Rural Renewables & Energy Equity
Centering rural people in the transistion to a fair, purposeful and clean energy future.
The North Fork Valley is part of a region where many are eager to transition to a cleaner energy future.
The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance supports deployment of locally-driven clean energy to support rural Colorado in the shift toward renewables, including community-solar projects that integrate with farms and residents, and that meet local needs and priorities.
The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance wants local communities to benefit the most from new clean energy, and to decide how that future is shaped.
We also network with other organizations and with peer communities, to advance rural economies beyond fossil-fuel dependent pasts.
We are currently helping to shepherd several innovative and community-driven projects that are designed to provide meaningful benefits to farms, farmworkers and the region, and that support local economies and livelihoods.
Our current work on in this space includes:
Thistle Whistle Agrivoltaics
Switchback Community Collaborative
National Just Transition cohort
Community Power Accelerator Prize
The North Fork Valley is helping to power a clean energy future with innovative community-solar projects made possible by a federal clean energy prize and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed by Congress in 2021.
SOLVE It Prize
In 2024, the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance was a partner in a separate clean energy prize. Through this award we participated in a community visioning effort around repurposing a former coal-mine as part of a mine-site and climate remediation project.
Although our team did not advance in the SOLVE IT Prize, we did develop ideas that may still inform development at this site, including the potential for additional community-solar.
Phase 2 Winner
Since 2023 the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance has been helping to lead a local effort to bring community-solar to the North Fork Valley. This has included this opportunity with the National Community Solar Partnership that has included two Community Power prize awards, an in-depth 10-week community-solar development class, and ongoing guidance from and engagement with a cohort of other teams and solar experts.
When partnerships connect federal resources, expert guidance, and local knowledge meaningful clean energy solutions become possible. We wish to thank the U.S. Department of Energy, our cohort and our North Fork Valley partners.
Read our news release on the Phase 2 award here.
2024 Update
In 2024 we advanced two innovative projects as part of our Rural Renewables & Energy Equity work — both made possible through recent federal funding in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.
Two national American-Made Challenge prizes that the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance helped to secure, for community-solar and clean energy innovation, are shaping a rural-minded, community-centered future for the North Fork Valley.
Both prizes are funded through the federal infrastructure law, and each could also help unlock additional federal clean energy and climate funding.
At Thistle Whistle Farm, outside Hotchkiss, a community led effort is making progress on what will be a 1 MW agrivoltaic and community-solar system. It is part of a community-solar project currently competing in the Community Power Accelerator Prize.
Agrivoltaics is the pairing of solar energy with agriculture, and community-solar is a strategy that helps advance energy equity, by giving subscribers a stake in a solar system and the opportunity to obtain an energy cost savings.
Switchback Community Collaborative which is being developed as a recipient of the SOLVE-IT Prize was awarded to a partnership that includes CO Farm & Food Alliance, for an innovative project to clean-up legacy pollution and provide community use at a former coalmine recently purchased by project lead Switchback Restoration.
Both prizes were submitted through the HeroX platform, which includes a broad range of opportunities to fund innovation and crowd-sourced solutions.
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The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance helped to secure a 2023 DEpt of Energy community-solar prize, which has spurred this project along. In January 2025 the team was awarded a Phase 2 Award, preparing it for development in 2025.
Once complete it will provide an energy cost-savings to 50 - 75 small farms and farmworker households, while benefiting agriculture on a small market farm outside the town of Hotchkiss.
Learn more at mirasol-ag.org -
At the site of a former coalmine outside of Paonia - Bowie #1 - the CO Farm & Food Alliance was partner to a federal clean energy innovation prize made possible by the Bipartisan Infratructure Law. However the project was not advanced to Phase 2 of the three-stage competition
This project still seeks to develop a community energy source, incubate new enterprise, build community resilience, reduce climate harm and support reclamation and habitat restoration at this site, and will be starting with studying the feasibility of a small community-solar project. -
The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance has been supported by the Just Transition Fund, and participates in a national cohort it convenes connecting coalmining and power-plant communities that are working to develop more diverse, resilient and secure economies and futures.
Learn more at JustTransitionFund.org