New West Network

My Page: Richard Martin

Cross-posted from Colorado Energy News.

The dispute over power-line siting authority has surfaced in Washington, D.C., and it has the potential to derail all of the well-intentioned renewable-energy programs now underway in Colorado and the West.

Simply put, there are not enough transmission lines to handle existing and projected loads on the nation’s energy grid, much less get electricity from remote sources of renewable energy to the consumers and businesses that need it.

The federal Energy Information Administration has predicted that U.S. electricity demand will rise 30 percent by 2030, but power lines have only been expanded by 6 percent since 1996. [more]

Priming the Pumps, & Arrays

The U.S. House has released the draft outline of the $825 billion economic stimulus package, which includes $76 billion for energy projects over the next few years. Of that, $18.5 billion is proposed for renewable energy, a sector hard hit by falling oil prices and the drying up of state revenues targeted at funding green-energy projects.

In Colorado, the budget for the Governor’s Energy Office, which receives funding from state gaming revenues, was slashed from a predicted $8 million to just under $4 million for last year. Initially projected at around $5 million for 2009, funding for the agency is forecast at zero. Zilch. Nada. [more]

The 'Golden Age of Aristocracy'?

With the withdrawal of Bill Richardson and the appointment of Michael Bennet, the Mountain West may have lost one politician on the national stage and gained another.
[more]

Vehicle Miles Decline

In a report that will doubtless find its way to the highest corridors of power in Washington, D.C., the Brookings Institute concludes that Americans’ love affair with the automobile is ending.

For the first time on record, U.S. vehicle miles traveled declined year-to-year in 2007, the study, entitled "The Road...Less Traveled," finds. “America is experiencing its longest and steepest drop in driving, signaling a permanent shift away from reliance on the car to other modes of transportation,” write study authors Robert Puentes and Adie Tomer.
[more]

Lame Duck Loopholes

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne today announced the final version of a sweeping rule change to the Endangered Species Act that would make it easier to go through with federal projects regardless of their impact on endangered or threatened species. [more]

Risk & Reward

How much does the fossil-fuel industry really contribute to the economies of the West?

Not as much as you might think, according to a new study from Headwaters Economics, a left-leaning think tank based in Bozeman that is producing a series of reports on energy and economic issues facing the Rocky Mountain West. [more]

The Obama Effect

Since the election of Barack Obama, and the Democratic near-sweep of Congress, two weeks ago there have beenhundreds of news stories about an up surge of gun sales across the West and across the country. Many of these have appeared in newspapers in the Rocky Mountain West: the Denver Post, Boulder's Daily Camera, the Salt Lake Tribune, and so on. The problem is, while these accounts seem to present persuasive evidence, they're almost all based on anecdotal evidence. [more]

Obama-Mania Hits Boulder

Ohio was the turning point. When Barack Obama won the crucial Midwest state last night it popped the release valve on eight years of pent-up outrage, frustration, and shame for millions of Democrats and independents across the U.S.

Up to that point the several hundred Obama supporters gathered at the Boulder Theater had reacted with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety as early returns were reported by MSNBC and CNN on the big screen. [more]

President-Elect Obama

It took a while, but Democrats in Colorado got almost everything they wanted in today's election results.

For more than an hour after the polls closed around the state neither the national nor local news organizations had called the presidential race in Colorado. Finally, at about 8:30 – moments before CNN called the national race – and with 32% of the precincts reporting, The Denver Post reported, "Colorado, a traditionally red state, swung blue tonight as voters chose Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president and Congressman Mark Udall for the state's open Senate seat."
[more]

Election Day

Equipped with a camp chair, a book, and a box of glazed doughnuts (Vote the Fried Dough Party!), I arrived at my polling place at 7:20 a.m. today prepared for a long wait. There was no one there. Nobody. [more]