Can Alternative Energy Save the Economy and the Climate?

By Douglas Fischer in Scientific American, November 13 2009

BRIGHTON, Colo. - The low-carbon economy has already arrived on the windy prairie north of this fast-growing Denver 'burb. It's here that Danish wind-turbine giant Vestas converted 298 acres of hayfield into the West's largest turbine factory - and turned Brighton into a magnet for "green" energy companies.

It's part of a $1 billion investment by the company in the United States, what Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter touts as a "new energy economy."

"We have a caseload of 56 prospects. Of those, a majority are energy-related industries," said Raymond Gonzales, president of the Brighton Economic Development Corporation. "People are looking. They're not slowing down. And they're aggressively looking at the United States."

Some say these efforts - not the upcoming Copenhagen climate treaty talks - provide the most promising route to energy independence, climate change mitigation and job creation.

Regardless of whether delegates emerge next month with a comprehensive replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, industry's full-throttle acceleration toward a low-carbon future will continue, they say.

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