Electrify Longmont took over Longs Peak Middle School to show off some of the more visible ways that electrification can be seen, such as with electric vehicles, while giving detailed talks about how the city is moving to renewable energy and why communities need to electrify.
Upon arriving at the school, visitors were treated to a smattering of electric vehicles and their enthusiastic owners, who graciously let visitors take a seat in their cars and look around.
Mayor Joan Peck discussed how the city of Longmont is working with the Platte River Power Authority to help Longmont along its path of 100% renewable energy by 2030.
But there are challenges to this goal, Peck said. “Not enough states and cities are using renewable energy in the quantities that we need,” Peck said. It ultimately comes down to multiple power authorities owning and operating transmission lines.
When no renewable energy is stored at any of the authorities, cities must rely on gas and hydroelectric to ensure that the power stays on when no solar or wind power is generated, Peck said.
Simply flipping a switch to renewable energies isn’t an option. It’s extremely expensive to transition to 100% renewable energy, Peck said. And the price is only going up as demand rises.
“Parts that we ordered for substations have tripled in price since we ordered them a couple of years ago,” Peck said.
After Peck walked the audience through the challenges of supplying renewable energy, keynote speaker Micheal Myers, sustainability advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy's Federal Energy Management Program and the National Nuclear Security Administration, shared the importance for communities to electrify.
Referencing a recent United Nations report discussing electrification, Myers said the report states we need “significant transformation in our various sectors … to reduce carbon and greenhouse gasses. We need that transformation so that we can prevent the global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees (Celsius) in order to prevent climate disasters.”
“We’ve seen the fires; we’ve seen the smoke from fires; we’ve seen flooding and extreme temperatures. This is important — and this is what we need to do. This is the type of transformation we need to electrification,” Myers said.
People have had to transition power sources before. In the past, people transitioned from paraffin and kerosine oils to the lightbulb within a 20-year time span, according to Myers
Electrify Longmont sought to show this transformation can happen again. Myers urged those in attendance to understand what products or rebates they could take advantage of to help foster their transformation.
