WASHINGTON — Funding for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado needs to be increased if the country is serious about reducing its dependence on foreign oil, Gov. Bill Ritter said this morning.
In town for a meeting of the National Governors Association, Ritter made the remarks before he and other governors headed to the White House to meet with Bush.
Ritter said he plans to ask President Bush to restore funding for the lab in Golden.
“I really do want to talk to him about renewable energy & how important it is to be research driven,” said Ritter, a Democrat.
Funding for NREL in the president’s fiscal year 2008 budget is down 3 percent from the fiscal year 2007 budget. That budget was never passed into law, however. Funding for NREL in the 2007 budget is up slightly from the fiscal year 2006 budget.
Ritter said he also wants to ask about funding for the State Children’s’ Health Insurance Program, and to allow states more flexibility to handle the mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind Program, which requires students to meet certain educational standards.
He said he’s also concerned about the National Guard units in Iraq, and how those units are returning without the equipment they used in the war.
Asked how much he can realistically expect from Bush, Ritter said “the expression of concern is itself a help to us.”
Ritter spoke this morning at a conference on energy. He talked about the state’s push to increase renewable energy supplies. Colorado’s legislature is considering requiring the state to use 20 percent renewable energies by 2020.
States must act, he said, because the federal government has failed to do so. There’s an important role for the federal government however, Ritter said, such as tax credits for companies investing in production of biofuels, or fuels made from plants. The companies making long-term investments in that area need to know they have those credits for more than just one year, Ritter said.
Ritter’s speech included the role organized labor and private industry will play in the push for renewable energy sources. Three days after he took office, Ritter said, British Petroleum announced a plan to develop a wind farm in eastern Colorado.
That plan already was in the works before he took office, he said, but added, “leadership matters. How we think about these things in government does really help us inspire people in the private sector.”
Asked how the state plans to catch up to states like California that already are far ahead of Colorado, Ritter said he’ll push to make sure the Public Utilities commission understands its role.
“We are paying attention to the issue,” Ritter said, in terms of cabinet appointments.
“You’ll see the production of wind take off, the production of solar take off,” the governor said.
