Plans for Colorado's new-energy economy get tangled in "green tape"

Politicians have been quick to pledge increasing use of clean energy and set ambitious production goals for solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and nuclear. Colorado lawmakers last spring upped the state's goal for renewable energy to 30 percent by 2020. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff promises 50 percent by 2030. But when land managers and investors float plans for building wind farms or tapping geothermal energy or stringing new transmission lines or processing uranium for nuclear power, the potential impacts to neighbors stir passionate resistance, the regulatory maze lengthens, lawsuits stack up and the lofty talk of a brave new economy falls flat. Karen Alderman Harbert, president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy, says the layers of federal, state and local "green tape" hindering new energy projects are "a plague on our economy and our energy security and our environment." Harbert recently surveyed all the U.S. energy projects seeking licensing and siting approval and found 380 stalled or canceled "as a result of the abuse of the environmental permitting process." More than 40 percent of those are renewable-energy projects...more