Under a new bill to be put before the Colorado House on Feb. 23, Colorado’s Office of Economic Development (OED) would be required to institute a study of the likely benefits of distributed generation from renewable energy sources like solar.

colorado clean energy bill 1228

Introduced by State Senator Gail Schwartz (D-Dist. 5) and Representatives Edward Vigil (D- Dist. 62) and Tom Massey (R-Dist. 60), the bill, officially known as HB 11-1228, would commission a study by an independent entity to be paid not by more taxes but by private donations from interested parties, and by gifts and grants.

I know a couple of Colorado solar companies that would get behind this study, especially since solar has become a “big ticket” item in the past few years, in spite of entities like Xcel Energy abruptly pulling the plug on solar rebates.

What is distributed generation? Simply put, it’s the opposite of centralized generation of electrical energy, in which one or more public utilities or rural electric cooperatives operate power plants under a single regional operational entity. In the East, this is PJM; in parts of the West, including Colorado, it is West Connect.

Distributed generation allows for much smaller power production units, like residential solar energy arrays, to feed power into the grid. This “islanding” of power supplies is good for the whole grid, even without backup generation like gas peaking plants, as a recent study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows. In fact, the larger the geographic area from which renewable sources are delivered, the less unpredictability the regional grid will suffer.

The real purpose behind Colorado’s proposed study is not saving the grid, of course, but providing jobs and driving economic development, which residential solar and small-scale renewable projects seem perfectly capable of doing (as opposed to utility-scale projects).

Legislators are clearly aiming for a feed-in tariff-style (FiT-style) stimulus to deliver jobs and money around the state, but FiTs are also known for generating massive renewable energy capacity increases, at least based on experiences in Spain and Germany.

But should the name be changed, to CLEAN (Clean Local Energy Accessible Now), to offset the perception that FiTs drive up electricity prices? While legislators squabble, and utility executives cower at the idea of FiTs under any name, the people of Colorado—and the nation—are quietly going about creating the green energy revolution we’ve all been hoping for.

Photo Credit: Larry Johnson via Flickr CC