The Western Governors’ Association’s annual meeting is returning to Colorado this month, bringing with it leaders from across the Western United States.

Gov. Jared Polis, who chairs the association, will host the three-day event at the Boulder Theater from June 26 to June 28. During the meeting, governors will participate in roundtable discussions on issues facing the West, including water, health care access and ecosystem restoration. 

Governors representing eight states and territories will attend the meeting: Polis, Josh Green of Hawaii, Brad Little of Idaho, Joe Lombardo of Nevada, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Tina Kotek of Oregon, Mark Gordon of Wyoming, and Arnold Palacios of Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. 

The meeting will also feature keynote addresses from Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; Ashley Llorens, vice president and scientist at Microsoft; and, Denis McDonough, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

This will be the first time Colorado has hosted the annual meeting since 2019 when it was held in Vail, and the second time Colorado has hosted during Polis’ time as governor. 

The meeting will also look at Polis’ “Heat Beneath Our Feet” initiative that he announced during last year’s meeting. The year-long initiative was intended to evaluate strategies to scale geothermal technologies across the West to expand clean energy recourses and jump-start the development of geothermal energy generation. 

Governors will discuss the key takeaways from the initiative during the first roundtable of the event, including remarks from Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk and panelists Claudio Berti, director and state geologist of Idaho Geological Survey, and Sarah Jewett, vice president of strategy at Fervo Energy.

The Western Governors’ Association is a bipartisan coalition of 22 governors from the western half of the U.S. Polis was elected chair of the association last July, with his term set to expire next month.  

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that eight governors will attend the meeting instead of the original 10. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and American Samoa Gov. Lemanu Peleti Mauga dropped out due to scheduling conflicts after the article’s publication.