Ritter talks up his econ plan and renewable energy in a coal and oil world.

• Author: Cote, Mike
• Position: COTE'S colorado - Interview

We recently sat down with Gov. Bill Ritter at the Capitol to ask him about his legislative and economic priorities. The following Q & A was culled from our videotaped interview, which can be viewed at cobizmag.com in three installments.

CB: You've named aerospace, bioscience, renewable energy and tourism as your administration's economic focus. How do you see those areas shaping Colorado's future?

Ritter: We've got the second-highest concentration of workers in any state in the country involved in aerospace. The defense industry is important to us as a state, and aerospace is a part of that. But there are other things outside of it that involve satellite technology that we're involved in, in a very significant way, both in the private sector and with respect to what our institutions are doing.

We think we can lure companies and grow companies. We can take ideas out of academia and transfer them into the private sector in aerospace. The same is true of the life sciences. It's not as big a sector for us, but we're ideally positioned as a state to do more around life sciences.

Renewable energy: We obviously worked very hard to put ourselves on the map in a significant way in 2007. And I think most of the people who were skeptical about the possibilities now look at us and say this is a sector we can develop.

Tourism is the second largest industry in Colorado if you take all of the clusters that are involved in it. The Legislature before I arrived, under Gov. Owens, dedicated another $15 million to marketing tourism. We've already seen the impact in a fairly short amount of time.

CB: Traditional oil and gas is a $23 billion a year industry. You're working toward a compromise allowing some drilling in the Roan Plateau public lands. How do you balance the renewable energy economy with our traditional energy economy?

Ritter: You mix the two and understand that, in this state, we passed last year a statute that said for the investor-owned utilities, 20 percent of the energy they provide in Colorado has to come from renewable energy by 2020.

We have the ability to capture wind, sun, even geothermal--all three great possibilities. But we know the future of energy use in this state is going to mean natural gas usage, and it burns cleaner than other hydrocarbons. It also means that...