The company, H3X, was founded by a team of engineers and has grown since its start in 2020 to 33 employees.

“We’re aiming to get to 45 to 50 by end of the year,” said Jason Sylvestre, co-founder and CEO.

The startup’s mission, Sylvestre said, is to help decarbonize the aviation, aerospace, marine, defense and heavy-industry sectors by designing and producing high-density, lightweight electric motors. He said H3X has won about $5 million worth of contracts with NASA and the U.S. Air Force.

In August, H3X announced $20 million in Series A fundraising. The round was led by Infinite Capital, with participation from Hanwha Asset Management, Cubit Capital, Origin Ventures, Industrious Ventures and Venn10 Capital. Other investors included Lockheed Martin Ventures, Metaplanet, Liquid 2 Ventures and TechNexus.

“It’s super exciting. We’ve been looking forward to this day for a while,” Sylvestre said. “The next six months are going to be pretty insane. We’ve got some very large contracts in the pipeline.”

Sylvestre, Max Liben, chief technology officer, and Eric Maciolek, president, formed the company in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were working remotely and living in three different states: Minnesota, California and Alabama.

After a round of fundraising, the three decided it was time to move into a building and start testing the hardware. They have a 17,000-square-foot facility in Louisville.

“We looked at a lot of different cities. Denver just had the right mix of everything we were looking for, with a really strong aerospace and defense ecosystem and an emerging startup scene,” Sylvestre said. “We also wanted our headquarters in a place where we wanted to live and that had a very high quality of life and would be easy to recruit people to move to. We need pretty specialized talent.”

H3X makes compact, lightweight electric motors ranging in power from 30 kilowatts to 30 megawatts. “We can power everything from small drones to large ships and airplanes,” Sylvestre said.

The company’s long-term mission is to advance the technology to electrify aviation. Sylvestre said the company’s current focus is on defense but it also has customers in the aerospace and marine industries.

“We’re pretty well into the commercialization process. We shipped our first products to customers last year,” Sylvestre said

The company is converting the contracts into multi-year orders, he added.

Nathan Doctor, founder and managing partner at Infinite Capital, said in a statement that over the past three years working with H3X, he has seen “a phenomenal display of rapid innovation” from the team.

“Bringing technical advancements to market this fast is rare, as they have already commercialized a series of market-leading electric motors,” Doctor said.

H3X is focused on scaling innovative technologies that Lockheed Martin Ventures believes could provide its customers with effective solutions for “electrifying legacy, multi-domain systems,” said Chris Moran, vice president and general manager of the investment company.

Sylvestre said the company’s motors can be used with batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or hydropower plants and can serve as generators without any changes required.

“The power density of our products is about 2 to 3 times higher over anything else that exists on the market,” Sylvestre said.

That means the motor will be roughly three times lighter than the next-best motor, he added. With aviation, one approach might be a hybrid system that reduces the weight of a battery pack. Sylvestre said H3X has some aviation customers who are looking to put electric-powered planes into service in 2028.

“One is working on a 19-seat aircraft and another is working on a 30-seat aircraft,” Sylvestre said. “Within five years, I think you’ll definitely see some aircraft that are operating using electric propulsion. It’s a lot closer than people realize.”

The company’s long-term focus is on aviation because the industry contributes to greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change and because it’s one of the most difficult industries to decarbonize.

In 2022, aviation accounted for about 2% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. In recent decades, air travel has grown faster than rail, road or shipping, the IEA said.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, said the demand for air travel is expected to rise by an average of 4.3% per year over the next 20 years.

“In terms of impact, aviation is the largest industry that our technology will impact just in terms of decarbonization,” Sylvestre said.

While the phenomenon sounds straight out of a cartoon, it’s actually more common than you’d think, experts said. It’s a big enough problem that electric utility companies brainstorm efforts to mitigate bird electrocution, said Taylor Barnes, a Fort Collins-based biologist and geographic information systems specialist who co-authored a 2022 study entitled “Wildland Fires Ignited by Avian Electrocutions.”

Researchers found no coordinated records or data illustrating how frequently electrocuted birds dropping off power lines spark wildfires, so they sifted through Google searches of avian-induced fires in the United States from 2014 to 2018 and found 44 reported cases.

California had the highest number of incidents at 15. Colorado had two in 2016 — one in Littleton and one in Berthoud, the study found.

However, in July and August of this year, Colorado’s Front Range has been the scene of at least three reported bird combustions resulting in wildfires.

Investigators determined the flaming carcass of an incinerated bird sparked a July 13 brush fire in Arapahoe County that burned more than 1,100 acres and destroyed property southeast of Byers.

On July 31, the West Metro Fire District responded to a small brush fire in Jefferson County near Morrison after a bird was electrocuted by overhead power lines, caught on fire and fell to the ground, igniting the grass and brush below, the fire district said.

And on Tuesday, firefighters from West Metro and South Metro Fire Rescue responded to a 35-acre brush fire burning near a Denver Water treatment plant and Roxborough Park in Douglas County. Officials said the cause appeared to be a bird that hit a power line and fell to the ground, catching the grass on fire.

No humans were injured in these brush fires, and they were all contained.

“We’re getting more grassland or wildland fires from birds than we normally do,” said Mark Jurgemeyer, interim chief operating officer of CORE Electric Cooperative, which services more than 375,000 Coloradans with electricity.

CORE, which serves areas in Adams, Elbert and Douglas counties, was the provider for at least two of the recent avian electrocution incidents, in Byers and Roxborough Park.

Xcel Energy and CORE both serve the Morrison area, so that one is trickier to determine, Jurgemeyer said.

Xcel was the first utility in the country to enter into an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to proactively address issues involving birds and powerline structures, said Michelle Aguayo, Xcel media relations representative.

