By SHAUN MCGRATH

Last week, city council members toured NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory, seeing some of the dazzling climate research conducted there in the "Earth on a Sphere" theater that gives a view of our world from outer space. Dramatic videos showing increasing carbon in the earth's atmosphere depicted very sobering impacts that we can expect in this century, including growing acidification of the oceans that could kill off coral reefs and a warming climate that could yield increasingly less land suitable for crop production--a scary thought given the trajectory for human population reaching 10 billion people.

I left the labs disheartened at the grim prospects for our world, but also proud of our community for its willingness to step up to the challenges of climate change. The climate research coming out of the labs is among the absolute best in the world, and it is being conducted by Nobel Prize-winning friends and neighbors living in our community. Boulder has also shown great leadership at a policy level as one of the early U.S. cities to adopt the Kyoto Protocol goals for reducing climate emissions, and becoming the first city in the nation to pass a carbon tax to fund programs to reduce those emissions.

Recently, Boulder landed another important first that will further our efforts to meet our climate goals. When Xcel Energy announced in March that they had chosen Boulder to become the first Smart Grid City in the nation, they noted that modern-day electric grid operations have not changed much since Thomas Edison invented the light bulb 100 years ago. Through Smart Grid, Xcel wants to bring their networks into the 21st century and digital age--starting with Boulder. They view Smart Grid "not only as improving our energy security, but also as an environmental solution to help solve the pressing global issue of climate change."

One of the first things Smart Grid consumers in Boulder will see is the replacement and installation of advanced meters in their homes. The meters will eventually provide a gateway allowing all homeowners--regardless of an individual's income or technology savvy--to remotely control or pre-set their furnaces, lights, air conditioners, and other devices, but only if they choose to participate. Appliances, equipment and energy load of all types will be operated to maximize efficiency and minimize environmental impacts.

The meters also give Xcel the ability to dynamically price electricity, giving consumers the opportunity to choose how much energy they use based on their personal preferences, such as pricing, green power availability or low emission power sources such as wind and solar.

Continuous feedback from smart meters and substation sensors should further increase power reliability by enabling rapid and precise response to grid problems. The system has the potential to pinpoint lines or substations at risk of overloading and activate remotely operated substation switches to reroute power. If problems persist, the system would send a signal to the smart meters of customers on the troubled lines, including possibly offering them some type of financial incentive to reduce demand when necessary.

One particularly exciting aspect of Smart Grid is its integration of infrastructure to support easily dispatched distributed generation technologies, such as plug-in hybrid vehicles. In this day of $4 per gallon gasoline, Smart Grid will facilitate a move to electric vehicles that can be charged when electricity is cheapest. It also will allow Xcel to draw from those same car batteries to meet peak demands for energy, thereby avoiding the need to build expensive natural gas power plants. Such ingenuity to address high gasoline prices is a welcome alternative to such unsustainable--and unhelpful--solutions as reducing the federal gas tax and opening up the Roan Plateau and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

On May 15, there will be a great opportunity to learn more about Smart Grid during the 2008 Boulder Economic Summit. Xcel Energy Chairman and CEO Dick Kelly will unveil the Smart Grid design plan together with speeches from Governor Ritter and myself. This event will take place at the University Memorial Center on the CU campus beginning at 10:00 a.m., and the public is invited.