March 28, 2024

Boulder Seeks to Take Power From the Power Company

Here, that debate is focused on electricity, specifically whether this city should, in Tuesday’s election, sever its relationship with a corporate utility and move toward a home-ruled, municipally owned one that would be environmentally greener and locally accountable.

Kristin Johnson, a 57-year-old lawyer, summed up her planned vote to oust the company, Xcel Energy, in seven succinct words.

“They don’t have our interest at heart,” she said.

Xcel, a Minneapolis-based company that supplies electricity across eight states, including most of Colorado, is fighting back hard, arguing that a divorce would be devastatingly expensive for Boulder residents through higher electricity rates and start-up costs. And if talk of home-rule is really about having more renewable, carbon-reduced energy generation, well then, the company has said in advertisements and letters to residents, a big corporation with deep pockets can help get there cheaper and faster than any city, however well intentioned.

“I can’t find the numbers for how Boulder is going to do it better,” said Bob Bellemare, an Xcel consultant.

Proponents of ballot issues 2C and 2B, which includes a $1.9 million tax increase in the first year to pay for planning and analysis, say that the utility industry desperately fears a public awakening, and that a John Brown-like raid on a monopoly in one place could galvanize electricity consumers all across the nation to push for change.

Leaders of the effort concede that huge challenges await if the city goes forward, and that Xcel is not the worst provider to have. Partly prodded by a Colorado law requiring 30 percent renewable energy by 2020 — one of the most aggressive standards in the nation — the company has become a big producer of wind electricity. It has also spent more than $40 million here in Boulder building a pilot project called Smart Grid, with sophisticated metering that can help customers reduce electricity use.

Not enough, some say.

“Boulder can do better,” said Shaun McGrath, a former mayor and a leader of the ballot drive.

“We were making some headway with our carbon reductions,” Mr. McGrath said, referring to the relationship with Xcel, which is still, like most utilities, dependent on coal for much of its output. “But really what we kept bumping into was this ceiling of where our electricity was coming from.”

The backdrop, both sides say, is the city itself, a mountain-fringed college town about 45 minutes from Denver that is consistently one of the most liberal and idealistic corners of Colorado politics. President Obama carried Boulder County with 72 percent of the vote in 2008.

In the electricity fight, left-leaning politics have been aligned with hard science, supporters say, creating a unique platform for thinking creatively about electricity and democracy.

Climate and weather research, in particular, has a huge presence in the city, at federal institutions like the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration along with the tech-heavy University of Colorado that sprawls through the center of town. More than two-thirds of the population over age 25 has a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to census figures — compared with just over 36 percent for Colorado as a whole.

A passionate outdoor youth and fitness culture — a weekend run or ride on a Boulder bike path can feel like a border crossing to Spandex nation — completes the demographic circle from which the anti-Xcel forces have drawn support. A youth-centered group called New Era Colorado has been phone-banking for the electricity measures for weeks.

“It’s probably going to get passed because it is such a Boulder thing,” said Jane Imber, 55.

Ms. Imber, a freelance copy writer, said that she planned to vote no, even though she believes strongly in clean energy. “I think we have a better chance of changing Xcel from the inside than the outside,” she said.

Some supporters of the separation, though, say that local history — notably a long-simmering conflict over a coal-fired power plant in the city, called Valmont, which Xcel plans to retire by 2017 — has poisoned the well. Valmont has been the site of numerous protests over the years.

“There’s a special distrust of Xcel,” said Kate Clark, 27, a graduate student in environmental studies at the University of Colorado and a ferocious opponent of coal. Ms. Clark, who said she had also visited the Occupy Denver protest site several times in recent weeks, has volunteered at New Era Colorado.

The two ballot measures would not immediately initiate a break with Xcel or the creation of a new provider. The soonest that could happen, both sides say, given the many technical and legal issues — and the question of compensation to Xcel for the assets and customers it would lose — is probably 2017.

And Xcel officials have said there would be other bumps.

Because of the intense environmental ethos here, for example, Xcel customers in Boulder have been disproportionate enrollees in the company’s existing solar energy and conservation programs. The city’s 48,000 Xcel customers account for only 3.4 percent of the statewide ratepayer base, but 15 percent of the solar participants.

What that means is that solar installation rebates, Xcel officials said, totaling more than $38 million to Boulder customers since 2006, have been disproportionally borne by other customers around the state — a subsidy pipeline that could dry up with separation, though that decision would require regulators to weigh in.

