Green Mountain gets deeper green

One of my favorite companies continues to impress me. Green Mounatin Roasters has finished installing a 572 panel solar power array on their plant in Waterbury, Vermont. An alliance between Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the State of Vermont's Clean Energy Development Fund and Green Mountain Power enabled this high up-front cost project to manifest.

I'd like to see this kind of collaboration happen in my home state of Colorado. Seems like businesses and cities around here talk about being green a lot but when it comes down to getting up the solar panels or wind turbines self-interest prevails and projects get halted. From a home owner's perspective the incentives are still left to be seen. Xcel energy gives no rebates to potential and eager home owners who wish to install solar panels if there is a tree partially shading their roof! Think about the amount of sun that is hitting my roof in Colorado vs. the amount hitting this factory in Vermont or any city in Germany for that matter. And the energy tyrants at Excel have the audacity to deny subsidies because of shade trees! Drives me batty.

The case of Green Mountain Coffee is a great example to follow. Perhaps we in Colorado on the frontier of the "New Energy Economy" can learn a few things about cooperative collaboration from this company.

Read more about this at Greenbiz.