From the Board President
All rights reserved by dgrinbergs
Julie Zahniser, CEA Board President
It is an honor to be board president of this organization that gets things done and whose name says it all ─ Clean Energy Action! CEA’s focused mission, speeding up the transition from producing energy by burning dirty fossil fuels to energy generation using clean, sustainable, renewable energy sources, provides a direct and long-lasting benefit to quality of life in the Denver metropolitan area. Clean Energy Action has changed the energy conversation by showing our community what is harmful and by encouraging solutions that bring a brighter, healthier, and more economically vibrant energy future.
In our community 88% of the electricity comes from burning coal and natural gas which together emit more than 63 health-threatening toxins; add to the ever-growing production of greenhouse gases that is changing our climate and poisoning our land, water, and Rocky Mountain region ecosystems; endanger health within 30 miles of the Denver Cherokee coal plant smoke plume; waste millions of gallons of Denver’s precious and dwindling water resource annually; produce acres of contaminated waste in Metro areas where neighborhoods have no say; and continually increase customer rates, even during recessionary times, with essentially no individual customer recourse, and almost non-existent community input at the Public Utility Commission where rates are determined.
Over the nearly-half dozen years that I have been involved with Clean Energy Action, I have seen first-hand how we have contributed to Colorado’s legislative agenda. Using education and the persuasive power of factual information, we have encouraged our state leaders to move forward with legislative accomplishments resulting in accelerating the retirement of Front Range coal plants, beginning to increase the required expansion of renewable sources in our local energy portfolio, as well as helping create a social-political climate where toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants will neither be tolerated nor allowed.
We have educated and inspired individual citizens about the health and environmental risks of fossil-fuel based energy and have empowered them to join us and to join together with allied organizations and sometimes with less fortunate communities to provide informed testimony during public participation opportunities at state and national health and environmental oversight agencies, such as the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment and the Environmental Protection Agency.
CEA not only promotes state government energy policy improvements and individual activism but also builds hope and awareness of solutions by hosting inspiring, knowledgeable guest speakers from across the Metro area, the country and the hemisphere to spotlight clean energy innovation developments in other places that might also be done right here. Our monthly Global Warming Solutions Speaker Series guests were recently credited by community members in Boulder, CO with having provided pivotal can-do encouragement for development of this fall’s city municipal electric utility ballot measures which hold promise of cleaner electricity production in Boulder and which ultimately could provide a replicable model for other communities in the Denver metro area and beyond.
Clean Energy Action has been a lean organization, powered by spirit, volunteer enthusiasm, and the financial generosity of a few individuals. We believe that we could provide additional valuable service to our community by expanding what we do locally and at the state level. To do additional work, CEA needs additional funding. We would like to be able to bring on student interns who would build skills and knowledge while helping us with public education, research, volunteer core building and outreach activities, and who would later return these abilities to their home communities. We would like to build our on-line presence through enrichment of the information and resources we provide on our website. We would like to continue to anticipate and meet the needs of our community by providing the foundation for local and state clean energy policy through our ever-growing data-driven research backbone. We would like to be able to bring in more thought leaders to share their insights and experiences and help our area meet the energy, health, and environmental challenges we all face. As a non-profit organization, Clean Energy Action exists to move our community and state forward along the path to improved quality of life for all. We hope to do even more and better work in the future and will be best able to do so through the generous support of others.
