Colorado Forest and Energy

I am now working (and have been since June) at Colorado Forest and Energy (CF&E), a renewable energy start-up in my hometown of Denver, Colorado. Our website (colofe.com) can give an idea of who we are and what we do. Our founding team is a group of people that I know from the Obama campaign, we worked together in South Jefferson County Colorado. We are working with another local company, Community Power Corporation, to commercialize the BioMax technology they have developed (the website has good info on the technology).

The energy context in America is changing rapidly, and I think a few key concepts (that reinforce each other) will emerge as the most transformative.

• Distributed Generation (small units connected directly to a facility like a school)
• Community Based Solutions (engage people in the production of the energy they use)
• Smart Grids (this includes demand management and the integration of distributed generation with good telemetry)
• Thrift (we use all of the waste heat generated by our units, central plants waste huge amounts of heat and even central solar and wind waste energy in transmission and distribution)

It is not a mistake that these are the core principles that drive what we do at CF&E. We are pushing hard to get our venture off the ground, and when we do we will be the only company that deploys small (100kw) biomass gasification units and owns those units, selling the power generated to utilities or directly to customers. That is why we make the claim that we are "the world's first community-based bioenergy power company."