That frog was right — it’s not easy bein’ green. Boulder knows it and, apparently, so does the BBC, which did a story on Boulder’s efforts to reduce its pollution and poor energy habits — and while it’s very short, it’s not very flattering.

But for all the solar panels arrayed on the roof of the municipal building on the corner of Broadway and Canyon, the roar of traffic tells a different story.

The people of Boulder are just as wedded to their cars as they are anywhere else in America.

Read the rest at the BBC’s site.

Colorado native Stephen Katsaros wants his bulb to brighten up places without electricity. (Leah Millis, The Denver Post)

As soon as he saw the first molds of the bulb coming out of the factory, Katsaros, 37, quit the legal firm where he worked as a patent agent and devoted himself full-time to Nokero.

His plan is to target countries such as India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan, where hundreds of millions rely on expensive, carbon-spewing gas lamps but income is high enough to afford a $15 lamp. Demand is higher in places such as Ethiopia, but the population is too poor to afford the lamp, Katsaros says.

“This is not a charity,” he says. “We are using capitalism as a method to improve people’s lives.”

The Nokero made a few waves in the tech blogosphere when it was unveiled a little over a month ago. A big part of the pitch is helping people quit burning kerosene for light, according to a post by SmartPlanet’s Andrew Nusca:

Nokero says no kerosene means saved money that would be used on fuel — five percent of total income, aqccording to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — and that its light bulb “can pay for itself within months.”

ClimateSmart is in limbo.

Laura had written here that ClimateSmart was in trouble — and at the Camera that the ClimateSmart home loan program is indefinitely suspended (though the ClimateSmart commercial loan program is not). The trick is that it’s yet another loan and multiple entities have claims to that debt — and they all want to have the first claim to it. Not surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal does a far better job of explaining the financial side of the PACE/Fannie/Freddie entanglement than I do.

More recently, Grist caught up with a Longmont teacher who came this close to retrofitting her home, but ended up frustrated with ClimateSmart.

“I was looking forward to a warm winter,” she said.

That’s when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac threw the program into confusion by sending letters suggesting that mortgage lenders should steer clear of PACE, arguing that PACE liens could not take priority over mortgages. The government-chartered mortgage giants are concerned about losing out if homeowners with clean-energy assessments default on their loans.

Boulder County commissioners, along with Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) and others, urged Fannie and Freddie and their federal regulator to clarify their cryptic letters and resolve the issue. But last week, after having already delayed the program once while awaiting resolution, the county felt compelled to cancel the latest round of ClimateSmart funding.

“We had a couple hundred homeowners who were applying for $3 million in financing for projects who have essentially been hanging in limbo,” County Commissioner Will Toor said. “We initially hoped the issue would be quickly resolved. It hasn’t been. While we still believe that it will eventually be resolved, we couldn’t ask our homeowners and local green building contractors to just remain in limbo.”

Read more of Kayla Thomason’s story over at Grist.

Boulder Community Computers' Eric Jackson | Photo: Mark Leffingwell, Camera

Great idea (and they were the hosts of the most recent Green Drinks). Eric Jackson fired up Boulder Community Computers, a nonprofit that aims to get working computers into the hands of people who need them — and to help people earn said computers. From the Camera:

Jackson, a longtime computer hobbyist, set up Boulder Community Computers, a nonprofit on Pearl Street that accepts donations of old computers, then offers low-income people the opportunity to earn one. People who are working to earn machines learn basic computer skills and help refurbish the old computers.

“Our mission is to bridge the digital divide,” Jackson said. “For me, it’s not about computers, it’s about enhancing other parts of people’s lives.”

Boulder Community Computers also helps solve a second problem: the difficulty of disposing of e-waste, which is often dumped in developing countries where the heavy metals can contaminate local communities.

Somebody from Boulder Community Computers (maybe Jackson?) also hung around in the comments of that story, so check out the comments for even more information.

E-waste is really, really gnarly, and if you don’t know much about it, watch this thing 60 Minutes did on it.

An employee works on equipment at Abound Solar's Longmont production facility. Courtesy photo | Abound Solar

President Barack Obama has recently announced a federal loan guarantee to Abound Solar, a Loveland-based company that has a manufacturing facility in Longmont.

The company, which employs 360 people in Colorado and manufactures thin film solar panels, will nearly double its employee base in the state, Abound Solar spokesman Mark Chen said.

He said it’s not yet clear exactly how the new jobs will break down between Abound Solar’s Longmont production facility, its headquarters in Loveland and its research lab in Fort Collins.

