Steve Pomerance

The state legislature and the Governor`s Energy Office have been very active this session in moving forward their agenda for Colorado`s clean energy future. Three bills will make significant changes in our renewable energy goals, in the way citizens invest in solar generated electricity, and in metro area air quality. House Bill 10-1001, which Governor Ritter recently signed, raises the standard for renewable energy to 30 percent of retail electricity sales for 2020 and thereafter. This applies to Xcel Energy (about 65 percent of the state`s electricity, I am told) and Black Hills Energy (the other investor owned utility, about 10 percent). The 25 cooperative electric associations and larger municipal utilities must meet a 10 percent requirement. The bill is quite innovative: It rewards utilities for investing in renewables ahead of schedule; it reduces rebates as the cost of renewables drops; and solar owners will continue to pay to support more renewables even if they zero out th...

The state legislature and the Governor`s Energy Office have been very active this session in moving forward their agenda for Colorado`s clean energy future. Three bills will make significant changes in our renewable energy goals, in the way citizens invest in solar generated electricity, and in metro area air quality. House Bill 10-1001, which Governor Ritter recently signed, raises the standard for renewable energy to 30 percent of retail electricity sales for 2020 and thereafter. This applies to Xcel Energy (about 65 percent of the state`s electricity, I am told) and Black Hills Energy (the other investor owned utility, about 10 percent). The 25 cooperative electric associations and larger municipal utilities must meet a 10 percent requirement. The bill is quite innovative: It rewards utilities for investing in renewables ahead of schedule; it reduces rebates as the cost of renewables drops; and solar owners will continue to pay to support more renewables even if they zero out th...

Xcel has been in the news lately. In the first week of March, Xcel refused to issue rebates for photovoltaic panels to the owners of a mobile home because it is not a “permanent structure.” Also, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved Xcel`s application for a two-tiered rate structure for residential customers. And Xcel backed Gov. Bill Ritter`s plan to convert a number of coal plants to natural gas to improve metro air quality. Although not obvious, the fundamental issue that ties all these events together is one that all investor owned utilities (IOUs) must eventually face — how to make money while providing a cleaner environment. IOUs make money by owning assets on which they earn a rate of return. In Xcel`s latest rate case, in December the PUC approved a 10.5 percent return on invested capital and 6.21 percent payment on Xcel`s bonds. The insider joke is that utilities always want to build the next “billion dollar block of concrete” — not for the power, but because it ...

At the last City Council meeting, Seth Brigham, a citizen of Boulder and former council candidate, was arrested by the police after attempting to raise issues about the behavior of certain sitting council members. The city manager has provided a detailed account, as well as recommendations to minimize future problems. But the fundamental issues are still unresolved. What caused all the trouble was the council`s rule that “speakers engaging in personal attacks may be interrupted by the mayor.” The notion of “personal attacks” is vague, the word “may” allows arbitrary application, and the rule is inappropriate since many times citizens come before council specifically to criticize the actions of council members. What exactly is a citizen supposed to do if they disagree with the actions of a specific council member? If they criticize that person, they could be shut down. And what if the mayor “interrupts” one person but not another who says something very similar? Is there any recours...

In Wednesday`s Daily Camera, we were all put on notice that the time it takes Boulder`s fire and emergency vehicles to respond is falling further and further behind both our own and national standards. Only the day before, many of us received e-mails from the city`s planning department inviting us to a workshop to discuss “sustainable growth and development” as part of the five-year update to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan (BVCP). It doesn`t take a rocket scientist to see that past growth and resulting traffic increases have led to these slower emergency response times. And that given the amount of expected future growth (13,000 more residents and 60,000 more jobs to “reasonable buildout”) and the failure of the city to require that growth pay its own way, the notion of “sustainable growth and development” is an oxymoron. If this growth is pursued, our future is rather grim, with emergency response time being just one of many sacrifices. The response time problem is simple...

Since the first time I wrote on the financial crisis, I have read almost everything relevant I could find. What really got me going was a call I placed to the Treasury Department in the fall of 2008 during the midst of the crisis to get some very basic mortgage data for a column I was working on. The woman from their Office of Public Information first told me that the information was private, and when I laughed out loud at that ridiculous assertion, she told me that they didn`t have it and I would have to call the Mortgage Bankers Association. Apparently the Treasury was its subsidiary. As former Fed chair Alan Greenspan admitted, he operated as if Wall Street was self-regulating. Ben Bernanke is another case in point. In my opinion, his performance demonstrates how badly things work when financial officials think that little regulation is needed, and that the welfare of banks is more important than the welfare of the citizens. During the run-up to the disaster, both while acting...

The Boulder City Council will hold their goal-setting session next weekend. But any progress they might make could be derailed by some ideas that are circulating. Reports are that as many as five council members would like to remove the earmarking from the Open Space tax, meaning that instead of the funds being dedicated to Open Space, they could be used for anything. This would effectively gut the Open Space program. Fortunately, it also would require a charter amendment and thus a vote in November. I expect a bitter campaign battle. I rate this “ugly” — it should never be brought up. Apparently, some council members would like the voters to re-consider direct election of the mayor and district elections of council members, even though this scheme was defeated 2 to 1 in the 2003 election. A directly elected mayor doesn`t work very well with an appointed city manager; either there is a power struggle, or they ignore the rest of the council. Mayoral elections will devolve into who...

The current Boulder City Council should be acknowledged for taking on the “pops and scrapes” issue (also called “compatible development”) and trying to finish it during their term. We should commend this group of our peers for their willingness to struggle with a very difficult issue that has many citizens on each side, and even some on both sides at once. Yes, there have been mistakes made in the process, and the council should definitely avoid making them again, but at least they are making the effort. The criticisms made by Mark Ruzzin and Leslie Durgin in a guest opinion (Camera, Sept. 15) were disingenuous. His council abandoned their attempt to deal with this issue by passing a Floor Area Ratio limit of 0.8 that accomplished essentially nothing. I know Leslie quite well — she was mayor when I was on council — and I believe her concern for a careful process is honest and well intended; however, in my opinion, given the work to date, the council that started this effort needs t...

Introduction The design of this rate structure started as an attempt to simultaneously address six goals for a water utility, like the City of Boulder's, in an area of scarce and expensive water, and that has a large existing customer base who have paid for the utility’s capital plant and water rights through tap fees/plant investment fees (PIFs): The rate structure should be equitable and economically efficient in that it accurately reflects both capital and operating costs associated with each individual customer, not just the “average” customer in a given class. Rates should provide an economically accurate incentive for conservation for all customers , big and small, that includes long term capital costs as well as variable operating costs , Plant Investment Fees should be accurate to current individual consumption levels and/or water budgets , not just to some class average consumption levels at some time in the past, The r...