As research centers go, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory may not be particularly large or well-known. But like two more familiar institutions in Golden, the Coors brewery and the Colorado School of Mines, it exerts a heady influence on a national and even international constituency.
With 1,100 scientists and other employees operating out of a cluster of buildings at the foot of South Table Mountain, off Interstate 70 at Denver West Boulevard, NREL serves as both a magnet for and a generator of scores of enterprises that aim to harness the power of wind, solar and bio-energy.
“We are here because of the presence of NREL, and that’s the only reason,” says Robb Walt, founder of Community Power, one of several allied firms in the Ken Caryl Business Center, a few miles south of the lab. “It’s a nexus of technical assistance and financial support.”
Besides Community Power, which makes modular bio-power systems, the NREL family includes such other Golden-area businesses as MV Systems, Industrial Solar and California-
based XsunX.
The lab, established by the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1970s, operates on a budget of about $200 million a year. Half is doled out in grants to researchers at Stanford, Yale and other universities across the country, the remainder is spent locally.
“Economically, it contributes tremendously to the area,” says Carol Ann Bowles, manager of the Golden Visitors Center, an arm of the chamber of commerce. “NREL is smaller than Mines and Coors, but its employees buy homes here, they shop here, they eat here.”
And they put down roots in the community, as demonstrated by a sign that identifies the visitors center at night. Installed by NREL, it is lit by electricity generated by a photovoltaic panel.
– Jack Cox
