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greenprint in the news
Reuteman: Green is the new black on corporate bottom lines
By: Rob Reuteman, Columnist
The Rocky Mountain News
August 5, 2006
It dawned on me this week as I was reading about Vail Resorts' decision to buy enough renewable energy to cover the electricity generated by all its ski areas, retail, hotels and headquarters. This is the year the concepts of green building, sustainability and alternative energy became firmly planted in the mainstream national consciousness.
Thanks mainly to the mounting cost of oil - but also to a spreading awareness of our relationship to this planet and its consequences - corporations and cities finally are embracing policies that once were the domain of tree-hugging dreamers.
Let's start with Vail. At a news conference Tuesday, new CEO Rob Katz was flanked by Gov. Bill Owens and U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, an unlikely set of bookends representing both sides of the political spectrum.
Said Udall: "Vail understands we're too dependent in this country on fossil fuels. We have to reduce our dependence on petroleum."
Said Owens: "We're going to see more companies following Vail. Slowly but surely, we're ushering in a new way of thinking."
The amount of wind energy credits Vail will purchase annually is the equivalent of taking 18,000 cars off the highway. Vail's shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange; as such, they don't have the leeway to make decisions that don't make impeccable business sense. "We view sustainability as integral to our company's future success," Katz said.
Vail's greening comes five months after Aspen Skiing Co.'s similar move. But Vail will buy about 152,000 megawatt- hours of wind power a year, while Aspen's credits amount to about 20,000 hours. Vail's move is dwarfed by Whole Foods, which agreed in January to buy nearly 500,000 megawatts of wind annually. And it's well worth noting that all three companies bought their energy credits from Boulder-based Renewable Choice Energy, a six-year-old company started by 28-year-old college dropout Quayle Hodek. Renewable Choice customers now include such Fortune 500 stalwarts as McDonald's, Sprint, Toyota, Honda, Disney and Johnson & Johnson. Hodek's renewable energy brokerage guarantees that producers from wind farms across the country will put an amount of wind-generated power onto the nation's grid that is equivalent to an agreed-upon amount of electricity.
Since President Jimmy Carter dedicated the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden in 1976, it's long been hoped that Colorado would play a key role in the switch to renewable energy. Thirty years later, we're seeing tangible results. Xcel Energy's Wind Source program allows its customers to pay a little extra each month to ensure that the power they use is matched by power produced by wind farms. But Xcel can't build the farms fast enough, and there's a waiting list.
And when I say that greening has finally taken hold in mainstream America, I'm talking about things like Al Gore's global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, retaining its place in the top 20 box office hits for more than 10 weeks. I'm talking about Toyota selling so many hybrid Priuses - 60,000 by May - that the special tax credit designed to encourage its sales shrinks in September from $3,150 to $1,575. The Prius has been a victim of its own success; it's now so common on our streets that heads no longer swivel at the sight of one. General Motors opened its new assembly plant outside Lansing, Mich., on Thursday, bragging that the green facility will cost $1 million less in energy a year than its typical plant. It collects rainwater from the roof to flush the toilets. Ford's new Dearborn, Mich., truck assembly plant has a 10-acre "living roof" of planted perennial groundcover that helps heat and cool the plant.
Back in Denver, the centerpiece of Mayor John Hickenlooper's annual State of the City speech on July 12 was the unveiling of Greenprint Denver, a litany of environmentally friendly new policies. He pledged to triple Denver's tree canopy from 6 percent to 18 percent by planting a million new trees over the next 20 years. He pledged to build solar and methane power plants capable of powering and heating more than 2,500 homes by 2007. A pledge to replace the city's light-duty vehicles with hybrids or high-efficiency vehicles. Another pledge to complete the transition of the city's diesel vehicles to biodiesel. All new city buildings will meet EPA Energy Star guidelines.
"With rising energy costs, these are fiscally responsible efforts," Hickenlooper said, "regardless of one's stance on climate change."
Why this year? With oil at $70 a barrel, corporations and cities now can make a business case for green policies that once were luxuries they couldn't afford.
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