Two events hosted by the Boulder County Business Report recently highlight the Boulder Valley's emergence as a center of clean technologies and green business practices.

The first was the March edition of our CEO Roundtable, sponsored by Holland & Hart LLP and Ehrhardt Keefe Steiner & Hottman PC. Roundtable topics change monthly, and the March 9 gathering focused on one of my favorite segments: energy and utilities.

The second gathering occurred the next day and was a planning task force for our Green Summit, scheduled for June 15 at the Millennium Harvest House in Boulder. We include about three dozen individuals on our planning task force, and we had about eight of them present in the Boulder conference room of one of our Green Summit sponsors, Holme, Roberts & Owen LLP.

Both events drove home the fact that the communities of the Boulder Valley are at or near the forefront of important changes to how businesses operate.

The CEO Roundtable itself included individuals who are seeing the direct effects of the clean-tech revolution, including companies involved in installation of solar systems, developing energy technologies, or implementing, in the case of Xcel Energy, massive shifts in how power is delivered to households and businesses.

Craig Eicher, Xcel's area manager for the Boulder region, related some of the important news involving Xcel in recent weeks.

On March 5, two important announcements came out of Denver, including that the state would require that 30 percent of electricity come from renewable sources by 2020. That's up from the former requirement of 20 percent, and the mere 10 percent requirement of just a few years ago.

Eicher noted that Xcel has endorsed the higher goal, but that it wouldn't be easy. To paraphrase, he said that the initial 10 percent threshold was attainable with Xcel having both hands tied behind its back. The second goal of 20 percent was attainable with one hand tied behind its back, and the new goal of 30 percent will require both hands to make it happen.

Another announcement on March 5 reflects Colorado's push for clean energy - and Xcel's emergence as one of the nation's greenest utilities. The proposed Colorado Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act, according to a press release from the Governor's Energy Office, "would require Xcel Energy to sharply reduce pollutants by retiring, retrofitting or repowering Front Range coal-fired power plants by the end of 2017 and replacing them with facilities fueled by natural gas and other lower- or non-emitting energy sources."

Xcel has endorsed the measure.

Finally, Eicher related progress in Xcel's SmartGridCity project in Boulder, which so far has seen installation of 24,000 smart meters in the city, a number that is expected to reach 27,000 by the end of the summer.

Much remains unknown about what this project will mean for smart-grid technologies, and how they'll be financed, but Xcel is further along than perhaps any other utility in figuring it out.

What about the rest of the energy sector? Clean technologies represent a burgeoning industry in the Boulder Valley, driven by our federal laboratories, university and the pending arrival of ConocoPhillips in Louisville.

Clean tech will be one of many topics to be covered at our Green Summit, along with energy research, global energy challenges, green business practices, green home building and more.

Have an idea for a topic? E-mail at the address below.

<i>Christopher Wood can be reached at 303-440-4950 or cwood@bcbr.com.</i>