Susan Osborne Explains Why Boulder Opted For A Clean Energy Takeover

May 21st, 2013 by John Farrell

The process started in 2003 when Boulder resumed studying the option to create a municipal utility. With a climate-action plan already in place, and a local carbon tax already financing conservation and clean energy, the once nascent issue became a serious option in Boulder. Creating a municipal utility would allow for more control over the grid, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and an increase in clean energy production. As former Boulder mayor Susan Osborne described, Boulder didn’t set out to “blaze a trail” for local ownership of its electric utility, but for a growing number of cities across America considering municipalization, there’s a lot to learn from their remarkable story.

Local Energy Rules Podcast with Susan Osborne: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Unfortunately, Susan said, the smart grid pilot came in over budget and underwhelming for the city’s residents. Despite further efforts to negotiate with Xcel to secure a lower carbon energy future, the city’s franchise contract with Xcel wasn’t renewed, and citizens replaced the lost revenue with an electricity tax to give the city time to study alternatives. Municipalization was back on the table.

By 2011, it became clear that Xcel wasn’t willing to give the city what it wanted (a last-ditch offer was stymied when Xcel insisted that the status quo also be placed on the ballot). The city put municipalization on the ballot in 2011 and the campaign began. Xcel spent over $1 million dollars in a failed attempt to kill the ballot initiative, outspending local energy advocates 10-to-1. In the end, Boulder citizens voted in November 2011 to part ways with Xcel, voting to form a municipal electric utility and to tax themselves to fund the investigation of whether this new utility could meet ambitious clean energy targets.

Although Susan has since retired from the city council, the effort continues, with city officials still talking to Xcel about options. But the release of a recent report on municipalization suggests that the city can significantly increase renewable energy, reduce emissions, lower costs, and improve reliability. In other words, there seems little reason to settle for the status quo.

Want to hear more from Susan Osborne? Check out this video of her talking to Minneapolis citizens about Boulder’s efforts for clean, local energy.

This is the 5th edition of Local Energy Rules, a new ILSR podcast that is published twice monthly, on 1st and 3rd Thursday. In this podcast series, ILSR Senior Researcher John Farrell talks with people putting together great community renewable energy projects and examining how energy policies help or hurt the development of clean, local power.

Click to subscribe to the podcast: iTunes or RSS/XML, sign up for new podcast notifications and weekly email updates from ILSR’s energy program!

Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.

Tags: boulder, Colorado, Electricity, local, municipal, Renewable Energy, utility

About the Author

John Farrell directs the Democratic Energy program at ILSR and he focuses on energy policy developments that best expand the benefits of local ownership and dispersed generation of renewable energy. His seminal paper, Democratizing the Electricity System, describes how to blast the roadblocks to distributed renewable energy generation, and how such small-scale renewable energy projects are the key to the biggest strides in renewable energy development. Farrell also authored the landmark report Energy Self-Reliant States, which serves as the definitive energy atlas for the United States, detailing the state-by-state renewable electricity generation potential. Farrell regularly provides discussion and analysis of distributed renewable energy policy on his blog, Energy Self-Reliant States (energyselfreliantstates.org), and articles are regularly syndicated on Grist and Renewable Energy World. John Farrell can also be found on Twitter @johnffarrell, or at jfarrell@ilsr.org.