Today Governor Ritter is expected to sign into law a bill requiring that 30% of Colorado’s electricity needs be met with renewable energy sources. With the passage of HB 10-1001 Colorado joins California as the only state in the country committed to delivering close to a third of their electricity from clean, renewable resources (see House and Senate vote here). Vote Solar has been working on this bill from its inception, and can attest that the game-changing bill sitting before the Governor is thanks to the impressive negotiating and organizing skills of many of our in-state partners like Environment Colorado, COSEIA, and others.
Vote Solar focused our advocacy efforts on making the solar goal in the bill as strong as possible. What we got was a requirement that 3 percent of total electricity sales come from “distributed generation” (DG) systems such as solar. This requirement is expected to deploy 700 megawatts (MWs) of solar generation by 2020, enough to power 102,200 Colorado homes, and create 23,450 jobs over the next 10 years.
Right now only Xcel Energy and other smaller investor-owned utilities (IOUs) are required to meet the goals laid out in HB 10-1001. Extending the same requirement statewide, Colorado could expect to see 1000 MW of new solar power, and the full benefits we quantified in our recent report “Investing in the Sun.”
We’re looking forward to personally thanking Governor Ritter for his leadership during this year-long process. Next Tuesday we will honor the Governor as our “Solar Champion” of the year at our annual Equinox event in San Francisco. If you live in the Bay area think about joining us!
2010 is shaping up to be a year of big wins for state solar energy policies – with net metering victories in California and New York, and fending off hostile amendments to Arizona’s renewable energy goal. It’s nice to see such momentum, and it’s only March.
Source: Vote Solar
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