And how green is green, anyway? Under Colorado law, shareholder-owned companies like Xcel are covered by the 30 percent renewable energy mandate by 2020. Municipally owned utilities of the size that Boulder would require would have to get to only 10 percent by then.

Jack Begg contributed research.

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Advertising: Boxed Wine Firms Claim They’ll Pass the Taste Test

“I said, ‘Don’t do it!’ ” said Ms. Ermel, 30, an unemployed lawyer. She then pointed out that another brand of boxed wine, Black Box, was on sale.

“This is just a couple dollars more and you’re going to like it a lot more,” Ms. Ermel recalled telling the woman, who proceeded to return her original choice to the shelf and plop two varieties of Black Box into her cart instead.

It was not, to be sure, the first time Ms. Ermel had sung the praises of the eight-year-old brand, whose eight varieties are sold in three-liter boxes, the equivalent of four 750-milliliter bottles, for about $20.

“I’ve pointed Black Box out to random people shopping for wine, and said, ‘If you’re looking for something different, you should try this,’ ” she said.

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Ms. Ermel, it turns out, is an agent who has been tapped by BzzAgent, a 10-year-old Boston company that specializes in word-of-mouth and social-network marketing.

BzzAgent was hired by Black Box last fall, according to a written summary of the campaign, to “generate word-of-mouth to increase awareness” and to “increase trial, advocacy and impact sales.”

Like about 2,000 other volunteers, who are not paid but receive products deeply discounted or free, Ms. Ermel was asked to invite friends to a blind tasting party at her home, and to serve the wine without first mentioning that it had come out of a box (the brand provided carafes for serving). Then, after the revelation, hosts solicited feedback from guests, who in Ms. Ermel’s case numbered 50.

Only four attendees at her gathering had even heard of Black Box before, but she said guests were so impressed that at least 20 subsequently bought the wine. She has bought it about a dozen times in the last year.

She is under no obligation to praise BzzAgent products unless she feels genuinely enthusiastic, and in the couple of instances she has tried products that she thought were duds, she did not recommend them to anyone, Ms. Ermel said.

Now, for another campaign for Black Box, BzzAgent is enlisting 5,000 agents to host wine tastings over the next two months.

“What we’re trying to do is get people away from their preconceptions about box wine,” said Malcolm Faulds, senior vice president for marketing at BzzAgent, which is owned by Dunnhumby.

Unlike HouseParty.com, which as its name makes clear focuses mainly on consumer-hosted parties to sample brands, parties play a role in only about 15 percent of the hundreds of campaigns BzzAgent undertakes annually, Mr. Faulds said.

Rather, most of what BzzAgent does, and a large component of the Black Box campaign, is encouraging participants to engage with friends about brands on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, as well as in face-to-face situations. Those agents regularly account for their online and offline mentions of participating brands on the BzzAgent Web site, enabling the company to inform brands how many consumers saw or heard those mentions.

The company reports having about 850,000 agents at its disposal, allowing it to assemble groups based on factors including interests, income level, age, gender and location.

Wine snobs tend to turn up their noses at wine sold in a box, and not without cause: boxed wine in the United States historically has been marketed to consumers who were interested almost exclusively in a good value and did not care whether their chardonnay had a herbaceous bouquet or complex finish.

But in the last decade, a new crop of boxed brands — including Black Box, a Constellation Wines brand — has aimed to raise the expectations of consumers. The so-called premium boxed wines, which tend to be sold in three-liter boxes, smaller than the more common five-liter boxes, have won over numerous wine reviewers, and are often compared favorably with bottled wine.

“Bottles might be prettier, but boxes are looking increasingly attractive to wine drinkers for one reason: they cost as little as $4 for the equivalent of a standard 750-milliliter bottle,” Consumer Reports wrote in 2009. “Here’s more reason to celebrate: Three boxed chardonnays our experts recently tried are very good.”

The brands were FishEye, Banrock Station and Black Box.

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Sales of premium boxed wines like Black Box, those in three-liter sizes that tend to cost $20 or more, rose 19 percent in 2010 from 2009, according to Nielsen. Similarly, sales for Black Box itself rose 18.2 percent in the year ending Sept. 4 from the previous year, according to the SymphonyIRI Group.

Besides the better-than-expected quality and affordability, a selling point for boxed wine is its shelf life. Air oxidizes bottled wine and ruins it within a few days, but boxed wine comes in an airtight plastic bag attached to a spigot, meaning there is little space for air and wine stays fresh for up to four weeks.

