By Brian Lada, Meteorologist
November 12,2015; 12:50AM,EST
For over a century, Aspen, Colorado, has been a pioneer in the renewable energy community. Earlier this year, the city achieved a new milestone in reducing its carbon footprint.
In August, Aspen became the third community in the United States to use only renewable energy as the source for electricity, joining Burlington, Vermont, and Greensburg, Kansas.
"This has been a project that was started in the mid-2000s, and there were a lot of activities over the years to get here," said Dave Hornbacher, director of Utilities and Environmental Initiatives for the City of Aspen.
Windmills
generate electricity on Colorado's largest wind farm, Colorado Green,
south of Lamar, Colo., Jan. 4, 2007. Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and his
allies in the Legislature are sending a message to the state: The energy
future is now __ and its renewable, they say. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)The history of renewable energy in Aspen started back in 1885 when they became the first municipality west of the Mississippi River to use hydroelectric power.
Since then, the city has been making adjustments to its power grid and coming up with new ways to exclusively use renewable energy.
Some of the biggest changes have occurred in just the past 10 years after the city developed the Canary Initiative, a plan to reduce the city's carbon footprint and achieve 100 percent renewable energy in 2015.
Part of this included the city buying into a wind farm to help get the project off the ground.
This was followed up by working with a wholesale energy provider that produces green energy to ensure that Aspen has enough resources available to meet the city's energy demands at any given time.
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"We use approximately 46 percent hydroelectric energy, 53 percent wind energy and 1 percent landfill gas," Hornbacher said.
Hornbacher added that the city does use solar energy, but its usage is very limited. It is mainly used by households to offset electricity use.
This diverse energy portfolio provides electricity for not only the nearly 7,000 residents that live in Aspen, but also the businesses in the city.
In addition to having a significantly smaller carbon footprint, Aspen's renewable energy has also helped the residents of the city save money.
"One of the myths is that renewable energy is not affordable," Hornbacher said. "For us, we did it in such a fashion where we kept our rates really, really low."
The approach that the city took and the amount of time in which the conversion to completely renewable energy took have kept Aspen's utility rates at the fifth lowest in the state of Colorado.
This
June 1, 2011, file photo shows Grand Coulee Dam, the nation's largest
dam, on the Columbia River in Washington state. U.S. negotiators are
proposing to elevate ecosystem functions to the same level as
hydroelectric power production and flood control as goals of river
management in the Columbia River Treaty with Canada. (AP Photo/Nicholas
K. Geranios)"Now that we've achieved 100 percent renewable [energy], our journey doesn't end," Harnbacher said.
The customer base is always changing, and there are always new buildings being constructed that are added to Aspen's power grid.
This causes the city's power requirements to vary and may lead to new innovations in the future to meet the energy demand.
What Aspen has accomplished may also lead other towns to be creative and innovative for finding ways that they can achieve a similar goal to reduce their carbon footprint.
"I hope people look to see what the city of Aspen did and see what might be relevant in their pursuit," Harnbacher said.
David Welsh ·
Works at Self-Employed
Carbon
footprint? Why don't they be honest and say carbon dioxide, which is
necessary for life. They always want to paint the picture of nasty black
carbon in people's minds. Those who worship the Earth are usually
Godless. With no afterlife, they remain pathetically tied to a dismal
future where they die just like an insect or animal.
David Munson
Factor
in the dam(s) built probably completely, or almost completely by
Federal money (free money, right)? Then all the subsidies to
manufacture, and install wind power equipment (free Federal money)
again. Plus the eyesores that are despoiling beautiful landscapes with
hun, or thousands of those ugly wind mills! Another place to cross off
my list of places I'd want to vacation !
1 · 
Mike Sigman
"If assholes were trees, Aspen would be declared a National Forest".
Notice they forget to mention the subsidies that they have to rake in, in order to make this fantasy work.
Notice they forget to mention the subsidies that they have to rake in, in order to make this fantasy work.
ah,
a town of 7000 completely fueled by renewable energy. pretty much a
darn shame that we all cannot live in such a 'garden of Eden'.
Marcus David ·
Because
it costs too much. This is a very small town. If you throw enough money
at a small problem you can make it work. But, stepping up to a million
person city is quite quite difficult technically and incredibly
expensive. Economy of scale doesn't work here.
Marcus
David sorry,, i will have to try better to express my sarcasm for these
greenie jerkoffs. they are so smug in their religion of man-made global
warming, oh sorry, it is climate change this year. in 1979 it was the
coming ice age. i think it was the cover of 'Time' magazine. they cannot
predict the weather next week, but their cousin climatologists can tell
us what it will be 50 100 200 years from now.
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