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MOREY WOLFSON'S CAREER AS AN ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST took root 40 years ago when he organized Denver’s participation in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. The event, held at the old downtown Currigan Hall, was the third-largest indoor Earth Day event in the nation, and jump started Wolfson’s environmental commitment.

“I was so happy that my parents trusted me after a certain age to light a fire and burn our garbage. Everybody did that –and all of a sudden when I was 10 years old the city of Denver made it illegal. Things can change; things do change.”

By the time Wolfson graduated from George Washington High School and headed to San Francisco State College in the 1960s, the times – as in the classic Dylan tune – were a-changin’ big time, and Wolfson had vowed to be an agent of that change. A degree in American history under his belt, he enrolled in the University of Colorado at Denver’s College of Environmental Design graduate program, became active in student government, and organized Denver’s first Earth Day at Currigan Hall on April 22, 1970, the third-largest indoor Earth Day event in the nation.

“That’s when I really started to become interested and informed about the environment and its connections to the economy and energy,” he says. “When you study environmental design, a lot of it is what is known as systems thinking, where you learn to connect the dots. That was my academic training: comprehensive, integrated forward-looking thinking.”

He earned his master’s in 1973 and continued to organize Earth Day events while working as an environmental consultant, and opened his Solar Bookstore at Colfax and York. From 1985 through 1999, he worked at the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC), and left in 2000 to work at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as a utility team leader in the Federal Energy Management Program. He left that job in 2004 to campaign for Amendment 37, a statewide ballot proposal that passed with a 54 percent majority. “The amendment required that large electric utilities, including Xcel Energy, must obtain a minimum of 10 percent of their electric power by the year 2015 from renewable energy. That law has since been updated twice. Now customers will know when they flip the switch in 2020 that 30 percent of the energy flowing into their homes comes from renewable resources.”

Wolfson has been working in the Governor’s Energy Office since 2007 on large-scale renewable energy projects such as wind farms and solar power plants and the transmission needed to bring that power onto the electric grid. He researches and writes major documents to encourage utilities in Colorado and throughout the western United States to develop and implement renewable energy and transmission projects.

“I work on the implementation of (Gov. Bill Ritter’s) Climate Action Plan,” he says. “In November 2007 the governor set a goal to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from the electric power sector by 20 percent by the year 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. I work on a complex set of activities that relate to legislation, regulation and utility practices that determine how we can achieve these carbon reductions in the most cost-effective, environmentally sound way. The value of renewable energy is that it does not deplete resources, entails no fuel costs, uses little water, and is clean.”

Wolfson says the Climate Action Plan points to a lot of evidence that Colorado’s economy and environment are being tested and challenged into the future as we continue to experience temperature rise. “Colorado is very vulnerable to drought, and appropriate energy policies can help in mitigating drought. My work helps the governor provide state, regional and national leadership, not only in renewable energy development but also in job formation in what is called the ‘Clean Tech Sector.’ We have been able to leverage Colorado’s resources to encourage companies that want to build wind farms, solar power plants and other clean resources to decide that Colorado is the right place for them to locate. We have a vibrant, emerging manufacturing sector where renewable energy technology companies have come to Colorado because they see it as a positive place to do business.”

The state’s abundant sunshine, highly educated and physically active workforce, scientific community, and political leadership distinguish it as a desirable location for Clean Tech industry. “There’s a perception that we’ve done more than almost any other place in the country in terms of renewable energy,” Wolfson says. “There’s also a lot being done in California and Massachusetts. And surprisingly, Texas is a kind of role model for us, particularly with respect to large-scale renewable energy development and high-voltage transmission. They are getting the job done and we’re paying attention to how they’re doing things.”

One of the greatest challenges to implementing renewable energy policies remains denial, according to Wolfson. “There are people who continue to think that climate change is not real. This way of thinking is something that is almost unique to the United States. There are very few other countries that have this resistance to acknowledging the scientific evidence. There’s a very large momentum in this country that’s concerned about what might happen to them if we change policies.”

But Wolfson remains hopeful about the future. “Young people see ahead over the next 50 or 60 years and understand the planet’s destiny is not shaping up that well. These young people are not going to be so readily pushed into a mindset that there’s not really a climate change problem. By and large we’ve been very successful in Colorado. Our General Assembly has passed 57 separate pieces of legislation on energy efficiency and renewable energy in the past three years, compared with just a handful of legislation in all the years before that in Colorado’s history. Legislators at this juncture are very interested and active in shaping a clean energy future.”

But is it happening fast enough? “Well, I would say no,” Wolfson says. “But remember, climate change is a global problem. You can say we’re just one state and we don’t really count – look at China or India. Or you can take a more positive approach and say, look at us. Look at the kind of educated workforce and intellectual capital we have and how we can contribute to national leadership. I think we’ve done that.”

Wolfson’s optimism springs from long, hard experience in the field, and a perspective developed over time. “Forty years ago when I first considered wind power it was very expensive and now it’s the least costly option for new electric power. As everyone should recognize, society does not do a good job of factoring in the full cost of fossil fuels. The traditional regulatory structure allows pollution to be emitted into the atmosphere without paying a direct price for it, especially when it comes to carbon. When that subsidy ends, renewable energy will look even better than it does at present.”

Our priorities are undergoing a quantum shift in relationship to our physical world, Wolfson believes. “There’s been a lot of progress in the past three or four years but there’s still a lot of denial on the environmental topic. In part because people are often insecure in their personal finances – it may cause some to be more susceptible to unfounded views that environmental improvement comes at an economic cost.

“Relatively few people have studied environmental science, while many have studied accounting, economics and finance, that tend to teach that human behavior will always choose the least expensive options. It is interesting to consider what happens if so-called rational behavior ends up testing the environmental limits of our sustainability on this planet. Is this really rational behavior? I think an increasing number of people now understand the importance of sustainability, and are willing to change policies so that we can live in the 21st century without perpetuating an outdated mindset.

“I’m ultimately optimistic because I think it’s a matter of demographics and education,” he continues. “And the number of books and movies out there about being green ... when I compare that to when I was growing up and later advocating for environmental consciousness in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, I have to kind of pinch myself and say, ‘Is this really happening?’ It really is.”