The warning signs are flashing. Colorado is on the verge of an epic power policy failure. Elected officials, bureaucrats, and regulators’ myopic view of energy policy through the narrow lens of carbon emissions is to blame.
Colorado is a single-party rule state. Democrats control all levers of power and have forced upon Coloradans an emissions-only energy policy that will be insanely expensive, will lead to reliability issues, and will exacerbate the most significant threat to public health – no power at all.
Environmental megachurches such as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have demanded wind and solar for decades. During the 2018 gubernatorial campaign, Democrat candidates Jared Polis and Mike Johnston promised to move the state to 100 percent wind and solar by 2040. Both ignored cost and reliability issues, and the news media did, too.
Now in his second term, Governor Jared Polis and the Colorado legislature are moving ahead with Polis’s “bold idea.” None of them will be in office when Coloradans feel the full impact.
Paying through the nose
Let’s start with cost. During the 2018 gubernatorial campaign, no one challenged Polis or Johnston about the cost of shutting down Colorado’s baseload coal and natural gas and replacing it with wind, solar, and batteries. But, the Independence Institute did in 2017, 2019, and 2023, which includes Polis’s wish list of electrifying home heating and transportation. The Institute’s analysis finds every Coloradan will pay over $115,000 (more than $460,00 for a family of four) for weather-dependent resources to power the state.
Remember, supporters of a 100 percent renewable-powered Colorado said it would save ratepayers money. Our current utility bills and analysis say otherwise.
With no fanfare, the Colorado Energy Office (CEO) issued a warning sign when it released its Ascend Analytics report earlier this year. The results are damning: The wind, solar, and battery-only scenario “requires the largest buildout of capacity at over 69,000 MW installed in 2040 and barely meets reliability targets.” With a $61 billion price tag, “it is also the most expensive scenario.”
Readers need to add billions of dollars more for the transmission lines Ascend failed to include, and it’s still a lowball price.
Ascend and the CEO’s suggested solution? “Clean hydrogen,” meaning hydrogen made from the same expensive wind and solar that is supposed to power our homes and businesses, which, at $51.6 billion, the CEO calls the “cheapest way to decarbonize.” According to the Independence Institute’s hydrogen issue brief, this figure doesn’t include infrastructure costs that could skyrocket to over $70,000 per natural gas customer. Building new wind, solar, and batteries isn’t cheaper (See Figure 1).
This forced march will bankrupt the state. It’s likely that when Coloradans voted for candidates championing the forced march to wind and solar, they didn’t know the cost because proponents and an uncurious media never bothered to ask. They focus only on emissions-based outcomes.
There’s more. In July, Xcel Energy confessed it probably won’t meet Colorado elected officials’ emissions target for the $12 billion cost it promised. The state’s largest utility needs more time and money from ratepayers.
When the sun doesn’t shine
Let’s consider reliability. Texas’s Winter Storm Uri, in which 246 people died, reminds us how quickly cold can kill when we’re without power. Our analysis shows that a portfolio of wind, solar, and batteries will leave Coloradans in the dark for 24 hours or more during the winter months when temperatures plummet and weather-dependent sources aren’t available.
The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) doesn’t want to be the next Texas. As the state continues to shut down reliable, baseload coal in favor of weather-dependent, unreliable wind and solar, HCPF is giving away “free” battery backups to Medicaid recipients to ensure their life-saving medical devices won’t die during blackouts. Without power, people die.
There’s more. Consider Demand Side Management (DSM). Instead of meeting customers’ needs to utilize air conditioning on hot days, the legislature allows Xcel to profit by depriving customers of the energy they need to reduce emissions. An example is Xcel’s recent “Energy Action Days,” which the utility defines in an email as “hot summer days,” when “your community may be using more energy to cool their homes than usual. This means Xcel Energy may need to tap into non-renewable energy sources to meet demand which often produce higher carbon emissions.” [emphasis mine]
The legislature also allows Xcel to charge residential customers higher rates during the hottest time of day, and the utility plans to ask the Public Utilities Commission to expand that from hours per day to six (3 p.m. to 9 p.m.).
Buy a generator
The financial costs of blackouts are also real. An April blackout cost one impacted Colorado business $12,212 per megawatt hour.
Reliable, affordable power fuels everything—clean water, communications, healthcare, homes, businesses, transportation—our entire way of life. Replacing reliable power with unreliable, expensive power is economic suicide. If Colorado doesn’t correct itself quickly, it will be the worst-positioned state in the nation regarding reliable, affordable power. With that dubious distinction will come the loss of economic activity and out-migration.
The solution? Colorado’s energy policy must stop considering emissions as the only policy outcome. We are resource-rich but policy-bankrupt. There’s nothing virtuous about starving our way of life. Energy usage, educational attainment, and economic prosperity go together. Instead, we should embrace our abundance and use it for good, advancing innovation. Colorado could learn from its western neighbor, Utah, which leads the way with an energy policy strategic framework that embraces human flourishing.
According to the Energy Information Association, U.S. energy production has tripled since 1950. In the second week of December 2023, the United States set a production record of 13.3 million barrels of oil per day despite a 69 percent decline in oil rigs. At the same time, we’ve cleaned up the planet. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that between “1970 and 2020, the combined emissions of the six common pollutants dropped by 78%.” In addition, we’ve cleaned up our waterways.
The bottom line is we’ve reduced emissions and become excellent environmental stewards because of reliable power. Despite all the evidence, Colorado’s leadership is still emotionally and politically invested in wind, solar, and batteries. It’s up to voters to force the governor and legislature to course correct. If that doesn’t work, buy a generator. You’re going to need it to avert the failure.
Amy Oliver Cooke is director of the Energy and Environmental Policy Center at the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.