Kim Moore, Black Box’s director for marketing, said the brand had not done traditional advertising because consumers might be so certain that boxed wine was inferior that they would dismiss advertising that claimed otherwise. “There’s definitely a stigma of box wine because people think of the value box wine that they drank too much of back in their college days,” she said, referring to the cheaper brands sold in larger boxes. “We say tasting is believing, and just getting people to try our wine gets them to peel back that stigma.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4aa024885c7b869a8b85c1c84ded9116

Business Briefing | Legal News: Lawyer Sentenced in Insider Trading Case

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Editorial: Not the America They Expected

No foreign workers should have to put up with bullying from bosses or threats of firing, or deportation, if they want to organize.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2259749130795ed801bf3bfe5bca53ef

Lawyer Convicted of Tax Evasion Seeks New Trial

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Perry and Bush’s Legacy

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Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=52059e0313d1eac8e03169df46fd60a0

Preoccupations: Into the Bustle of China’s Boom

I was excited about the idea. I’ve been with the company for more than 20 years. From 2005 to 2007, I worked on a project in Russia and made a number of trips there, but they never lasted more than 30 days. I have a feeling that NBBJ felt I could adapt easily in China because I’ve worked with some demanding clients. They probably also figured that if I could work in Russia, even for short periods, I could work anywhere.

I would rather have been offered the China project when my children were young and could have gone with me, because it would have been a great experience for them. On the other hand, I probably had more flexibility when the offer did come up, because they were already grown and on their own.

The biggest drawback was that my wife, Beverly, couldn’t join me. She’s a lawyer with the Washington State attorney general’s office, and her job can’t be done from afar. We decided that I’d go and that she’d visit when she could.

My predecessor in China tried to tell me about the job, but it’s hard to teach or learn everything by phone. And NBBJ didn’t have classes or training that larger corporations with hundreds of overseas employees might have.

Before I agreed to the assignment, however, the company sent my wife and me to Shanghai to give us a feel for what life might be like. We saw some housing options and met the people in the Shanghai office. NBBJ also paid for some economy-class airline tickets for family visits.

That amount of help was O.K. with me. I’ve traveled a fair amount, and am usually pretty good about preparing for a new region. I’m not necessarily looking for a lot of information; sometimes I enjoy being surprised and would rather find things out for myself.

I had three months to prepare. I picked up software for learning Chinese, but work was so busy that I didn’t have time to get to it before I left or after I arrived. Luckily, our Chinese employees spoke English.

Of everything I encountered, the biggest surprise was the street signs — they were in both English and Chinese, so it was easy to get around. The buses broadcast the stops in both languages as well. I was pleased to find that I could go wherever I wanted; I saw no restricted areas.

Since NBBJ is a United States company, Chinese law requires that we work with a local design institute in China. It could be stressful at times. The Chinese clients expected significantly more design options than a typical American client, and they wanted faster responses. Occasionally, they seemed intent on sticking with a design that had already been done, but on the other hand, they could be willing to take risks.

My work schedule was intense, so I didn’t have much free time, but I did become lonely for my family. It took a while, but I made friends in the compound where my apartment was. I also got to know some expats in our office, and my Chinese landlord and his wife were wonderful.

I enjoyed Shanghai more than I thought I would. Life moves onto the street in that city, especially when it’s warm. There’s always something happening, from card games to street-vendor sales to impromptu ballroom dancing. I was there for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The Chinese literally rebuilt both cities for these events, which, as an architect, I found fascinating. There is probably no better place for an architect to practice currently than China.

LIKE many other people who return from work in another country, I wish that I had traveled more while I was there. I also wish that I had learned the language before my arrival: then I could have enjoyed arguing with the taxi drivers about directions. But I did learn how to get around and knew the most direct routes. I also regret not being able to just talk with the drivers. Something told me they are like taxi drivers everywhere — they want to talk about the city and what’s happening.

I’d advise people who work overseas to try living outside the expat community. There were expats everywhere in Shanghai, but they seemed to congregate in certain areas. People with children might want to be close to the expat schools, but it pays to live with the locals if you can. You learn so much more about the culture.

I’ve been home a year now. I live on a houseboat on a lake in the middle of Seattle. In Shanghai, I rode a bike to work; here I walk to the office. I’m amazed by how quiet Seattle streets are. I miss the noise of Shanghai.

As told to Patricia R. Olsen. E-mail: preoccupations@nytimes.com.

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