On March 5, the state Senate approved a measure to increase Colorado’s renewable energy standard (RES) to 30% by 2020, and on March 8th, the House finalized the bill, sending it to Gov. Bill Ritter for his signature.
The legislation confirms Colorado’s leadership in nurturing the development of clean, renewable energy just six years after voters approved the state’s first RES – 10% by 2015. In 2006 the state legislature doubled the RES to 20% by 2020, and with enactment of the latest measure only California will have a set a more ambitious state requirement than Colorado, 33% by 2020.
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) announced this evening that he’s retiring at the end of his term, a shocking development that threatens Democratic control of his Senate seat next year.
Dorgan was up for re-election in 2010, but the third-term senator wasn’t facing any strong Republican opposition– but was facing the growing possibility of a serious challenge from popular Gov. John Hoeven (R-N.D.).
Joseph Romm wonders if this increases the chances that Dorgan will vote for the climate bill.
Embattled Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd (D) has scheduled a press conference at his home in Connecticut Wednesday at which he is expected to announce he will not seek re-election, according to sources familiar with his plans.
“The water is so saturated with methane and other chemicals it is not to be used for human consumption,” said Bernice Angely, who’s had water trucked to her home 10 miles west of town since her well blew up in July 2007.
Petroglyph Energy Inc., a Boise, Idaho-based firm that has worked the rolling plains of the Raton Basin since 1999, suspended drilling until it can stem the methane. Colorado also is rewriting rules that had allowed Petroglyph to discharge water runoff from its drilling into streams and creeks.
Somebody is going to have to pay for that, right?
But Petroglyph says it’s not clear the drilling caused the methane leaks or prompted other area water wells to run dry. Eying what it calls an extremely promising natural gas field, it believes a shallow water formation tapped by area homeowners isn’t connected to a deeper one pumped by the company for its drilling operations.
Petroglyph chief operating officer Paul Powell also believes a growing number of new homes in the area could explain some of the dry water wells.
“We’ll do what we need to do,” Powell said, stressing that his firm is working with the state on a solution.
Oil and gas industry representatives this week continued to assail a phone survey in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District showing overwhelming support for federal regulation of a natural-gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing.
The survey of 504 registered 3rd district voters, conducted for two environmental groups by Boulder-based Harstad Strategic Research and released last week, found 67 percent of the sampling favor passage of the FRAC Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat from Denver.