“We understand our infrastructure can be attractive to birds for roosting and building nests and can pose a collision or electrocution hazard to birds,” Aguayo said. “Our facilities are designed to meet industry standards that prevent or reduce the likelihood of avian incidents.”

Jonathan Ashford, fire investigator with the West Metro Fire Protection District, said that, during Tuesday’s fire investigation, they found four birds with varying degrees of burn damage in the area of the fire’s origin near an electrical line. Normally, a bird in the path of fire would fly away, Ashford said, so this was a good clue that the burned birds started the fire.

Ashford said he believed the birds likely would have been close enough together to face joint electrocution.

There are a couple of reasons why birds are increasingly meeting an end better suited for the “Final Destination” films.

It’s partially because of climate change, Barnes said.

An electrocuted bird is more likely to ignite a fire if conditions are dry, he said. Nearly half of Colorado is now in drought or has near-drought conditions, according to the most recent report from the U.S. Drought Monitor.

In July, a series of wildfires burning along the Front Range foothills killed one person, destroyed structures, caused the governor to activate the Colorado National Guard and enveloped sweltering metro Denver in a heavy cloud of smoke.

In addition to climate, there is the human introduction of electrical utility equipment into the environment, Barnes said.

Birds can sit on one wire, no problem. But if a bird touches a second wire, it opens a path of electricity right through the bird’s body, with a resulting zap that can be potent enough to send the bird up in flames.

Larger birds like hawks and eagles can be more at risk of electrocution, Barnes said, because their wider wingspans put them at greater risk of touching two different wires simultaneously.

There are ways to design power poles and their accompanying structures to make them less susceptible to bird electrocution, Barnes said.

Barnes works at EDM International, an electrical utilities consulting company, where the biologist tackles this very issue.

For new electrical poles, Barnes said designers can ensure enough space between “energized components” to allow birds to exist without touching two electrical components at once.

However, many utility companies can’t rip out and replace all their infrastructure, Barnes said, so there are ways to retrofit existing equipment to make it safer for birds. For example, utility companies can cover problematic wires or exposed electrical equipment with insulating material or put cages around pieces they don’t want birds coming into contact with.

“It’s amazing how resourceful birds can be when they want to be,” Jurgemeyer said. “We are constantly trying different products and different ways of working with vendors to come up with stuff that doesn’t exist to figure out ways to keep animals away from those energized parts.”

Sometimes smaller birds on the hunt for bugs will drive their beaks under insulated coverings in hopes of a snack, only to find an electrical jolt instead, CORE’s Jurgemeyer said.

“Every utility in the country that has overhead power lines has the same, exact problem,” he said.

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Yet one of the first comments we received was from a famous energy guru: “Nice building. But why do you have a heating system at all?” Or more simply put: “Why didn’t you build a perfect building, instead of just a really good one?”

Solving climate change could depend on how we answer that question. My answer: Society needs the Prius of buildings, not the Tesla X.

The green building movement didn’t originate only from a desire to protect the environment. It often had elements of the bizarre ego gratification that trumped practicality.

Recall “Earthships” that used old tires and aluminum cans in the walls. Geodesic domes were interesting looking but produced inordinate waste to build. They also leaked. Rudolf Steiner’s weirdly wonderful Goetheanum was an all-concrete structure designed to unite “what is spiritual in the human being to what is spiritual in the universe.”

Early practitioners such as Steiner, Buckminster Fuller, and Bill McDonough, among others, were often building monuments, whose ultimate goal became the concept of “net zero.” Net zero was a building that released no carbon dioxide emissions at all.

Designers achieved that goal by constructing well-sealed, heavily insulated, properly oriented, and controlled buildings–but then they did something wasteful. They added solar panels to make up for carbon dioxide emissions from heating with natural gas. The approach zeroed out emissions, but at extraordinary cost that came in the form of added labor, expense and lost opportunity.

While net zero wasn’t a good idea even when most buildings were heated with natural gas, the rapid decarbonization of utility grids — happening almost everywhere — and advances in electrification make the idea downright pointless.

Instead, all you need to build an eventual net zero building is to go all-electric. It won’t be net zero today, but it will be net zero when the grid reaches 100% carbon-free power. So, all that really matters is that building codes require 100% electrification.

Yet many communities remain focused on that sexy goal of net zero, and therefore include requirements for solar panels, or “solar ready” wiring. Even apart from the issue of cost, many utilities don’t need rooftop solar because they increasingly have access to huge solar arrays, giving them more electricity than they need in peak times.

What utilities really need is energy storage and smart management.

That means home batteries and grid integration that allows utilities to “talk” to buildings and turn off appliances during peak times. The problem is that environmentalists haven’t evolved: Just like we can’t retire our tie-dyes, we think “green” means rooftop solar panels.

My company’s Buttermilk building passes the only test that matters: “If everyone built this kind of structure, would it solve the built environment’s portion of the climate problem?” The answer for our building is “yes.”

Still, aspirational monuments matter. We need the Lincoln Memorial, the Empire State Building. But if we’re going to solve climate change in buildings, which is about a third of the total problem, new structures will have to reconceive what we consider efficient and beautiful. And it doesn’t have to break the bank.

Electrification, for example, is getting cheaper every year. Years ago, I served on an environmental board for the town of Carbondale in western Colorado. The overwhelming interest there was ending dandelion spraying in the town park. But at one point, we worked on a building.

After a long conversation about the technical tricks and feats we could pull off, a Rudolf Steiner disciple named Farmer Jack Reed said: “We should also plant bulbs in the fall so colorful flowers blossom in the spring.” “Why?” I asked, stuck in my own technocratic hole. He said: “Because flowers are beautiful and they make people happy.”

So, too, are realistic solutions as we adapt to climate change.

