Meet Julie Smith | Environmental Author, Engineer and Activist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Julie Smith and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Julie, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
I was compelled to write my book because our planet is spiraling into disaster and the lack of action to save it terrifies me. As an engineer with a long history of industrial energy, water and waste reduction as well as two decades in the oil industry, I have a very good understanding of what we as a species face on our planet. I have a unique understanding of how things fit together, and know from experience that it’s not hard to reduce our impact, if we know what we need to do and feel enough urgency to do it. It’s actually pretty simple and it would be pathetic beyond words if we don’t. The book takes a logical and systematic approach, first building a compelling case that links human population with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, defining “three legs of sustainability”, and modelling how much we need to reduce our emissions to salvage our planet to the extent possible for future generations. To be clear, by “our planet” I mean the habitability of the surface for the life that lives here. Obviously the actual rock isn’t going anywhere for a long time and will recover just fine in about 10 million years.

I think it’s sadly ironic that in the past 56 years, since the first Earth Day in 1970, we have lost 70% of our wildlife and have more than doubled human population and our CO2 emissions. Does it feel like Earth Day is doing very much? Does it seem like we’re getting anywhere with our environmental stories in their silos? It certainly doesn’t seem that way to me. And now we’re down to just a few decades in which we will either save our planet or lose it completely. Now is not the time for the status quo that has so far failed us. Which is why I wrote this book.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I am currently an environmental author and activist. I also own a small business, Aspire Colorado, that makes sustainable castile soap and personal care products.

I began my professional career soon after high school as a part-time lab technician for an oilfield service company that my father had recently founded, TIORCO, INC. The business grew and the job quickly became a full-time job, and I found myself managing a lab with a few chemists. While working full time, I went to college part time, and after several years earned a BS in chemical engineering and petroleum refining from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO. I also earned a minor in Environmental Engineering, and learned about the decimation of our environment at the hands of fossil fuels. During my oil industry career, I invented and marketed technology to improve oil recovery beyond conventional production practices, writing more than 30 papers and giving numerous presentations in the U.S. and other countries.
After about 20 years in the oil industry, I couldn’t do it anymore because of my passion for environmental sustainability, so I pursued a career change, which took me to the Coors Brewery in Golden, CO. I started in the water and wastewater utility lab, and went back to school, where the company funded a Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering with a water and wastewater track at Colorado School of Mines. I graduated with a 4.0 grade point average. I finally got around to taking my Professional Engineer exam in Colorado, and continue to maintain the license. I also earned class “A” operator licenses in water treatment, wastewater treatment and industrial wastewater treatment.
I was soon promoted to Utility engineer at Coors, where I was responsible for all of the plant utilities, including water and waste water, as well as steam, electricity, condensate, ammonia refrigeration, plant compressed air and CO2 collection and distribution. I was a founding member of the brewery green team, along with P.J. Coors, and I managed a project to bring in single stream recycling throughout the entire brewery and all other facilities in the valley. I also worked with the city of Golden to lead an annual Clear Creek trash clean-up, as part of the company’s water responsibility initiatives, since beer is 90% water. I earned a diploma in brewing, which included intimate knowledge of industrial brewing and packaging, as well as how the glass and can manufacturing processes worked. I also earned and maintained a Project Management Certification through Project Management Institute (PMI).
During my final 9 years at Coors, I was the energy engineer for the Golden brewery, responsible for finding ways to reduce energy and water consumption throughout the brewery and valley. I managed communications with the on-site 40 MW co-gen power plant, and was instrumental in the transition from a blend of coal and natural gas feed to 100% natural gas, which reduced our CO2 emissions considerably. I also worked with the Xcel grid electricity provider to optimize electricity through our back-up standby grid account. We reduced energy by 50%, water by more than 20% and became the largest zero waste to landfill brewery in the world. We won the annual award for energy reduction from the Colorado Industrial Energy Challenge in 2013, which I received at the state capitol on behalf of Coors. I earned an energy engineer certification from Association of Energy Engineers (AEE). I also taught an annual class (a single session as a guest lecturer) at Colorado School of Mines as part of an “Industrial Waste Minimization” graduate class, on “Industrial Brewing Energy, Water and Waste Reduction”. This class was combined with a tour deep within the brewery for the students, and I scheduled the various process managers to explain their processes and energy reduction to the students.
I remained active in the regional wastewater professional organization, Rocky Mountain Water Environment Association, which is the rocky mountain association under the national Water Environment Federation. I spent many years as committee chair of the Professional Wastewater Operators committee, which provides education to licensed operators so that they can get enough credits to maintain their licenses. I then moved onto the board of directors, where I worked my way up from trustee to President.
Since retirement in 2018, I’ve been volunteering with local sustainability efforts, and last year, I was awarded the citizen sustainability award from the City of Golden for 2024. The same year, I joined a small group of Golden residents to form “Sustainable Golden”, a non-profit dedicated to helping the city reach their sustainability goals.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
In Golden, the biggest attractions are the Coors Golden Brewery and the National Renewable Energy Lab. There’s also an amazing geology museum at Colorado School of Mines. Foothills Art Center. Fossil Trace golf course and water park, open in summer. World-class kayaking and tubing on Clear Creek. Live Theatre at the Miner’s Alley. Tons of great places to eat. Lots of microbreweries, like Golden City Brewery, Cannonball Creek and Barrels and Bottles. Lots of hiking and biking, along Clear Creek, the Plains to Peaks trail, on the mesas and on Lookout Mountain.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I have been inspired by my environmental engineering instructors at Colorado School of Mines, who taught me well, by passionate environmental people I worked with at the Coors Brewery in Golden, the passionate environmental activists in Golden, the activists who put on the Colorado Environmental Film Festival every year, and the amazing entrepreneurs who founded Nude Foods, the most progressive grocery store model in the world, in Boulder and Denver. I have also been inspired by the many books and publications I’ve studied as I researched my new book, 2050: What’s it Gonna Be? These are all referenced in my book, and there are more than 600 of them.

Website: https://www.whatwouldjuliedo.blog/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/

Image Credits
The author has produced all of these.