Mortgage-Monster.com/Grand-Junction
Club 20 endorses Clean Coal and Natural Gas
Club 20 is a lobbying and promotional organization representing 22 counties in
western Colorado, the Western Slope if you will. The “club” is conducting its fall
meeting, including several debates today at Two Rivers Convention Center in
Grand Junction, Colorado.
How to balance the economic development of two important sources of energy to
the entire country? We have abundant coal resources in western Colorado. And
it burns cleaner than anything in the more well-known eastern part of the U. S.
We also have abundant, and even more efficient natural gas resources. Natural
Gas of course, is well known as more efficient than gasoline as a transportation
fuel.
The Club 20 board of directors unanimously called for the state to acknowledge
the value of coal to the state’s economy from the mines on the Western Slope to
the coal-burning electrical utilities on Colorado’s Front Range.
The resolution is in direct response to HB 1365, approved by the Colorado
Legislature this year, which was aimed at encouraging greater use of natural gas
by Colorado utilities to improve air quality and avoid federal sanctions.
Avoiding federal sanctions is the ‘elephant in the room’ phrase here. I do believe
that no one in Colorado wants to pit the local coal mining economy
against the potential local natural gas economy. But when the rest of the country
is on a ‘green streak,’ heads are gonna roll.
The board of directors of Club 20 didn’t stop at boosting Western coal. It also
urged more use of compressed and liquefied natural gas as a transportation fuel
and called for additional development of alternative energy resources, such as
solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric power in western Colorado.
Coal-fired plants in Moffat and Routt counties have been retrofitted to burn coal
more cleanly, Club 20 noted.
Candidates for the 3rd Congressional District, Colorado governor and the U.S.
Senate will debate at 6, 7 and 8 p.m., resp