A New Energy Future Will Protect Colorado’s Environment
The time has come for Colorado to put its technological expertise and natural advantages to work to create a new energy future. By investing in renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and biofuels and energy efficiency measures we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil, reinvigorate our economy, create good new jobs, protect consumers, and safeguard our environment.

To protect our environment Colorado needs to build a New Energy Future.

• Colorado electricity generation creates more than 35.6 million metric tons of global warming pollution, 56,451 tons of SO2, and 60,934 tons of NOx each year.
• Fossil fuel burning power plants use 20 billion gallons of Colorado’s limited water resource annually—this is as much water as Aurora uses per year.
• Pressure from soaring gas prices is driving oil and gas companies to drill in pristine lands such as Colorado’s roadless forests and treasured Colorado landscapes such as the Roan Plateau.

Fortunately, continuing down this path is not the only alternative.

Colorado is ready for a New Energy future

• Colorado is on track to get 10% of its electricity from renewables by the end of 2008. We have the potential to generate 11.5 times current energy use from wind power.

• Colorado is home to an emerging biofuel industry. Currently, ethanol accounts for roughly 5% of our gasoline use. New plants with the capacity to produce hundreds of millions more gallons are under construction.
• Colorado’s utilities have launched energy efficiency programs to help consumers use energy more efficiently and save millions each year.
• Colorado is already a leader in renewable energy research and innovation. We are home to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and several leading energy research universities including CU-Boulder, CSU, and the Colorado School of Mines.

The Plan for a New Energy Future will dramatically reduce global warming and air pollution in Colorado.

• Our plan will cut global warming pollution by nearly 12 million metric tons each year. Together the cuts equal 1/3 of current CO2 emissions from electrical generation in Colorado. It will also reduce nitrogen oxide pollution—a major smog forming pollutant— by nearly a third, and sulfur dioxide—which aggravates asthma and other respiratory conditions and mixes with precipitation to create acid rain—by more than a third.

The Plan for a New Energy Future will conserve Colorado’s scarce water resources.

• Our plan will save Colorado just over 6 billion gallons of water in 2015 by reducing our dependence on thirsty fossil fuel power plants. Over the next three years, our Plan for a New Energy Future will save more than 53,000 acre-feet of water, enough to fill the four reservoirs serving the Denver-Metro area to the brim.

The Plan for a New Energy Future may ease pressure to drill for oil and gas in Colorado’s treasured public lands.

• Our plan will save approximately 41.4 billion cubic ft of natural gas annually in 2015, enough gas to heat every home in Denver for over two years.