Howard Kenison, Prominent U.S. Environmental Lawyer and DU Alumnus, Participates in Green Energy Roundtable

Howard Kenison, chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Environmental Law and chair of the ABA Working Group on Environmental Issues and the Rule of Law, says that Colorado is in the top five -- and perhaps the top three -- in terms of state activities involving green energy technology.

Mr. Kenison, a DU law alumnus and chair of Lindquist & Vennum's Environment, Natural Resources, and Climate Change practice group, recently participated in a roundtable discussion ("Inside the Boardroom: Being Green and Generating Green Dominates Roundtable," June 15, 2009") about Colorado's leading role in green energy development sponsored by Law Week Colorado. 

Mr. Kenison pointed out that Colorado's impressive green energy technology standing is driven, in part, "by the fact that we're at a place where we have wind, we have solar, and we have a relatively good transmission grid, although we're going to need to do a lot of work to update that grid to bring renewables on line."

Despite Colorado's favorable geographic setting, however, Mr. Kenison said that the state should not assume "just by virtue of sunshine and wind that we'll become a green energy center. I think we have to work at it. I think we have to consciously decide that we as a state want to do that." 

The key is to have many stakeholders working together, he said adding:

"It means working with [utility company] Xcel [Energy], it means working with [utility firm] Tri-State, which just acquired maybe 200 megawatts of solar in New Mexico. And they now have to tap into their transmission system to bring it...to the front range...Whether you are utilities, whether you're in the environmental group, to get us to that point we have to make a conscious decision to do that. And that's what, I think, hopefully, [Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter] is doing. It sounds like he's doing it, because he keeps saying energy policy...and green energy, but we really have to do it as a team."

Mr. Kenison has been a long-time friend of the LLM/MRLS program, supportive of the graduate program's mission and always willing to provide advice about how to improve the program based on his wide-ranging experiences in the practice of environmental law.  

As a leader in environmental law, his observations about what is going on in Colorado, and nationally for that matter, merit close consideration.  Put simply, what he says matters.