Auden Schendler is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is senior vice president of sustainability at Aspen One. His book, Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering our Soul, comes out in November.

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CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment comes as insurance companies increasingly rely on technology to help them determine how big the wildfire risk is across the United States and, in turn, how much they need to charge homeowners to cover those risks while still turning a profit.

The problem, according to consumer advocates and industry regulators, is these modeling systems do not account for all of the mitigation work being done to protect properties from fires. It’s a problem Colorado Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway is trying to solve.

“What the majority of them don’t do at all is incorporate state-level or community mitigation,” Conway said. “They have been telling homeowners they have to mitigate to keep insurance affordable and available. But if they’re not going to take that into account, that’s a very big problem.”

Colorado homeowners have seen their insurance costs escalate faster than the rest of the country because of wildfires and hailstorms, according to a 2023 Colorado Department of Insurance report that looked at rates between 2018 and 2022. At least one analysis found home insurance rates increased in the state by 19.8% between 2021 and 2023.

The increasing costs are not just impacting those whose homes are at risk of burning in a wildfire. Every property owner in Colorado will pay more so insurance companies can cover their risk when a catastrophe happens elsewhere in the state. That makes people’s monthly mortgage payments go up as most homeowner insurance is paid by their banks through escrow accounts.

The increase also affects renters as landlords will charge tenants more to pay for their expenses.

Those rising rates are being driven by increased wildfire risk — a result of a warming climate — and inflation, said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, an advocacy group for consumers. But new technology that provides insurers with maps, graphics and piles of data also are contributing to enormous increases, she said.

The latest wildfire risk assessment was produced by CoreLogic, a tech company that creates risk assessments for wildfires and other natural disasters. But CoreLogic is just one of a handful of companies producing such assessments by using artificial intelligence, drones and mapping, Bach said.

For example, Verisk Analytics’ most recent analysis on the cost of home reconstruction after a disaster, which also is used by insurance underwriters, reported that Colorado had the second-highest increase in post-disaster reconstruction costs in the country, behind only New Hampshire. The cost to rebuild a house rose 9.05% in Colorado between July 2023 and July 2024, the analysis found. Colorado also had the second-highest jump — 11.57% — in rebuilding commercial properties.

“In the beginning, I thought it was climate change driven,” Bach said of rising homeowners insurance costs. “But now I believe it’s the tech factor that is equally causing a dramatic shift in the market.”

Wildland urban interface

CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment estimated that 2.6 million homes in the western United States are at least at moderate risk of burning in a wildfire, and the cost to rebuild those homes would exceed $1.2 trillion. Colorado ranked second with the most homes at risk while California was first and Texas was third, the assessment stated.

In Colorado, 68,928 properties in metro Denver are at risk along with 50,298 in the Colorado Springs area. Most of the homes in the state that are threatened by wildfire are in what insurance companies and firefighters call the wildland urban interface — in other words, houses built near open spaces or on the outskirts of mountain towns such as those that burned last month in the Stone Canyon fire near Lyons and the Alexander Mountain fire west of Loveland.

That growth around the wildland urban interface is contributing to rising insurance costs in Colorado.

Insurify, a digital insurance agent that compares quotes from more than 100 agencies, found that Colorado’s average annual home insurance rate is expected to increase by 7% to $4,367 in 2024 from $4,072 in 2023. In 2023, Colorado’s average home insurance rate was $1,695 higher than the national average.

Colorado’s continuing popularity and people’s desire to live near the mountains and foothills contribute to the state’s high ranking in the CoreLogic report, said Jamie Knippen, a senior product manager for the company. Since 2010, the number of homes built in Colorado in the wildland urban interface has increased 45%, she said.

“So as people have moved and development has increased within these areas, risk has also grown just due to the number of homes and the value of those homes,” Knippen said.

CoreLogic started producing the wildfire risk assessment in 2019 to help insurance companies figure out the risk they would take on when selling policies to homeowners in different areas of the country, Knippen said. The company also writes risk assessments for hurricanes and floods in other parts of the U.S.

The company wants to report accurate data so insurance companies and the general public understand risks, Knippen said. The risk assessment should start conversations about the perils homeowners face and how they can be taken into consideration when it comes to decisions such as buying a new house or protecting the ones people already have.

Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Association, said the various data reports generated by tech companies are really reflecting what insurance companies already know — hot, dry weather in Colorado is increasing the chances of wildfires and still people are building expensive homes in the mountains.

She disputed arguments that the various analyses cause rates to go up.

“What it really does is provide accuracy, first and foremost, for what your risk is,” Walker said.

Modeling isn’t new

Computer modeling for wildfire risk is fairly new to the industry, Walker said.

It is much more sophisticated than years ago when a homeowner would talk with their insurance agent about how far they lived from the nearest fire station and where fire hydrants were located in neighborhoods. Now, drones, satellite imagery and other data points can help analyze the slope on which a home is built, the vegetation around the house, construction materials and, yes, the distance to the closest fire station.

Those models also are helping with the science of mitigation, which is an increasingly big part of reducing wildfire risk, she said.

That means homeowners do as much as they can to reduce the chances their houses will burn in a wildfire. It involves everything from upgrading roofs to moving wooden fences farther from houses to clear-cutting dense brush around the perimeters of homes.

But that’s where the fight is centered. If insurance companies are going to ask homeowners to mitigate risk, then the homeowners should receive discounts for that work, Conway said.

So far, the risk analyses and modeling programs that insurance companies rely on are not taking into account all that work, he said.

For example, Colorado deployed a Firehawk helicopter for the first time to fight blazes that sparked this summer in Boulder, Jefferson and Larimer counties. The state’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control also has airplanes to map fires and carry water and retardants to extinguish them. Those aviation assets saved valuable property.

