Vail Daily column: Solving climate crisis
If a Colorado Latino homeowner does the right things — gets an energy audit/assessment, makes their home more energy efficient, adds solar PV to their rooftop or a solar PV array, and buys an electric car like a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt— after five to seven years they will be saving anywhere from $600 to $800 per month.
Let’s look at the numbers for a moment. 1,106,340 or 21 percent of all Coloradan’s are Hispanic or Latino. There are almost 368,780 Latino households in Colorado. If all Latino households got an energy audit/assessment, switched to solar power and purchased electric cars, in five to seven years they would be saving an average of $650 a month. That’s a collective savings of nearly $239,707,000 per month or $3 billion a year kept in hands of Latinos and even more with business and agriculture involved.
No longer would those monies go to utilities, oil, gas, and coal or dirty emissions auto manufacturers. Our Colorado skies would be clearer; we could breathe without sucking down pollutants; our lands would be free of gas and oil wells, smoke stacks and coal strip mines.
A whole new job market and economy would emerge for Latinos — one that is so robust people are happy and able to enjoy life. They can afford medical insurance. They can afford can afford necessities for their children, to go out to dinner or a movie more often, even go on vacation and send their kids to college. Not only that, but with a lower cost of living and less debt, crime rates would drop.
Climate Colorado is a Colorado nonprofit with a how-to step-by-step process for Colorado Latino families to get these energy upgrades and affordably.
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Robert Castellino
CEO, Climate Colorado
