A car dealer who wants to help develop the future of renewable energy?  Unheard of, right?  Well, Burt Automotive is such a dealership.  Burt Automotive is a stakeholder in a project with an eye to the future of renewable energy in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Through it’s sponsorship of the Thunder Ridge High School Science Club, Burt is helping with a grass roots idea at its very inception; the development of a new energy economy and an incubator for renewable energy research right here in Denver’s southern suburbs.

Learn more about this project:

The community of Highlands Ranch in south metropolitan Denver could possibly be incorporated by 2009.  As the 2nd largest city ever to incorporate in U.S. history, Highlands Ranch has a window of opportunity to develop a city charter based on a mixture of creative entrepreneurial and novel approaches to significant social and environmental issues of the present and future. 

Here’s the future vision of the Highlands Ranch City of the Future team at Thunder Ridge High School: “By 2020, the electricity used in a Highlands Ranch household is 50% generated by a rooftop solar panel. The scientific energy industrial park located near Lucent Blvd and Highlands Ranch Pkwy has 50 wind turbines producing enough electricity to power the Highlands Ranch Town Center and residential homes within a five-0mile radius.  Local residents and businesses receive an annual dividend check rebated back from local industries that relocated here 11years ago to start-up research and development energy businesses. Today, they produce solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells, bio-fuel equipment and other innovative products that reduce the community’s reliance on foreign oil while earning profits and dividends for the businesses and the city budget.

Worldwide leaders routinely visit Highlands Ranch to learn how a city of 90,000 residents developed and adopted a city charter back in 2009 to form revenue sharing partnerships with companies developing alternative energy products.  The entire community has been transformed into a working model that other local, state and federal agencies can learn about innovative energy consumption tax models that produce local revenue while keeping local taxes low.” (Source:  http://renewablehighlandsranch.blogsome.com)

Overall, Highlands Ranch becomes a change agent, thought leader, proactive, visionary and risk-taker.  This is a unique opportunity to create a unified strategy and set of tactics with residents and business leaders at the same time striving for a single goal to reduce our reliance on foreign oil.  It provides a source of municipal financial independence for Highlands Ranch while other local traditional municipalities are seeking new but meager revenue generators with no real long-term value. Other cities have adopted alternative-energy measures and policies ad hoc and without voter approval.  In Highlands Ranch voters will have an incorporation choice to determine whether to have a very traditional local government or vote on incorporation that just focuses on reducing Highlands Ranch dependence on foreign oil that will have a positive generational impact.

This is a unique opportunity because it is easier to implement such a program at a start-up local level than trying to implement and retrofit an energy program into an existing local government.

Click here to check out the Highlands Ranch renewable energy blog online at http://renewablehighlandsranch.blogsome.com/ Hear more from project partners and government officials on Renewable Energy

LG Chavez Jr., CEO of The Burt Automotive Network The Burt Automotive Network has contributed operating funds to the Science Club for the development of the business/master plan project as a high priority.  L.G. Chavez, CEO of The Burt Automotive Network states, “We support the ThunderRidge students to explore and map out a business plan that someday can reduce Highlands Ranch’s dependence on foreign oil, create a profit-sharing alternative fuel plan and at the same time, make a positive contribution to the environment.  As a born and bred Colorado company, Burt will be able to supply the largest array of energy-efficient and alternative fuel vehicles in the future.  Coloradoans are pragmatic environmentalists and very concerned about the effects auto emissions have on our air-quality, outdoors lifestyle, animal population and general habitat.  We hope to enlist other like-minded companies to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime venture.” Click here to join the program.

If you’d like to act as a student mentor, would like to get your company involved in this initiative or simply hear more about this and other grass roots projects in which Burt is involved, please give us your contact info and we’ll be happy to get back to you.