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Recent Articles from Allen Best
Three Towns in The Four Corners — A Cultural Insight Into Colorado’s Border Communities
Using wheelbarrows to transport the merchandise, Maria’s Bookshop moved into its current location in an old building in downtown Durango in 1992. Last year, it sold 100,000 volumes, many of […]
All-Electric Houses On the Rise — Colorado Homebuilders Embrace Alternatives to Natural Gas
Pure Zero Construction has begun building houses in Pueblo with components that, although still rare in Colorado, may become commonplace during the next few years. Mainly, all-electric houses. Natural gas […]
Water Pipeline Back in Play? — The Future of Colorado’s Water Distribution
From Aaron Million’s 12th-floor office in downtown Fort Collins, you can see Wyoming in the distance. Depending upon the route, it can be 3,000 feet uphill. The downhill side of […]
New law raises the roof on solar
SB21-261 removes the former limit on total capacity of roof-top solar. The limit, now gone, was 120% of the power consumed by occupants of that building. More important, the bill authorized a new concept called virtual net-metering to customers of Xcel Energy and Black Hills Energy. This will allow a company to do business in one location and own solar panels elsewhere.
I-70 takes growing toll on Western Slope
First came the national truck and driver shortage. Then Glenwood Canyon was closed for about three weeks. The experience re-ignited conversation about improving a narrow, winding alternative to Glenwood Canyon.
Denver’s National Western Center aims for year-round impact
The ambitious goal at the 250-acre National Western Center is to create “the global destination for agricultural heritage and innovation.” That’s on a year-round basis, not just 16 days in January. And food, not just livestock. Think also of concerts and festivals, farmers’ markets and sporting events, classrooms and laboratories. The City of Denver is the master developer.
Steel deal showcases Pueblo’s solar prowess
The mill will produce the 200-meter ribbons of rail preferred by railroads. That decision wasn’t a given. Other states, especially those with abundant low-priced hydroelectricity, made a hard run. How Pueblo won says much about the evolving nature of the economy of Pueblo and that of Colorado. Prominent is the solar farm, the largest east of the Rocky Mountains when the deal was announced. It wi[...]
Carbon fiber stokes hope in dwindling coal industry
Carbon fiber, strong and light, has been around since the 1970s. Already carbon fiber is used in high-end cars and very substantially in the Boeing 847, but it is expensive and made from petroleum. Making it from coal could bring the cost down – but there is that engineering to be done.
Colorado’s oil industry faces rocky road to recovery
This year has brought challenges aplenty to the Colorado oil industry, which accounts for almost 4% of U.S. total crude oil production and also holds about 5% of the nation's economically recoverable crude oil prices.
Clean energy when the sun goes down and the wind isn’t blowing
Atlanta-based Emrgy recently opened a sales office in Boulder and hopes for much more work in Western states and provinces. Using satellite technology, Emrgy has mapped and evaluated 15,000 miles of irrigation canals in 10 states, starting in California and moving east.
Kate Greenberg ushers in a new age of Colorado agriculture
Greenberg is the first-ever female commissioner for Colorado, and at 32, probably the youngest. She differs in every obvious way from her recent predecessors, who were men of a certain age named Don (Ament and Brown) and John (Salazar and Stulp), all Colorado natives who were farmers or ranchers themselves.
Reinventing a Blue-Collar Economy Around Green Energy
The city is moving to re-brand itself as the renewable energy hub of not just Colorado, but more grandly yet, the southwestern United States, as big money slides into the effort to decarbonize the economy
