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Recent Articles from Allen Best
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
Newsstands are going the way of the dinosaur
Very few newsstands remain in Colorado. Nearly all are victims of a digital transformation in which all information is supposed to be free. It’s a terrible mantra for merchants of the printed word.
Addition by Extraction
“Jobs Matter,” the red-and-white yard signs declared against Proposition 112, the proposal to push back drilling 2,500 feet from homes, businesses and waterways rejected by Colorado voters in November.
Cattle Call on the Eastern Plains
To understand the business model of the Flying Diamond Ranch near Kit Carson, on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, it’s useful to revisit the hunting expedition there in 1872 by the third son of the Russian czar.
Staying Power: Why They're Still Drilling for Natural Gas
Coal companies angrily resisted the switch. The Colorado Mining Association predicted "dramatically higher electricity rates." No, not really, responded the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. It said this was the cheapest way to improve Colorado's air quality.
Colorado groups pitch plans for Elon Musk’s hyperloop
When Musk-spawned company Hyperloop One sponsored an international competition that drew 2,600 entries, the list of 35 semifinalists included three from Colorado.
Tiny houses: Real estate’s next great wave?
Tiny houses have been showing up from mountain towns to Front Range cities, even out on the Eastern Plains.
Aspen Skiing to buy 34 more tiny houses
In theory, the new units will accommodate an additional 102 seasonal workers. They will cost about $100,000 each, or about the same as the first units.
Colorado's supporting role on the global business stage
Beef is big, but think also of Colorado’s craft breweries. You can, at a certain pub in London, choose from several Colorado beers. With international tourism, we import visitors to Aspen, Breckenridge and other resorts, but export experiences, picking up money along the way.