But the state and its homeowners do not get credit in risk assessments for those airplanes and the helicopter, Conway said.

The models also don’t take into account all the work that communities such as Boulder County have done to help reduce the level of destruction a wildfire can cause. For example, Boulder County collected $8.9 million last year through a sales tax dedicated to wildfire mitigation that funds projects such as using goats to graze on open space in Superior.

The same fight is happening in California, Bach said. It’s impossible to put the “tech genie back in the bottle,” so it is up to regulators like Conway to push the tech companies to change their models and predictions so mitigation efforts are included in the assessments, she said.

“That is the fight,” Bach said. “From my perspective as a consumer advocate, if you’re charging someone who has mitigated the same rate as someone who hasn’t, then you’re overcharging.”

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“Let’s not go overboard on this,” he said during a media briefing on the sidelines of an event he was hosting in London.

AI data centers represent a relatively small additional load on the grid, Gates said. What’s more, he predicted that insights gleaned from AI would deliver gains in efficiency that would more than make up for that additional demand.

In short, Gates said, the stunning rise of AI will not stand in the way of combating climate change. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, no, we can’t do it because we’re addicted to doing chat sessions,’” he said.

That’s an upbeat assessment from a billionaire with a vested interest in the matter. Gates is a big-time climate investor, and is the former head of Microsoft and remains a major stockholder in the company, which is at the center of the AI revolution.

And while it’s too early to draw a definitive conclusion on the issue, a few things are already clear: AI is having a profound impact on energy demand around the world, it’s often leading to an uptick in planet-warming emissions, and there’s no end in sight.

AI data centers have a big appetite for electricity. The so-called graphic processing units, or GPUs, used to train large language models and respond to ChatGPT queries, require more energy than your average microchip and give off more heat.

With more data centers coming online almost every week, projections about how much energy will be required to power the AI boom are soaring.

One peer-reviewed study suggested AI could make up 0.5% of worldwide electricity use by 2027, or roughly what Argentina uses in a year. Analysts at Wells Fargo suggested that U.S. electricity demand could jump 20% by 2030, driven in part to AI.

And Goldman Sachs predicted that data centers would account for 8% of U.S. energy usage in 2030, up from just 3% today.

“It’s truly astronomical potential load growth,” said Ben Inskeep, the program director at Citizens Action Coalition, a consumer watchdog group based in Indiana that is tracking the energy impact of data centers.

Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta have all recently announced plans to build new data centers in Indiana, developments that Inskeep said would strain the grid.

“We don’t have enough power to meet the projected needs of data centers over the next five to 10 years,” he said. “We would need a massive build-out of additional resources.”

Tech giants are scrambling to get a grip on their energy usage. For a decade now, those same four companies have been at the forefront of corporate efforts to embrace sustainability.

But in a matter of months, the energy demands from AI have complicated that narrative. Google’s emissions last year were 50% higher than in 2019, largely because of data centers and the rise of AI. Microsoft’s emissions also jumped for the same reasons, up 29% last year from 2020. And Meta’s emissions jumped 66% from 2021 to 2023.

In statements, Google and Microsoft both said that AI would ultimately prove crucial to addressing the climate crisis, and that they were working to reduce their carbon footprints and bring more clean energy online. Amazon pointed to a statement detailing its sustainability efforts.

There are two ways for tech companies to meet the demand: tap the existing grid, or build new power plants. Each poses its own challenges.

In West Virginia, coal-fired power plants that had been scheduled to retire are being kept online to meet the energy needs of new data centers across the border in Virginia.

And across the country, utilities are building new natural-gas infrastructure to support data centers. Goldman Sachs anticipates that “incremental data center power consumption in the U.S. will drive around 3.3 billion cubic feet per day of new natural gas demand by 2030, which will require new pipeline capacity to be built.”

At the same time, the tech giants are working to secure a lot more power to fuel the growth of AI.

Microsoft is working on a $10 billion plan to develop renewable energy to power data centers. Amazon has said it used 100% clean energy last year, though experts have questioned whether the company’s accounting was too lenient.

All that new low carbon power is great. But when the tech companies themselves are consuming all that electricity to power new AI data centers, pushing up energy demand, it isn’t making the grid overall any cleaner.

The energy demands from AI are only getting more intense. Microsoft and OpenAI are planning on building a $100 billion data center, according to reports. Initial reporting suggests it may require 5 gigawatts of power, or roughly the equivalent of five nuclear reactors.

And at the same time that companies are building more data centers, many of the chips at the heart of the AI revolution are getting more and more power hungry. Nvidia, the leader in AI chips, recently unveiled new products that would draw exponentially more energy from the grid.

The AI boom is generating big profits for some companies. And it may yet deliver breakthroughs that help reduce emissions. But, at least for now, data centers are doing more harm than good for the climate.

“It’s definitely very concerning as we’re trying to transition our current grid to renewable energy,” Inskeep said. “Adding a massive amount of new load on top of that poses a grave threat to that transition.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Denver South works with local governments and businesses on economic development and transportation issues in communities along 8 miles of the Interstate 25 corridor in the south metro region. The area, which includes parts of Denver, Arapahoe and Douglas counties, Greenwood Village, Centennial and Lone Tree, has seen steady growth in the number of businesses and housing units in the last few years and expects more.

The area is also projected to see increased traffic, said David Worley, president and CEO of Denver South.

“What we project in the corridor is increased traffic of 15 to 30% in the coming years,” Worley said.

Growth is expected even as many employees continue to work from home for part of the week. Worley said traffic in the south-metro area is above pre-pandemic levels.

A Denver South study of the I-25 corridor forecasts traffic growing from the current daily average of 252,000 vehicles at about the I-225 exchange to 289,000 by 2050. Daily trips are expected to rise from the current 157,000 vehicles to 230,000 in 2050 in the vicinity of Ridgeway Parkway.

