President Biden will visit a major wind energy manufacturing facility in Southern Colorado on Wednesday, the White House announced in the morning.
Biden will tour and give remarks in Pueblo, Colorado, at the factory of CS Wind, a Seoul-based company that is the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbine towers. The company broke ground on a $200 million expansion of their existing plant earlier in the year, with an undisclosed portion of the investment being supported by Inflation Reduction Act funding.
The White House estimates that the expansion will eventually generate at least 850 new jobs in the Pueblo area. The facility was initially constructed in 2009, and was purchased from Danish firm Vestas by CS Wind in 2021.
Biden’s visit has explicitly political motivations. The White House official press release on Wednesday morning directly addressed prominent controversial congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who represents the district encompassing the wind tower facility and Pueblo metro area, for her past criticism of the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate and energy provisions.
“President Biden is delivering on his promise to create opportunities and jobs in communities too often left behind, while self-described MAGA Republicans like Representative Lauren Boebert continue to undermine their constituents by trying to block the President’s agenda,” Wednesday’s press release reads.
The White House highlighted Boebert voting against the Inflation Reduction Act and previously describing the legislation as “dangerous for America” in the press release.
President Biden has reportedly been pushed by advisors to take a more aggressive tact in promoting the administration’s perceived accomplishments in the face of criticism from high-profile congressional Republicans including Boebert, as the incumbent president’s poll numbers continue to lag despite receding inflation.
Colorado is already a major facilitator of renewable energy systems in the US. The state’s total renewable generation has more than quadrupled since 2010, according to the US Energy Information Agency. Renewables accounted for 37% of the state’s net power generation in 2022, four fifths of which was attributable to wind energy.
Colorado currently has the seventh largest installed wind energy generation capacity of US states. Colorado is also the eighth largest oil-producing state in the US, with the majority (82%) of production occurring in Weld County in the area to the northeast of the Denver metropolitan area.
“We know that we have more progress to make, but we feel very strongly that the president’s ‘Investing in America’ agenda is getting the economy back on track here after four years of Donald Trump and is making the kinds of investments that deliver for working people,” Olivia Dalton, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, told the Pueblo Chieftain on Tuesday.
