Energy and climate professionals, Wiley Barbour, Ben Vitale and Alden Hathaway will discuss the different options available for the City of Boulder to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Solar thermal energy is a cost-effective, one of the most efficient forms of renewable energy available an efficient way to heat and cool buildings. According to NREL researchers, Colorado’s sunshine, climate, and heating requirements make solar thermal technologies perform better in Colorado than in any other state in the U.S. Also, the solar thermal industry has strong economic and job creation advantages: local labor comprises two-thirds of total system costs related to solar thermal installation.

CAMU is a non-profit organization that provides legislative representation, training and information to the 29 cities and towns of Colorado that own and operate their own electric systems. The primary mission of CAMU is to represent the interests of municipal electric systems at the Colorado State Legislature in a nonpartisan manner. CAMU believes that the needs of Colorado’s municipal electric systems are best met at the local level. To that end, CAMU works to urge our state and federal elected officials to respect the sanctity of local control in Colorado. The CAMU panel will focus on legislative and legal considerations that municipalized communities face and how CAMU provides assistance.

The Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska (MEAN) is the wholesale electricity supply organization of NMPP Energy (Nebraska Municipal Power Pool). Created in 1981, MEAN provides power supply, transmission and related services to more than 60 communities, one public power district and one joint-action agency in four states: Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming.

A Sustainable Municipal Utility is an energy utility structure that: seeks to achieve sustainability and reliability in meeting community energy needs, prefers energy efficiency and demand-side management to increased energy sales, and promotes renewable energy before fossil fuels. It must be smart, not inflexible. Baird Brown and Chris Berendt, lawyers with Drinker, Biddle, and Reath, LLP, will discuss forming, operating, and financing a municipal sustainability utility including issues to be managed and opportunities generated.

A standard concern related to community municipalization is that the city won’t be able to effectively run the system. Never mind that hundreds of municipal utilities around the country ranging in size from Lyons, Colorado to Los Angeles, California keep the lights on day after day. One of the ways (but not the only way) that municipal utilities operate is to hire outside firms with expertise to run the distribution system. Dennis Eastman is the CEO of ENCO–a company that runs distribution systems for several electric entities. Before that he ran the distribution system for Southern California Edison which served over 11 million people. While there would be a number of options for how a Boulder municipal utility might run its distribution system, Mr. Eastman will describe how this is done presently in power-providing entities both large and small–both private and public.