The traffic map in the study shows I-25 and Arapahoe Road in red, depicting congested/over-capacity conditions and other streets as congested and near their capacity by 2050.

Traffic at spots along I-25 is beyond the highway’s capacity now, said Daniel Hutton, Denver South’s vice president of transportation and mobility. He said the highway was engineered to handle roughly 200,000 vehicles a day.

The traffic volumes projected for 2050 assume people keep doing what they’re doing now, with few changes in how people commute, Hutton said.

“I-25 is a really significant corridor. A lot of people don’t realize that one-ninth of Colorado’s economy is really based in that 8 miles” in the south metro area, Worley said.

Denver South is encouraging businesses to apply for state tax credits as a means to reduce single-occupant vehicles, relieve congestion and reduce air pollution. The tax credit offers employers a 50% tax credit of up to $125,000 a year for money spent on encouraging workers to get out of their cars.

The maximum amount allowed for any one employee is $2,000 per tax year, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Worley said employers could get tax credits for buying EcoPasses for employees. The Regional Transportation District pass allows for unlimited rides on buses and trains.

“It could be an e-bike program, van pool or a carpooling program designed by the employer,” Worley said. “You could put together an e-bike program with an EcoPass to get to and from work. There are a lot of creative things employers could do with this tax credit.”

Ridership on RTD buses and light rail in the south metro area is below pre-pandemic levels, Worley said. “It’s starting to come back a little, but we have a lot more capacity for light rail than ridership.”

At this point, participation in the tax-credit program is low, Worley said. “We’re struggling with people not being aware of this tax credit.”

The Department of Revenue is compiling the number of claims for credits. The 2023 tax year was the first year that Colorado businesses, nonprofits and others could claim the credit, spokesman Derek Kuhn said.

Legislation passed in 2022 created the Alternative Transportation Options Tax Credit, which was supposed to end this year.

“But we worked really diligently to try to get it extended. It’s now extended through 2027,” Worley said. “One of the reasons we’re working really hard to promote it is that the tax credits need to get used in order for it to stay on Colorado’s legislative landscape.”

Denver South hosted Josh Pens, director of tax policy with the Department of Revenue, Tuesday to talk to area employers about the incentive. The organization joined several metro-area business groups in 2021 to oppose rules that would have required large businesses to set goals to reduce the number of miles that employees drove to work.

The state Air Quality Control Commission planned to write rules for businesses to help implement a 2019 law that set goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26% by 2025; at least 50% by 2030; and at least 90% by 2050 from the levels that existed in 2005.

The rules would have targeted metro Denver and the northern Front Range, which is out of compliance with federal standards for ground-level ozone pollution. The pollution is prevalent on hot, sunny days when volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides from oil and gas operations, vehicle exhaust and fumes from industrial chemicals react in the sunlight.

Denver South, along with a broad coalition of businesses, strongly urged the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission to use voluntary measures instead, Worley said.

“While we supported the State’s efforts to improve air quality, protect public health, and mitigate climate change, we also recognized the business community’s constraints, limitations, and continuum of needs,” Worley said in a statement.

The rulemaking for the so-called Employee Trip Reduction Program didn’t happen. The Colorado Chamber of Commerce hailed the withdrawal of the proposal by the state Air Pollution Control Division. After taking input, the division said voluntary measures “can build a foundation for the future success” of the program.

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Re: “100-degree sizzlers here to stay as summers get hotter,” Aug. 11 news story

Any discussion of Denver weather records must include the fact that the official recording site was moved to Denver International Airport (DIA) when opened in 1995. This location has a different microclimate than the previous site of Stapleton Airport, situated 12 miles to the southwest of DIA. Before Stapleton, weather records were taken in downtown Denver dating back to 1872.

On Sunday, Aug. 4, the daily record high of 102 set at DIA would not have been a record at Denver Central Park (Stapleton) where the daily high was 96. In fact, none of the five daily record highs set at DIA this summer would have been records at the previous Denver sites. DIA has reached 100 degrees on six days in 2024, while the highest temperature recorded at Central Park has been 99.

With all the media hype of man-made climate change and record heat, we need to be careful not to compare apples and oranges with weather stats going out to the world representing Denver.  Average annual precipitation also tends to run a bit lower at DIA, and snowfall is quite often less at the airport due to its proximity farther away from the mountains.

Dave Larison, Longmont

Editor’s note: Larison is a retired National Weather Service meteorologist.

News flash to Tina Peters and John Case: Trump won in Mesa County in 2020?

Re: “Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, election deniers hero, found guilty in election computer breach,” Aug. 12 news story

In his post-conviction rationale for the necessity of former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters committing felonies by unlawfully permitting unauthorized access to voting systems, her attorney, John Case, stated in The Post that she had to break the law in getting election denier operatives into the system to find out whether anyone from “China or Canada” had accessed the machines while ballots were being counted. “And thank God she did. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know what happened,” he said.

What happened was that Donald Trump won Mesa County in 2020 with 62.8% of the vote to Joe Biden’s 34.8%. The votes cast in Mesa County were 56,894 for Trump against 31,536 for Biden. However, in Colorado as a whole Biden won 55.4% to 41.9% The statewide vote was Biden 1,804,352 to Trump 1,344,607. This is an example of the “Stop the Steal” operation at its most absurd. Peters violated Colorado law and the security of our elections to protect us from the Chinese or Canadians in a county that Trump won overwhelmingly. As a former Colorado prosecutor, I have always put my trust in the common sense of jurors.

Richard L. Nathan, Greenwood Village

Tina Peters received a well-deserved conviction of multiple felonies regarding her role in the breaching of election security in Mesa County. Her buddy Mike Lindell, the pillow guy, continues to spew election fraud lies in addition to the many lies spewed by the MAGA crowd without a single shred of evidence supporting their claims.

