Backgrounders

Renewable energy potential:
5 Utah counties rate high in energy report, Deseret Morning News, 4/27/08

Elko tops state in renewable energy potential, Elko Daily News, 4/24/08

Study: Montana has great renewable energy potential,
Great Falls Tribune, 4/22/08

Housing affordability :
Affordable housing grades low,
Grand Junction Sentinel, 4/24/08

NV Gets Poor Grades on Affordable Housing, KLAS-TV CBS 8, 4/19/08

Ravalli County scores low for affordable rent, Ravalli Republic, 4/18/08

County nets ‘D’ on housing report, Bonner County Daily Bee, 4/17/2008

Wildness:
County scores B+ for 'wildness' on report
-Tooele Transcript Bulletin, 04/16/08

Immigration:
Rocky Mountain region's immigration twice the national rate,
New Mexico Business Weekly, 04/11/08

Report: Immigrant Growth in Rockies Outpaces Nation
-Conde Nast Portfolio; 04/08/2008

Read more coverage online

Related links

2004 State of the Rockies Report Card
-Headwaters News; 05/04/2004

2005 State of the Rockies Report Card
-Headwaters News; 05/11/2005

2006 State of the Rockies Report Card - Headwaters News, 04/06/2006

No new coal-fired power plants. Ever.

After researching and writing a report on renewable energy in the West for the 2008 Colorado College State of the Rockies Report Card, I am confident that with energy conservation through efficiency, and generation and distribution of renewable power, we can meet the increasing energy needs of the West.

The 2008 Report assesses the current capacity of renewable energy in the West and maps the potential for renewable energy use in each county of the region. At the end of the Report, the reader is presented with four letter grades for each county, giving them the ability to decide the best prescription for energy production in their area.

While the grading method is effective for comparing Rockies counties to each other, it fails to demonstrate the most remarkable aspect of the Report. Almost every county in the Rockies region has renewable resources superior to the rest of the country, and in some cases, the world.

For example, only two counties in Colorado received A's for solar potential, but the sun power in any part of the state is 33 percent better than the solar potential of Germany, where solar panels were installed on 100,000 roofs in 2006. The resource maps for the entire country demonstrate that the West has the greatest potential for solar, wind and geothermal power.

The West is beginning to increase its use of renewables in electrical generation, but still falls far short of the region’s capability. In 2005, electricity production in the West was 63 percent coal, 19 percent natural gas, 8 percent conventional hydro, 7.7 percent nuclear and other non-renewable resources, and 1.2 percent renewables.

Between 2000 and 2005, electricity production in the Rockies increased by 26 million megawatt hours (MWh). Although the amount of renewable energy used in electrical production doubled, it only reaches 1.2 percent of the resource use and a total of 4.5 million MWh.

However, the promising advances of renewables during this period was overshadowed by the growth in coal and natural gas. Natural gas production increased twenty-fold, and coal increased by 1.2 percent. Coal’s increase seems small, but with its large share of the market, coal showed a larger increase than renewables (2.6 million MWh to 2.2 million MWh).

Renewable energy is working its way into the system, but without legislative and citizen support, it will have trouble chipping away at coal's stronghold. Currently, five of the eight Rockies states have Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) that require a certain percentage of the energy to come from renewable resources by a designated year. For example, Colorado, passed Amendment 37 requiring 10 percent renewables by 2015, and has since passed HB07-1281, requiring utilities to achieve 20 percent renewables by 2020.

Passing legislation is imperative to jump-starting renewable energy production, but changing traditional consumer demands and notions can bring more complete structural changes to the energy infrastructure of the West.

By and large, renewable energy cannot be utilized in 300-megawatt power plants the way coal can. Distributed generation and citizen involvement in energy production can lighten the load of utilities while strengthening energy security by spreading generation throughout the region. To assist citizens in this endeavor, some utilities offer rebates and net metering for home and business owners who install solar panels and put excess energy back on the grid. Farmers and ranchers have the additional opportunity to lease land for wind turbines, which doubles the land’s utility as turbines 250 feet tall coexist peacefully with cattle.

