"Solar Roughneck" Jonah Coles Featured in Colorado Biz

Priming the New Energy Pump

While green energy is blossoming in Colorado - thanks in large part to political incentives - oil and gas is pulling back as low prices curb profits.
By Todd Neff

Having a hands-on job in the Colorado energy business used to mean roughnecking on a rig or laying natural-gas pipe. Jonah Coles’ energy job involves laying silicon sheets on roofs.

Coles, 30, leads a solar panel-installation crew for Boulder-based Independent Power Systems, a company that has doubled in size to about 25 employees since he started there in mid-2007. Coles and two colleagues were recently spending their third day on a 33-degree shingled slope above Denver's Hilltop neighborhood, where they installed 24 SunPower photovoltaic panels. He never had an interest in working on a rig.

“I think this is a passion,” Coles said. “Not everybody wants to be on the roof in the summer. But we truly believe we¹re saving the planet when we get up to go to work.” Oil and gas still dominate the Colorado energy world, employing more than 50,000 and generating an estimated $23 billion in economic output, or about 6 percent of the state¹s total. Yet as the oil and gas industry cuts back in reaction to falling prices and, some argue, an uncertain regulatory environment, solar, wind, bio-energy and energy-efficiency businesses appear to have emotional as well as political momentum.

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