Let’s be clear, there wasn’t any question about election integrity until Donald Trump came along. For months before the 2020 presidential election, Trump laid the groundwork for his lies claiming election fraud by basically exclaiming that “If I don’t win, the election is rigged.” It’s amazing how many of his supporters believed the lie. It really is kind of a Trump cult.

Let’s also be clear that the reason Joe Biden was declared the winner late, after Election Day, was because a handful of states, including Pennsylvania and Arizona, both controlled by Republican state legislators at the time, decided that they were not going to count the early mail-in ballots, which typically favors Democrats by a good margin, until after the polls closed on election night. These ballots went strongly for Biden overnight. He didn’t win these states because of faulty election machines or stolen Trump votes or illegal aliens voting or any of that other nonsense spewed by the Trump cult.

And yet, a majority of Trump supporters still believe, without any proof, that the 2020 election was stolen. And now, Trump is laying the groundwork for more lies about election fraud in 2024. Election deniers have been appointed to certify (or not certify) elections in several battleground states. These deniers can believe whatever they want, but I am certain that the truth about election results and security, which has never been stronger, will always win the day in our great nation.

Jim Ciha, Grand Junction

Why are diesel pickups blowing smoke?

I’m not sure why, but this summer in Western Colorado, I have seen more diesel pickups than ever emitting clouds of thick, black smoke. I have a diesel pickup I bought new 16 years ago, and it releases no visible smoke. This leads me to believe that these trucks, most of which are much newer than mine, have been modified to produce this smoke, which is dangerous to our health and environment.

Why are these trucks allowed to be on the road, and why do local police and county sheriffs not pull them over and cite the drivers?

David Ryan, Montrose

Look beyond “the self-serving purveyors of propaganda”

Re: “Liberal philanthropists have their sights set on local news,” Aug. 2 commentary

Michael Watson’s entire commentary regarding funding our local news is based upon the flawed premise that journalism can be bribed into delivering false or misleading information, something he labels partisan journalism. According to Merriam-Webster, journalism (in part) is “writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.” Watson envisions local news as a choice between one side’s misinformation versus the other side’s misinformation.

We already have that in the form of biased theatrical commentators like Sean Hannity, Joe Rogan and Stephen Colbert. They are not journalists. The fact that too many readers/viewers believe all those sources of partisan blather, as though it entailed a dogged pursuit of truth, is the greatest threat to our nation’s stability.

What if all of us sincere pursuers of truth and factual information paid a little to support real journalists and turned off the self-serving purveyors of propaganda so we can enjoy life and each other more?

Norm Davey, Centennial

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Re: “End of an era: Second Landmark movie theater to shutter,” Aug. 8 news story

Someone at Landmark Cinemas had the bone-headed idea of announcing Chez Artiste’s closure with one week’s notice. Did someone think that this was a courageous move? A rip-the-Band-Aid-off, gutsy decision? I disagree.

This was a heartless, insensitive, and disrespectful decision. They could have given the wonderful Chez Artiste staff and patrons much more notice. Why give several months’ notice for the recent closure of Landmark’s Esquire Theater but almost no notice for Chez Artiste?

I’m sure Chez Artiste has been losing money. I know that Landmark has to operate its business efficiently. And I know that the “old ways” of watching movies on a big screen are quickly fading. I also know that the Chez Artiste staff has always made us feel welcome. They know and love movies, and they see me, know me, and greet me (and many other patrons) by name. They provided a wonderful community for movie lovers like us and others throughout the Denver area.

I guess I’ll go to the Landmark Greenwood Village theaters (even though they rarely play art house films) and to the beautiful Mayan Theater. But I won’t cram myself into the Mayan’s barely functional, tiny upstairs theaters that feel like a punishment for handing over my hard-earned money.

Making decisions based solely on financial considerations isn’t always the kindest or smartest way to run a business. Thanks to Landmark Cinemas for diminishing the cultural standing of our city. Just call me a pissed-off art house movie fan.

Art Glover, Denver

One less reason to endure teeth-grinding anxiety on Interstate 25: the closing of Chez Artiste movie theater, a Denver icon, after 52 years. The Landmark managers figure that we can switch our viewing to Landmark Greenwood Village. Really? “Despicable Me” is considered alternative movie fare? Chez Artiste, Denver film lovers will miss you!

C. Greenman, Lakewood

Focusing our attention on the American hostages

Re: “Forgotten in Gaza?” Aug. 11 commentary

About the forgotten and dead U.S. citizens, I am ashamed of our current administration and our media for the lack of action for our fellow Americans. At least someone has the courage to write about it and ask the questions: Why is no one talking about this and why does no one care? If it was any one of the elite’s children over there, this would be finished, and they would be home. No one in journalism has any impact anymore. It is sad that we have lost one of the most important counterbalances in our democracy. Shame on you!!

Jule Taylor, Thornton

I seriously doubt Hamas thought its Oct. 7 attack in Israel would “bring Israel and the United States to its knees.”

More likely, it was to remind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel that the people of Palestine have the will to fight back against the repression of the decades-old Palestinian apartheid.

David Russell, Vancouver, B.C.

Doug Friednash is, understandably, worried about the five American hostages in Gaza. However, I will point out that negotiations in these situations are not usually conducted in public. Before the recent hostage exchange was announced with Russia, many people believed that nothing was being done to free those individuals. Attributing unpleasant motives to the administration without evidence seems unproductive at best.

