Last month a guest author wrote about his experiences installing a rain barrel in his home. The moral of his story was “Be prepared to face an uphill battle.” In the Denver Post recently there was an article with a similar theme, namely that the regulations being put in place regarding clean energy have hampered its development and expansion. While Colorado positions itself as a leader in the new energy economy, there are a multitude of road blocks.

As mentioned previously, Colorado officials increased the percentage of the state’s electricity required to be generated from alternative energy.The Post article stated that some would go even further than the current 30% by 2020. “Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff promises 50 percent by 2030.” This target includes nuclear energy expansion. Possible uranium mills stand as one of the article’s foci.

Nuclear is not the only energy source that has drawn resistance. Whether stemming from the environmental reviews necessary or landowners’ fears, geothermal, wind, and solar projects also face opposition. According to the Post,

Karen Alderman Harbert, president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, says the layers of federal, state and local ‘green tape’ hindering new energy projects are ‘a plague on our economy and our energy security and our environment.’

Harbert recently surveyed all the U.S. energy projects seeking licensing and siting approval and found 380 stalled or canceled “as a result of the abuse of the environmental permitting process.” More than 40 percent of those are renewable-energy projects.

In the past three years, bureaucratic regulations have cost the country 250,000 new jobs and $560 billion in capital investment, Harbert said.

In order to expedite certain alternative energy projects and clarify these issues, Colorado’s GEO (Governor’s Energy Office) “recently launched the Renewable Energy Development Infrastructure Project to help untangle the challenges of installing new transmission lines needed to move power from wind and solar hot spots in Colorado to more populated areas.”

Needless to say, any obstacle to clean energy creates a difficult environment for the generation of these projects. Considering the start-up costs for solar, geothermal, and wind farms, these endeavors begin at a bit of deficit as compared to traditional energy sources. While incidents like BP’s Deep Horizon oil leak may signify a a shift in attitudes toward petroleum, fossil fuels still make up roughly 85% of the United States’ energy portfolio. If this country is to build a clean energy economy, subsidies like those that help build petroleum and other energy industries would go a long way toward leveling the playing field.

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