Susan Innis is the Colorado Carbon Fund program manager for the Colorado Governor’s Energy Office (GEO). Prior to joining GEO in 2007, Innis spent eight years as an energy policy advisor and green-power marketing director at Western Resource Advocates, a regional conservation law and policy center. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Colorado at Denver, studied energy planning and sustainable development at the University of Oslo, and earned a bachelor’s of science degree in biology from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

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Coloradans have long had a strong interest in supporting clean-energy projects
in their own communities. For the past decade, most of the state’s electric
utilities have offered voluntary green-pricing programs, whereby folks
can opt to pay a bit more on their power bill to support new wind farms.
Those programs were instrumental in helping to jumpstart the first few
renewable-energy projects in the state. They were successful in part because
folks could drive an hour outside the Denver metro area and see some of the
country’s first large wind farms. Citizens felt a strong and direct connection
in helping to make those new projects happen.

In 2004, Colorado voters increased support for renewable energy by
passing the first statewide referendum on renewable energy. Amendment
37 required utilities to obtain 10 percent of their energy mix from renewable
sources like solar and wind. Due to popular support, the state legislature
later expanded that policy, and now the state’s largest utilities will get
20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020. The voluntary
green-pricing programs and progressive state renewable-energy policies
have led to the installation of more than 1,000 megawatts of wind energy
and thousands of rooftop solar panels.

Over the past few years, some consumers have started to question whether
paying more on your utility bill can really help drive renewable-energy
installations beyond what would be happening anyway in response to state
policy mandates. There is a strong interest among some businesses—Aspen
Skiing Company, for example—to drive development and innovation even
further. Aspen Skiing Company and others have expressed a strong interest
in directly helping to fund brand-new, local projects. They want to see
that their investment in renewable energy directly leads to new projects
being developed and they prefer to see those projects developed as locally
as possible. Through the Colorado Carbon Fund, we now have a product
that responds to this market demand to link a voluntary purchase with a
brand-new, local greenhouse gas– mitigation project. While carbon offsets
are rather intangible, to the extent we can help make the direct link between
a company’s donation and a new project, the more we can build credibility.
There are a number of carbon-offset programs that are run by nonprofits
and for-profit companies. Many of them are focused on developing projects
overseas, which is terrific for helping the developing world move ahead with
innovative technologies. However, here in Colorado, many folks want to
have a more direct role in solving the climate-change problem. Since our
reliance on fossil fuels has helped create the problem, it makes sense to try
to change the way we do things locally.

The Governor’s Energy Office hopes that the Colorado Carbon Fund will
build capacity within the state to develop greenhouse gas–mitigation projects
and monetize the reductions to participate in national and international carbon
markets. With President Barack Obama’s administration’s commitment to
make the United States an international leader in tackling climate change, the
Colorado Carbon Fund can serve as a model for developing expertise among
local businesses and agencies in participating in the international market.