The profit incentive is reason alone for some to invest in renewables, but if the West moves beyond the allure of immediate profits in its renewable endeavors, it will become the national leader in the sustainability movement.

After years of intensive coal mining and burning that pollutes waterways with sulfuric acid and air with carbon dioxide and sulfates, it is time for the people of the West to embrace renewable resources.

By welcoming the beauty of wind turbines on the horizon and the prestige of solar panels on rooftops, the West can re-awaken the independence of the cowboy, move the economy forward, and preserve the region’s natural beauty for generations to come.

Elizabeth Kolbe (Colorado College '08) is the researcher and author of the Renewable Energy section of the 2008 State of the Rockies Report Card and the 2009 Rockies Program Coordinator.

If you live in the Rocky Mountain West, you’ve almost certainly noticed changes wrought by the influx of immigrants, mostly from Latin America.

English Language Learners in schools, bilingual signs in The Home Depot, people speaking in accented English or another language altogether.

Between 2000 and 2005, immigrant populations increased in the eight Rocky Mountain West states about twice as fast as that of the rest of the United States.

The arrival of newcomers at such a rapid pace is stirring up heated debate as receiving communities undergo profound change. Frustrating efforts to grapple with this issue is a lack of quality information on immigration, both legal and illegal.

The 2008 State of the Rockies Report on Immigration in the Rockies was designed to capture pertinent information to provide needed information to communities in the region impacted by immigration.

Here are how these findings can be used to respond to some of the common sentiments regarding immigrants and immigration.

“We should round up all of the illegals and send them home.”

Ignore for a minute the practical roadblocks to performing this task. Is it desirable? We saw a snapshot of what this might look like in 2006 following raids at the Swift and Company meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 261 workers in a single mass raid. Swift had complied with all of the laws designed to ensure legal status, but nevertheless ended up employing undocumented workers and endured a loss of over $50 million dollars.

Since most of Swift’s meat is purchased locally, the economic impact of the raids hit Greeley and northeastern Colorado hard. In addition, residents of the area said that six months following the raids, downtown Greeley still felt empty. There is also a humanitarian consideration here. Many children, some U.S. born and some immigrant, were left behind in Greeley without even a goodbye from their parents.

Another relevant fact: In the Rockies, the illegal immigrant workforce is almost double that of the unemployed workforce. If all of the illegal immigrant workers disappeared, the region would immediately face a significant worker shortage.

“Illegals broke the law to get here, so they shouldn’t be allowed to stay, period.”

Many of the illegal immigrants who are here today first arrived legally on a work visa. Most work visas for low-skilled labor last for only six months. At the end of the six-month period, the worker must return to his/her home country, wait for about three months, and hope the visa will be renewed.

However, many of the jobs that these immigrants work in the Rockies are year-round. The construction and service industries, two of our region’s strongest, employ the most immigrant laborers. When the 6-month visa expires, employers tell their workers, “If you leave, your job won’t be here when you get back.” What to do if you are supporting a family? There is too much risk in leaving. Unfortunately this situation is not the exception, it is the rule.

The visa requirements designed by national politicians in Washington are antiquated, especially for the types of jobs that employ immigrants in our region.

“I’m tired of paying tax money to support immigrants. We should stop handing out services to immigrants so that less come here.”

The statistics show unequivocally that poor immigrants in the Rockies, citizens and non-citizens alike, receive far fewer public services—such food stamps, welfare, and Medicaid--than poor U.S.-born citizens. This should scare you, not please you. Our region’s immigrant population, which earns far less than the region’s average annual salary, is falling through the public safety net because of fear, miscommunication and a desire to “make it on their own.”

