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels will have gone up 2 percent in 2013 from the previous year, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) said on [...]
Is An Energy Transformation Afoot?

Almost immediately after we empowered Boulder to form a utility, a spate of articles appeared in the national press talking about the relative costs of coal and renewables, and the trends in those costs. There was Krugman's Here Comes Solar Energy [...]
The Energy Collective | Case Study: Boulder Colorado Takes Action On Climate Change

The Boulder vote should send a message to utilities around the country as well as other communities that are tired of inaction on climate goals. In Colorado, while Xcel is on track to have 25% renewable energy in their portfolio by 2020 (a [...]
Paris Review | American Inferno

Centralia has been on fire for almost fifty years. The mines under the town—a vast network designed to tap the veins of purplish anthracite coal that spread weblike throughout the county—have been burning since 1962. The conflagration [...]
GOOD | Across the Globe, Solar Power Just Keeps Getting Cheaper

Solar power is getting cheaper. It’s something of a parlor game among energy companies and analysts to predict when, exactly, solar will achieve “grid parity” with coal and other cheap sources of electricity—in other words, when it will be [...]
American RadioWorks | Power and Smoke: A Nation Built on Coal

At the time the settlers arrived at Plymouth Rock, people back in England had already been burning coal for generations. Londoners complained about coal smoke during Queen Elizabeth I's era. A century before the American Revolution, in 1660, an [...]
Amateur Earthling | Boulder’s Energy Future Is Bright

We’re going to be exposed to future fuel price volatility one way or another. If we stick with Xcel, it’ll be coal prices which seem low today, but are difficult to hedge against. If we strike out on our own, it’ll be gas prices, which are [...]
Glustrom Wins Renewable Energy Award

On June 3rd in Fort Collins, CO, Leslie Glustrom of Clean Energy Action was awarded Colorado Renewable Energy Society’s (CRES) most prestigious award, The Larson-Notari, for her exemplary contributions in the field of renewable energy. Glustrom [...]