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
Energy Innovation at Former Coalmine
National Just Transition cohort
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.
Through two national prizes that the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance helped to secure, for community-solar and clean energy innovation, we are helping to shape a rural-minded, community-centered future for the North Fork Valley.
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.
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.
Both prizes were submitted through the HeroX platform and were funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
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The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance helped to secure a 2023 National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) community-solar prize, which has spurred this project along, preparing it for development in 2025.
Once complete it will provide an energy cost-savings to about 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 is a partner to an NREL-sponsored clean energy innovation prize made possible by the Bipartisan Infratructure Law.
This project seeks to develop a community energy source, incubate new enterprise, build community resilience, reduce climate harm and support reclamation and habitat restoration. -
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