Rose Gibbons, Denver

Preparing for continuing, relentless heat

Re: “Spend the rest of this summer preparing your landscape for next year’s heat,” Aug. 11 commentary, and “100-degree sizzlers here to stay as summers get hotter,” Aug. 11 news story

Now that global warming deniers have been proven wrong, I’m curious how conservatives will respond. I don’t know Krista Kafer’s personal feelings about the science of climate change, but when she worked at the Heritage Foundation (per her Denver Post bio) she must have been intimately associated with people who created and promoted policies that ignored the problem and rebuffed any attempt at mitigation.

Kafer, do you and your ilk feel any obligation to “own it” and concede that conservatives took a stand, often without scientific expertise, against recognition of the fact that humans are modifying our climate? Will you admit that conservatives were wrong to do so and that scientists were correct? Do you think continuing to deny the existence of human-induced climate change, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, is the proper course of action?

Perhaps writing a helpful newspaper column about replanting one’s yard with grasses adapted to 100-degree summer days, now that these are the norm in Colorado, is enough? As one who has believed and supported scientists and has consistently backed climate solutions at the community, state, and national levels, I’m angry with those who blocked us at every turn. What level of accountability, apology or remorse do they feel is owed?

Ian Baker, Fort Collins

RFK Jr. brings more conspiracy, not optimism

Re: “Cheering on the ‘third’ candidate for president,” Aug. 11 letters to the editor

Recently, two letters expressed the writer’s support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president. One stated that Kennedy gave them “a renewed sense of optimism” and suggested that people vote for someone “who inspires them and makes them excited about what is to come.” If they truly desire a hopeful future, the wise choice would be to vote for the Harris/Walz ticket. We all know that Kennedy cannot win and “what is to come” with a Trump/Vance/Project 2025 win is a dark and fearful future for our nation. Vote for Kennedy to soothe your own conscience if you desire, but votes not supporting the Democrats put America in danger of a second disastrous Trump administration. To quote the second letter writer, “Here’s hoping America will vote on hope not fear!”

JM Jesse, Glenwood Springs

In response to the citizens writing to endorse Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I would encourage them to research his stance on important issues. Confidently, he addresses many of the problems that concern us — for instance, mass shootings. Kennedy claims psychiatric drugs cause mass shootings, while countries like Switzerland have as many guns as we do and do not experience the mass shootings that we do. Really? Prozac came out in 1988, and yet there were mass shootings before that.  Guns?  Our country leads the world in firearms ownership by far and four times that of Switzerland. Experts have found that there is no connection between psychiatric drugs and mass shooters. There is not enough space here to address the multitude of false data to which RFK Jr adheres. I urge readers to fact-check Kennedy using peer-reviewed sources, not just podcasts or social media.  Finally, remember that RFK Jr. rebuked Ralph Nader for running a third-party spoiler against Al Gore in 2000. The votes that Nader took away from Gore helped George Bush win the election and got us into an endless quagmire in the Middle East. Think about it.

Robert Nyboer, Longmont

RFK Jr can’t even get his own family to endorse his campaign. His anti-vaccine position would put our whole country in danger. COVID killed far too many people because of false claims by him and many Republicans. Vaccination rates are dropping among young children, and diseases that we thought were eradicated, like measles, are coming back.
Donald Trump and JD Vance are being labeled as weird and Project 2025 should scare every American. We don’t need another spreader of conspiracy theories on the ballot in Colorado. The Republicans have that covered and RFK Jr would only make it worse.

Be grateful that Joe Biden put our country first and stepped aside. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the best things to happen to the Democratic Party since Barack Obama and represent the best chance of beating back the dystopian view that Republicans share about the future of our country. Conversely, the Democrats offer a future of hope and prosperity, which is desperately needed for the next generation of people in this country.

David Shaw, Highlands Ranch

Conservative support for Harris/Walz

“Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.  And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” — Ronald Reagan.

I have been a member of the Grand Old Party and have voted Republican from 1984 through 2016. My Party has been hijacked by a party of narcissists stealing the mantle of Lincoln, Reagan, and the great Senator from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith. I have joined with former U.S. Reps. Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and Joe Walsh, and at least 60,000 other Republicans with whom I participated in an organizational online meeting Tuesday night to prevent the ascension of a dictatorial regime which could well make all parties irrelevant, and will be voting Harris-Walz. Country over Party! If you are a disillusioned Republican, know that you are not alone and have a great number of colleagues who are going to take the brave step to vote for a Democrat.

It’s hard to cross the line, and I am only doing so to save the integrity of the GOP and a robust 2-party system that existed through the 20th Century.

Although I may profoundly differ on the Harris-Walz platform in a number of ways, the only issue important to me today is the preservation of our great Republic, the rule of law, and the Constitution. Former President Donald Trump has thumbed his nose at all of these pillars of the American social contract.

Fellow elephants, for the sake of the future of the GOP, join me! In doing so, we will live to fight another day.

Matthew S. Finberg, Broomfield

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Given this trajectory, homeowners may feel they have to choose between a crispy brown lawn, a high water bill, or an ugly rock-scape that radiates heat and irks neighbors. There is another option. By replacing some or all turf grass with native and other water-wise plants appropriate for high desert conditions, homeowners can reduce water use while creating wildlife habitat and other productive uses.

I gradually began eliminating sod from my landscape more than a decade ago and replaced it with plants that require less water and are far more productive than turf grass. The turf-free property now supports 60 kinds of fruit- and vegetable-producing plants and twice as many ornamental shade-giving and flowering plants, including some two dozen native species. The yard draws butterflies, bumblebees, insect-eating birds like wrens and towhees, and hummingbirds.

There is nothing wrong with having some turf grass, and there are types that consume less water, but having none means none of the broken sprinkler heads, flooded basement incidents, repair costs, and frustrations my folks experienced when I was young. My drip system, which delivers water directly to the base of the plants, costs little to repair or rearrange myself. I don’t own a lawn mower, leaf blower, or edger, the use of which contributes to carbon emissions and ozone pollution. Although I spend less money keeping up my yard, I confess I do spend more time enjoying it.

