By Shannon Lukens.

 

Moffat County Board of County Commissioners have approved $3,000 dollars to support and sponsor the first Northwest Colorado Energy Summit. It’s scheduled for June 2 in Craig.

Former Moffat County Commissioner Ray Beck is helping organize the summit. He says the mission is to advocate, communicate, and educate about options for energy.

“Energy options… exactly right, like nuclear, like hydrogen, like biomass, like geothermal and all those things we have questions about and don’t have enough information to make an informed decision. So hopefully this community can put things like that out and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

 

Ray Beck is with a group called JOLT which is helping organize the Energy Summit. JOLT stands for Just Organizations Leading Transition.

“Our mission is to advocate, communicate, and educate. And when I say advocate, that’s advocate for diversity in our economy and also advocate for our communities as a whole. What we’d like to do is just be able to plant seeds. And if one of the seeds takes root over the course of the next three to four to five years, then mission accomplished. That’s what we would like to do is educate our community, our elected officials and the industry. And so it’s a pretty broad stroke if you will. We’re shooting for 150 people at the Quality Inn. And hopefully this will have a positive impact in not only our community but other coal-impacted communities.

 

The power plants and coal mines in Moffat County and in Colorado have been mandated to shut down in the next seven years.

The energy summit has also received funding from Tri-State Generation and Transmission, Trappers Mine, Montrose County Board of County Commissioners, Delta County Board of County Commissioners, and the Colorado Attorney General’s office.

Request letters for sponsorship support have been sent out to Xcel Energy, the office of Just Transition, Routt County Board of County Commissioners, and Garfield County Board of County Commissioners.