Sun and shadow: 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.

• Author: Neff, Todd
• Position: PLANET-PROFIT REPORT

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 we're 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 state's 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.

In February, President Barack Obama chose the solar-paneled Denver Museum of Nature & Science as the locale to sign the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, which the Rocky Mountain News reported includes $ 130 million in clean energy and weatherization assistance programs for Colorado. It also includes tax incentives for renewable energy facilities.

Colorado's "New Energy Economy," as Gov. Bill Ritter has branded it, is showing no signs of slowing, according to a recent study by the Boulder-based American Solar Energy Society and Washington, D.C., research firm Management Information Services Inc.

The study put 2007 Colorado renewable energy revenues--including wind, photovoltaics, solar thermal, hydroelectric, geothermal, ethanol, biodiesel, biomass power, fuel cells and hydrogen--at $1.1 billion. Much larger yet was the $9.1 billion in energy-efficiency industry sales, which include a wide array of recycling, reuse, and remanufacturing, the production of Energy Star-rated electronics; and green building materials from traditional manufacturers such as Denver-based Johns Manville, among a wide range of goods and services.

Colorado is an outsized performer in renewable energy, the study found. While the state's economic output totaled just 1.7 percent of the nation's in 2007, it had about 6 percent of the U.S. wind and photovoltaics markets and 5 percent of the ethanol and biodiesel markets.

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The report estimated direct employment in Colorado renewable energy businesses at 4,400, with energy efficiency-related businesses employing an additional 40,000. Including indirect jobs, renewable energy and energy efficiency activities employ 91,000 Coloradans, the report concludes.

And those numbers will only grow, it says. By 2030, the authors estimate, Colorado's renewable energy sector could explode to $13 billion in revenues and 113,000 jobs in the most optimistic scenario. Energy-efficiency businesses would generate an additional $44 billion in revenues and 500,000 jobs.

The report also found that, dollar for dollar, renewable energy and energy efficiency generates many more jobs than the oil and gas sector.

"If you want to provide an incentive, you get 2 1/2 times the jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy as you would in oil...