In recent years the states of the Rockies have been among the leaders in restricting immigrants’ access to services. This has not appeared to deter immigrants from coming here and staying here. States like Massachusetts, known for pouring services into their immigrant population, have lower levels of immigration. Why? Because Massachusetts’ economy is shrinking, while the Mountain West’s is growing.

Experts agree that immigrants come here for two main reasons, employment and family. Reducing access to services (this includes new legal immigrants, not just those who are here illegally) only causes suffering and hardship that undermine community well-being more broadly.

In addition, illegal immigrants usually pay taxes, too. Immigrants’ total fiscal impact on our region is difficult to quantify for obvious reasons, but a 2006 study from the University of Arizona found that immigrants in Arizona created a net surplus in tax revenue of $942 million. Our data on immigrants’ role in the region’s fiscal health suggests that some of the loudest voices on immigration policy are misguided and ill-informed when it comes to taxes and receipt of services.

Immigrants have always, and will always, play a significant role in the strength of the Rockies. Keeping people out has never been a part of the region’s tradition. In 1900, immigrants made up 18 percent of the region’s population. Today this number is 11 percent.

Our challenge is to figure out how to manage immigration and integrate our immigrants in the most fair and prosperous manner to receiving communities and the newcomers themselves.

About the Author

Simon Cataldo is a senior Environmental Science major at Colorado College and a student researcher for the 2008 State of the Rockies Report Card.

For the past five years, the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project has published an annual report card to highlight key issues affecting the eight-state Rocky Mountain region.

In early April, we reported this year's grades and took a few lumps when our home county received marks of A-, B, C+, B, B-, and D.

Rating renewable energy potential (first four grades), housing affordability, and wildness respectively, this overall grade point average of 2.6 would not place Colorado's El Paso County in terrific standing as a student in most of our nation's schools.

Compared to other places we each have lived, though, our county actually rates near the top of the class. Montana's Missoula County matches El Paso with a 2.6 GPA, then scores fall off steadily from there: Colorado's Boulder County earned a 2.1 GPA 2.1; its Eagle County a 2.0; and its Delta County a 1.4 GPA.

In many respects, these simplifying ratings should not be the highlight of the 2008 State of the Rockies Report Card – in fact, we declined to grade counties for other issues included in this year's report, immigration and river restoration, because these topics seemed too complex to boil into numbers.

But ratings serve a purpose and this year's grades illustrate several points:

• many parts of the region have top-notch potential for renewable energy production;
  

• housing affordability presents a problem from our largest urban areas to booming micropolitan sites to quiet rural communities; and
  

• despite a reputation for wide open spaces, the Rockies include a majority of counties that rate somewhat poorly for “wildness” – a measure that for this report included the percentage of land in federal ownership, average distance to roads, and population density.

Moving beyond the attractive precision (and, yes, limitations) of grading individual counties, the mission of the State of the Rockies Project is to engage the region in a thoughtful dialogue about pressing current issues.

Researched and written by a team of Colorado College students, the State of the Rockies Report Card is presented each spring with a companion conference.

This year's conference offered keynote speeches on regionally important topics:

Former secretary of the Interior Gale Norton discussed public land management;

Woody Beardsley, president of Denver-based Hybrid Energy Group, discussed investment strategies for mid-scale renewable energy projects.

Each of the five student researchers/authors of the Report Card also organized topical workshops to ground regional issues in practical applications and connections to the local Colorado Springs area.

In all, more than seven hundred students, agency employees, elected officials, and community members attended some portion of the conference.

Public outreach represents an integral piece of the State of the Rockies Project so we're consistently interested to see how information from the report and conference spreads.

Web-based media and search engines provide relatively easy tracking of some of the impact of the State of the Rockies Report Card.

Most newspapers, television and radio stations – even those serving small towns across the West – now post stories to websites the same day they are produced.

In just three weeks following its release, more than 150 stories have covered some aspect of this year's Report Card. Articles ranged from lamentations over the lack of housing affordability across Nevada, where it takes an average minimum-wage earner 120 hours of work per week to afford a median-price rental, to more upbeat claims of bragging rights by New Mexico and Montana newspapers touting their counties' high marks for renewable energy potential.