Lawn reduction may seem daunting financially and technically for those who have not taken the plunge into water-wise landscaping. Fortunately there are financial and educational resources available. The state government helps fund local government and water utility programs that provide financial incentives for turf replacement. You can get paid to rip out a portion of your lawn.

Don’t know what to plant or where to plant it? The Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver Water and other city utilities, Front Range nonprofits like Resource Central, Wild Ones Front Range, Oasis West Wash Park, and others provide information on what to plant, where to buy it, and how to care for water-wise plants.

They say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The same could be said for planting water-wise plants in an increasingly hot and arid time. As the weather cools and the August rains come, it might be tempting to put off landscaping changes until next year. When Denver starts breaking new records in June, July, and August of next year, procrastination will become regret. Now is the time to plan to replace some of that crispy, brown sod with water-wise plants. Late summer and fall are great times to plant. Get to it.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on X: @kristakafer.

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CHICAGO (AP) — Dozens of protesters broke through a security fence near the site of the Democratic National Convention on its opening day Monday as thousands took to the streets to voice their opposition to the war in Gaza.

Families with babies in strollers, students, elected leaders and others holding signs and flags joined the march to the United Center, where the convention is being held, to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. As the larger group marched peacefully, a few dozen who broke away tore down pieces of the security fence.

Several protesters who had managed to get through the fence were detained and handcuffed by the police. Officers put on gas masks as some protesters tried to bring down a second fence set up in front of police. Authorities said the inner security perimeter surrounding convention site was not breached and there was no threat to those attending the convention.

Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said some of the protesters who took down the fence threw water bottles and other items at police. Police de-escalated the situation without using their batons or chemicals, he said.

“When you have people infiltrate a crowd and they want to commit acts of violence, vandalism we are going to stop them,” said Snelling, who walked in a group of officers ahead of the protesters Monday. “We are not going to tolerate anyone who is going to vandalize things in our city.”

Members of the crowd chanted “End the occupation now” and then “The whole world is watching!” just as anti-Vietnam War protesters did during the infamous 1968 convention in Chicago when police clashed with protesters on live television. Families gathered on their porches and outside their doors as protesters marched by. Some children wore keffiyeh, blew bubbles or held “free fist bumps” signs.

The march happened just as President Joe Biden, who has been the target of intense criticism from pro-Palestinian groups, including the marchers, was doing a walk-through of the largely empty United Center. Biden was scheduled to address the party in the evening.

“Biden, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide,” the marchers chanted amid the beating of drums. They also referred to him as “Genocide Joe” and lodged similar chants at Vice President Kamala Harris.

Protesters said their plans have not changed since Biden left the race and the party quickly rallied behind Harris, who will formally accept the Democratic nomination this week. Activists said they were ready to amplify their progressive message before the nation’s top Democratic leaders.

“People are dying,” said Cameron Benrud, a 25-year-old high school special education teacher from Minneapolis. He drove five hours to attend the rally at Union Park to call on Democratic officials to halt funding to Israel.

“I’m from little old Minnesota, and you feel kind of powerless… You gotta do something,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said authorities were well prepared. “The city of Chicago is really good at things like this,” he told a news conference. “We are ready.”

Organizers had hoped at least 20,000 people would take part in Monday’s rally and march, but it appeared that only a few thousand were present, though city officials declined to give a crowd estimate.

“We’re proud of the turnout, especially considering the degree of the repression from the city,” said organizer Faayani Aboma Mijana.

The Chicago area has one of the largest Palestinian communities in the nation, and buses were bringing activists from all over the country.

Taylor Cook, an organizer with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, traveled from Atlanta for the march. Cook said the group was pushing all Democrats to call for an end to aid to Israel, with a particular focus on Harris.

“We’re saying to Kamala, she has been complicit in this. People think it’s just Joe Biden, but she is vice president,” Cook said. “So we’re saying, you need to stop if you want our vote.”

Medea Benjamin, who traveled to Chicago from Washington, D.C., with a women-led group of protesters calling for peace, said she was shocked that the Biden administration recently approved an additional $20 billion in weapons sales to Israel.

“There’s an incredible discrepancy in what people are calling for in this country and what the administration is doing,” she said ahead of the rally in Union Park. “We’re so disgusted by this.”

Pro-Palestinian supporters descended on the park, west of the Loop business district, for the rally.

Prior to the march, independent presidential candidate Cornel West addressed the crowd, which welcomed him with cheers.

“This is not about some Machiavellian politics or some utilitarian calculation about an election,” he yelled into a microphone. “This is about morality. This is about spirituality.”

Around 40 pro-Israel supporters walked around the park during the rally. Remaining mostly silent while waving Israeli flags, they were accompanied by about 20 police officers on bicycles. Although tensions flared at times, there were no physical altercations.

Josh Weiner, co-founder of Chicago Jewish Alliance who walked with the pro-Israel group, said their intent was to “make our presence felt.” He said the group applied for permits that were not approved by the city.

“The pro-Palestine protesters have gotten multiple permits, including a march, which seems to be a little bit weighted on one side,” Weiner said.

Coalition activists and the city have been at odds over the location of the protests and other logistics. A judge sided with the city over an approximately 1-mile (1.6-kilometer) march route, which organizers argued was not big enough for the expected crowds.

Not a single speaker or spectator showed up to a speakers’ stage offered by city officials near the United Center. Eight groups with progressive agendas had signed up for 45-minute speaking slots on Monday. On other days, some conservative groups, including the Illinois Policy Institute think tank, have plans to speak.

In the afternoon, the Philadelphia-based Poor People’s Army, which advocates for economic justice, set up in Humboldt Park on the city’s northwest side before marching more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) to the United Center.