ENERGY
Our Perspective
The Forum believes that Colorado should pursue a balanced energy policy and exercise leadership in energy production, conservation, efficiency, and the development of alternative energy technologies. We believe that Coloradans should ensure access to ample, reliable, affordable, and healthy energy sources to heat their homes, power their businesses, and transport themselves and their products. We recognize that Colorado’s oil and gas sector will continue to contribute to these goals, even while renewable energy sources gain traction statewide and nationally. We are sensitive to the economic needs of some Colorado communities as Colorado transitions towards low/no emission energy sources. While safeguarding Colorado’s unparalleled natural environment and improving the health and safety of all Coloradans, we support energy policies that will empower our State and our citizens.
Our Work
The rapid rise of natural gas fracking technologies in the early 2000’s underpinned a boom for Colorado’s oil and gas sector and increased jurisdictional disputes between local governments and industry. The Forum is actively involved in understanding this extremely complex issue. We encourage each affected sector to acknowledge the needs and concerns of the other. After years of litigious controversy, in 2018 Colorado’s Supreme Court addressed how to balance negative environmental and human health impacts of drilling and fracking with the beneficial labor and economic contributions of Colorado’s energy sector. Its ruling and subsequent legislative action gave primacy to health and environmental concerns over extractive rights. Before the 2018 ruling, and since low-emission legislation was signed into law in 2019, the Forum has worked to broker understanding and collaboration between the oil and gas sector and local control, environmental, and health advocates.