The 16th annual ARE DAY Summit is back this weekend, focusing on creating “the new hydrogen-carbon economy.”
The event is hosted by the American Renewable Energy Institute, or AREI. Chip Comins, the founder of AREI, said the rates of carbon going into the atmosphere are alarming and causing even local climate change repercussions.
"This is forcing our atmosphere into some very severe feedback loops that are resulting in some of the climate changes on our planet," he said. "Just here locally, the massive fires in Basalt last summer just one year ago, and the massive snowfall we received last winter."
That is why the event is centered around stepping away from using coal and gas as the baseload source of energy, and focusing on hydrogen.
"We really are encouraged by some of the developments we are finding in hydrogen and the use of hydrogen," Comins said. "Solar and wind are not going to make it as a source of baseload energy anytime soon."
The weekend will be filled with over 100 speakers, including presidential candidate Tom Steyer and youth climate activist, Xiye Bastida. Comins said he hopes the use of speaker events and streaming them online will breathe a bit of inspiration and hope into the world when discussinf climate change.
"Every individual and citizen on the planet Earth has to take action to avoid the burning of fossil fuels," he said. "I'm interested in 3 things: implementation, acceleration and replication of solutions. And then step and repeat."
Passes to speaker events can be found on their website, or be streamed online. Free films focusing on climate change will be screen until Friday evening at several locations across the Valley.