The NEXTera Energy wind farm has 250 wind turbines that dot the landscape north of Limon. Wind generation provides a secondary benefit to rural communities, in that it saves about 226 gallons of water per person in the U.S. each year, according to the American Wind Energy Association. (Denver Post file)
Re: How wind benefits rural Colorado, April 11 letter to the editor.
An important point that Lincoln County Commissioner Doug Stone makes in his letter to the editor is that oil and gas development is cyclical — quite boom and bust — whereas wind power and other renewable sources are quite economically stable. The energy-rich Colorado economy would greatly benefit if it could rely on more renewable energy production rather than the quite unstable oil and gas production.
This can be done using market forces by applying a revenue-neutral fee on CO2 emissions of fossil fuels. Such a fee would be applied at extraction of fossil fuels. The revenue from this fee would be return to the economy through any number of ways, including a per-capita dividend or reduction of various taxes.
This would benefit Coloradans in two ways — our economy because it would rely on more stable energy sources and our environment by reducing the pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
Douglas M. Alde, Denver
This letter was published in the April 21 edition.
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