Considering the subprime mortgage meltdown and continued housing slump kicked into full gear after we selected our 2008 topics, perhaps the most prescient chapter in this year's report is one that focuses on regional housing affordability.

To grade counties in this category, we took standards for fair market rent and compared these against each county's median household income.

While not a comprehensive portrait of affordable housing in each county, our standardized analyses of the Rockies' rural, micropolitan, and metropolitan counties create a means by which to grade like counties against one another.

Several regional newspapers found the report “eye opening” (especially those in counties that received a poor grade), but for many residents across the West our results simply reaffirm what they already recognize as a critical issue.

While grades can catch county officials' and media attention, the heart of the housing chapter is student researcher Wiley Rogers' analysis of why housing is particularly unaffordable in many Rockies communities.

Rogers doesn't just settle for critique, but also suggests measures that federal, state, and local governments could take to improve the situation, and highlights the economic, health, and environmental benefits of building resource-efficient homes.

It's a set of policy recommendations that developers and elected officials alike ought to take seriously. To his credit, Rogers does as well – after graduating from Colorado College in May 2008, he plans to help construct “green” housing projects to pursue his research interests from the ground up.

If there's one piece of this year's State of the Rockies Project that we take particular pride in, it may well be the concrete examples of its impact on students, an array of citizens and elected officials, and our local community.

For example, one participant in the conference's renewable energy workshop recently solidified plans to install solar panels at Colorado College. At the conference, he was able to meet with a representative from SolSource Inc., a Denver-based solar installation company. He later spoke one-on-one with Hybrid Energy's Woody Beardsley about innovative ways to finance solar projects.

Gloria Lanyon attended the conference representing Tri-Lakes Cares, a social outreach program serving Monument, Colo., just north of Colorado Springs. Lanyon was sufficiently impressed by the caliber of student research, she has subsequently arranged an internship for Colorado College students to help Tri-Lakes Cares conduct a programmatic needs assessment.

The conference workshop on river restoration focused on the condition of a local watershed – Fountain Creek – and how community members and local institutions can pursue a comprehensive restoration effort of this stream that consistently exceeds state standards for E. coli. Workshop participants included representatives from NGOs such as Trout Unlimited and the Fountain Creek Restoration Committee, officials from municipal water treatment facilities, whitewater recreationists, students, concerned landowners, and others who are determined to turn a regional liability into a lasting asset. With officials from Colorado Springs sitting at the same table with their peers from downstream Pueblo, the session provided a valuable – and at times, vigorous – exchange of ideas and visions for this watershed.

One final example demonstrates how electronic media and the Rockies conference can stimulate discussion. We knew in advance that conference keynote speaker Gale Norton might be a controversial pick. As Secretary of the Interior for much of George W. Bush's administration (2001-2006), her office attracted scorn from an array of constituencies for fast-tracking oil and gas projects on federal public lands, revising scientific reports to comport with administration policy interests, and for failing to uphold federal obligations to the Indian Trust Fund. Her talk was politely received and succeeded in generating a lively debate, and not just in the question-and-answer session following her presentation.

The following day, the Colorado Springs Gazette published a piece entitled “Gale Norton Defends Her Record,” and simultaneously posted the article on the internet. Messages discussing the talk immediately filled the article's comments section, demonstrating how electronic media can go beyond reporting on results or events and provide a forum for discussion. In this case, comments ranged from “Gale Norton for President” to “Gale Norton is a Disgrace.” Working through these views there lies a healthy and productive debate that may be integral to charting a particular regional course to honor the uniqueness of the Rockies.

We encourage you to pick up a copy of this year's State of the Rockies Report Card and hope it may serve to inform, provoke, even inspire you to think anew about this region we call home, and what we can do to make it ever more livable.