But he said Longmont would most likely be the biggest beneficiary since the bulk of production is done in the city. The company will be able to add two production lines to the one it already has in Longmont as a result of the loan guarantee, Chen said.

The White House said the project marks the first time this new manufacturing technology for Cadmium-Telluride panels will be deployed commercially anywhere in the world.

It will produce photovoltaic panels using an innovative process in which thin films of Cadmium-Telluride are deposited onto the glass panels, according to the White House. The technology reduces overall product costs.

Abound Solar is a member of PV Cycle, an organization dedicated to creating “truly sustainable energy solutions that take into consideration the environmental impacts of all stages of the product life cycle, from raw material sourcing through end-of-life collection and recycling.”

Learn more about the Abound Solar expansion in Longmont and the federal loan guarantee at the Camera.

-Hannah Gentry

Solar cooker baking zucchini bread | flickr user davidsilver

A solar cooker is a  simple way to use and understand a resource Boulder has in abundance: sunlight.  Simple cookers require such basic household items as Elmer’s glue, cardboard, aluminum foil and a glass jar, and can be assembled in as little as two to three hours.

The Boulder company Willow Way, run by Zia Parker, offers a solar oven construction class taught by Jeff Graef.

“One thing that’s good about it is it’s a slow cooker,” Graef said. “You basically don’t have to watch it. You can throw in the food, go out and do some errands, come back and it will be cooked.”

“You can cook a pretty good variety of things, but things that take a long time to cook are more challenging,” he said. “The easiest things to cook are fruits and vegetables.

While a solar cooker might not be able to produce enough heat to cook everything on the dinner table, it could be a fun and energy efficient way to gain more understanding of the power of the sun.

Read more about how to make a solar cooker at the Camera.

-Mikaila Altenbern

Photo taken from Shelf Road north of Cañon City, Colorado | flickr user longhorndave

CANON CITY, Colo. (AP) — Keeping Fremont County’s administration building closed one day a week has saved more money than expected.

Last June the county switched the building’s operating hours to 10-hour work days, Monday through Thursday in a move to save an estimated $10,000 per year in utility costs.

County Manager George Sugars said a recent energy cost analysis found that the savings from closing the building for three days per week during the last 10 months of operation totaled $18,276. He says turning down heating and cooling systems from Thursday evenings until Monday mornings helped reduce costs.

Todd Young, owner of medical marijuana growing operation the Therapeutic Compassion Center, smokes a joint to help the pain of his back injuries | Daily Camera

Medical marijuana operations are sweeping Colorado. (If you live in our great Rocky Mountain state, I’m sure you’ve noticed).

Lots of folks are psyched. (Especially 20-something dudes with snowboard injuries.) But lots of towns aren’t. This spring, communities across Colorado have gone to great pains to figure out how to regulate these businesses. Mostly, they seem concerned about how close dispensaries are to schools, day cares and each other. And in some towns, dispensaries may be banned altogether in the near future, thanks to a new state law.

The Boulder City Council is concerned about little kids too, but in classic Boulder style, they’re also concerned about whether folks are growing their pot with energy from coal plants. (All those heat lamps can burn a heap of electricity.) So last night, when city council passed a new set of pot shop rules, this was among them: growing operations have to offset 100 percent of their electricity use with renewable energy!

Read more about last night’s decision to pass the rules here, or read more about the concept of requiring renewable energy here.

Scott Pardee, a technician for Bestway Insulation, finishes installing insulation in a crawl space beneath a home in Longmont on Thursday. Insulation projects are a popular improvement paid for with money from Boulder County's ClimateSmart Loan Program.

Boulder County has suspended its popular, voter-approved ClimateSmart Loan Program, which lets you borrow money from them (at relatively low interest rates) to make energy-efficient improvements to your home like adding solar panels or blowing in some more insulation.

There are, apparently, a couple of problems that came out last week. One is a set of new rules from the DOE that govern loans like ClimateSmart — though that one will  likely be no that big of deal. The second, which is more of a problem, is a letter from mortgage-buying giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The letter implies that the government-sponsored agencies won’t buy mortgages for houses that have ClimateSmart liens on them.

“Every program in the country — in Colorado the programs that are just getting set to launch in Eagle County — are going into neutral and saying, ‘We’ll continue developing programs,’ but nobody is going to issue any additional financing until there’s clarification of the letter,” Commissioner Will Toor told the Camera on Thursday.

“The timing here in Boulder County is very unfortunate because we had a round of residential loans that would be closing tomorrow and we were looking at a bond sale in a few weeks,” he said. “There are a bunch of property owners and a bunch of contractors who were hoping that this would move forward.”

Read more about the suspension at DailyCamera.com.