BOULDER, Colo. – Last night, the Boulder City Council approved a measure to transition to 100 percent clean, renewable electricity by 2030. The Council considered the move as a major step toward reaching the city's longer-term goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050.

Sarah Huntley, the city's deputy director of communications, said Boulder is taking conservation efforts, which typically ask people to use less energy, in a different direction.

"What we're trying to do is shift to renewable and clean electricity, away from fossil fuels that have harmful greenhouse gas emissions and toward cleaner renewable sources that we actually could use in abundance, if we have been able to make this transformation," she explained.

Like many cities, 99 percent of Boulder's emissions currently come from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat and transportation. The City Council's move includes a two-year planning window to outline how Boulder can reach its goals, including transitioning to a city-owned utility, increasing energy efficiency and boosting renewable production locally.

Colorado got a failing grade for air quality on the most recent report card from the American Lung Association.

While cities are some of the biggest sources of air pollution, Hillary Larson, communications coordinator for the Colorado Sierra Club, said they're also uniquely positioned to make improvements. She said Boulder's move could energize campaigns already underway to convince Denver, Fort Collins and Pueblo to make similar commitments.

"When cities like Boulder commit to generate 100 percent of their electricity from clean, renewable sources, we know that that is a huge step forward in protecting our health, protecting our air and water, and protecting our planet," Larson said.

Boulder is one of 20 U.S. cities that has officially committed to getting all electricity from renewables, including Aspen, Colo., which reached its goal last year with a combination of hydro-power, wind and increased efficiencies. The State of Hawaii is set to be powered exclusively by clean sources by 2040.



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The 2022 Olympic Games are scheduled to open in Beijing later this week, but new research found unless world leaders make significant progress toward mitigating climate change, they could be the last Winter Games.

The report showed in most parts of the world, including Colorado and the American West, winter-sports venues said the natural snowfalls they depend on to operate are no longer reliable. The Beijing Games will be the first ever produced with 100% artificial snow.

Madeline Orr, founder of Sports Ecology Group, said the warming climate presents a major obstacle to winter sports.

"What we're starting to see is, snow's going away," Orr explained. "It's going to be a challenge moving forward to identify those places where you're going to have a snow-sure condition to host an event, without relying extensively on artificial snow."

The report warned shifting climate patterns in Colorado and around the world are producing an ever-shrinking snowpack, which has decreased by a total of 35 inches since the 1970s.

While man-made snow can be used in the short run, Orr argued it is not sustainable, because it takes massive amounts of energy and water to produce.

"Artificial snow has been a stopgap solution to kind of bridge those gaps, but it's not going to solve everything," Orr contended. "If you don't have enough snow, you can produce it using artificial snow guns. But if you blow that snow out of the gun, and it hits the ground, and it's too hot for it to stay on the ground, there's nothing really you can do about that."

The lack of snow could also spell economic disaster for those who count on the skiing industry for tax revenue and jobs.

Chris Davenport, a professional skier and climate activist from Aspen, agreed climate change is making winter sports a risky business.

"It's really difficult to plan for your ski resort business or your apparel business, or anyone who depends on the winter, if you really have no idea if there's going to be snow or not," Davenport acknowledged. "It's risky for sponsors, for nations, for teams and athletes, if they just don't know what's going to happen."

The next Winter Olympics are scheduled for 2026 in Milan and Cortina, Italy.

A bill to require big corporations to be transparent about their own carbon footprint needs a vote in the California Senate by the legislative deadline on Monday, or it will die.

Senate Bill 260 would require U.S.-based corporations that do business in California and make more than $1 billion a year in revenue to disclose their full greenhouse-gas emissions to the state.

Melissa Romero, legislative affairs manager at California Environmental Voters, said the data is necessary to fight global warming "because we can't really have a serious conversation about reducing carbon emissions without addressing the corporate sector's contributions to pollution - when just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global industrial emissions."

Senate Bill 260 has long lists of supporters and opponents. The bill doesn't include details of how it would be enforced, and opponents say it would increase the costs for companies that have to comply.

The bill also would require the California Air Resources Board to produce a report that estimates how much these companies would have to reduce their emissions in order to avoid overall global temperature increases over 1.5 degrees Celsius. That's considered the limit to avoid climate catastrophe.

Romero noted that companies would have to release data not only on their energy usage, but about their carbon footprint, up and down the supply chain.

"That is really where the biggest information gap exists," she said, "and also, where a lot of the emissions from large corporations are coming from."

Critics of the bill claim it would discourage big companies from doing business with smaller ones that are unable to meet the greenhouse-gas reporting requirements. California has set a goal to lower greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.

A new report analyzes the economic effects of a changing climate on Idaho. It's the first to look at state-specific circumstances.

Katherine Himes is director of the University of Idaho's James A. and Louise McClure Center for Public Policy Research, which compiled the research. Himes said the goal was to create a nonpartisan, evidence-based resource for industries and policymakers.

"The big key here is those changes - temperature, precipitation and snowpack," said Himes, "because that then influences what happens to agriculture, energy, forests, human health, infrastructure, rangelands, recreation and tourism."

On the current climate-warming trajectory, increasing temperature, changing patterns of precipitation across the state and lower snowpack are expected in the coming decades for Idaho.

An advisory board for the report included businesses, nonprofits and government officials, including Native American tribal leaders.

Kelly Olson is a retired administrator for the Idaho Barley Commission. She said the report allows sectors of the economy such as agriculture to prepare for the future.

"It's a call to arms, I think," said Olson, "as a state to look at that changing water situation and what we can do about that, which we just can't turn on a spigot and change the flow of water overnight."

Himes said it's important that this resource is accessible. She said there's technical information but it also includes one-page summaries with high-level looks at the data.

"There are ways to visualize the information, a lot of tools and resources on the website as well," said Himes. "We wanted it to be as interactive as possible so that policymakers could use it, decision makers could use it, and so forth."