Over the past few months, we’ve all read and heard about the potential for Amazon’s HQ2 to locate here in Colorado. While we’d love to see Amazon build HQ2 out here in northeast Colorado, we won’t hold our collective breath. During this period of waiting for Amazon to discover the splendor of our region, we’ll take some time to encourage our state’s leaders, businesses and communities to continue to pursue options for which everyone knows eastern Colorado is perfect, namely new energy produced from the wind and sun.
Out here in eastern Colorado, we grow most of the food that your family needs. We produce fuel for your car and to keep your home warm. We take care of Colorado’s wildlife. We produce some of the electricity that keeps your lights on and we want to do more with our abundant wind, sunshine and natural gas. Our economies are becoming more diverse, but make no mistake, we need to do more. We are truly blessed with these resources and we should seize on the opportunity to produce more electricity from the sun and wind so we can make our communities stronger.
An economic study done by our own Progressive 15 showed that in 2015, eastern Colorado counties had over 4,000 jobs in more than 220 advanced energy businesses. Let’s put that in perspective: 40 jobs in the Limon area is the equivalent of bringing HQ2 to Denver! Yeah, it’s a big deal. It means our kids might get to stay here, near their homes and have a promising career earning real money. For instance, the median household income in Logan County is around $43,000. Last year, graduates of Northeastern Junior College’s wind tech program earned half again more than that. In their first year out of school. At the age of 20!
Eastern Colorado needs more of that. We want to export food, fuel and electricity; we are tired of exporting our kids.
The growth of these new energy jobs impacts more than workers, they also benefit our farmers, ranchers and local governments. According to the Pro-15 study, renewable energy facilities in eastern Colorado provided about $7.2 million in property taxes and $7.5 million in landowner lease payments in 2015 alone. These payments to our towns and counties provide new revenue to invest in schools, fire districts and more. The payments also help landowners struggling in a volatile commodity market. Wind energy surely has been a boon for the places we call home.
While these new energy sources have benefited our local economies, we would like to see more projects developed in the near term and a current proposal from Xcel Energy seeks to do just that. By taking advantage of some of the lowest prices of energy production, Xcel has requested approval from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to identify options for producing new energy from wind and solar. The Colorado Energy Plan, as it has been dubbed, could help bring in new investments and keep energy costs down for the company’s customers. Xcel is currently accepting proposals from developers to see if this plan makes sense — that is, according to the company, if it does not raise consumer electricity rates.
According to The Wall Street Journal, for the first time ever, last year natural gas surpassed coal as the leading source of electricity in the United States. And since 2008, wind and solar has grown from 1.4 percent of generation to 6.7 percent. Government policies and subsidies aside, wind and solar are growing faster than any other source for one simple reason: cost. In Texas, where wind and natural gas have been embraced, the average wholesale power price is currently $25, a decade ago, it was $55.
Wind and solar are on sale and natural gas is so abundant, they are practically giving it away. Xcel’s Colorado Energy Plan seeks to take advantage of this. We hope the PUC approves Xcel’s request and we hope the projects submitted to Xcel lead to more wind, and more solar across a broad range of the counties in eastern Colorado.
Trae Miller, Maggie Metzler and Trisha Herman are, respectively, the economic development directors for Logan, Yuma and Phillips counties.
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