Part I: A conversation with Chris Hansen

Key legislator talks about his role in Colorado’s energy pivot, his hope of achieving 97% emissions-free power at La Plata Electric, and Colorado’s need to forestall data-center problems

 

by Allen Best

Colorado ranks high on everybody’s short list of states with the most significant progress in the energy transition. As a state legislator, Chris Hansen has played a major role in creating the public policies to guide that pivot.

On November 12, just a week after his election to a four-year term, he became chief executive officer at La Plata Electric Association in southwest Colorado. There, he says he can see a pathway for La Plata to reduce emissions to just 3% of its electrical portfolio by 2035.

He will remain a state senator until January 9, representing a district in Denver from Union Station to the Lowry neighborhood.

In an interview with Big Pivots on November 25, Hansen talked about his career change, which he says involved negotiations that were not consummated until just days after the election. “It was a hard decision but I think ultimately the best one for my family,” he said.

The Durango Herald reported that the salary range for the position was $400,000 to $600,000 annually. As a state senator, he has been making $41,500, although he draws other compensation for his work outside the statehouse.

He and his wife, Ulcca Joshi Hansen, have two sons, both students at George Washington High School in Denver. One of his sons, Sachin Hansen, a senior, wrote an essay published in The Denver Post on November 25 about the rough-and-tumble of political life. “I was just 8 years old the first time my family came under attack,” he wrote.

Hansen was reared in Goodland, Kan., the son of a hospital and hospice nurse and the son of a school teacher and coach. He worked on farms and ran cross-country races in nearby Colorado. When he first saw a nuclear reactor as a high school junior, he was drawn to engineering. He went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from Kansas State University. There, he was the first student body president in decades to be an avowed liberal. He has, he said, been the lone Democrat at many a Thanksgiving dinner.

He later received an advanced degree from MIT in technology policy and a Ph.D. from Oxford in economic geography.

Hansen, who is 49, talked about the energy bills he crafted in the realm of electrical generation, transmission, and distribution that he believes were the most important. An electrical grid that depends largely on renewable generation needs to be larger than one weather system, he said, and Colorado’s currently is not. And tough but important bills, he explained, sometimes take multiple years to pass.

He also talked about the challenges and rewards of working with Gov. Jared Polis and said he had planned to introduce legislation in the 2025 session to help Colorado avoid having the same problems with data centers that have plagued Virginia.

Hansen also defended Colorado’s approach to regulation of oil-and-gas extraction with climate goals in mind. “It’s not an effective policy to say, ‘Let’s ban it here.’ That, to my mind, would have negative consequences. It would backfire as far as the climate policy. That’s why I’ve been so focused on electrification and the electricity sector, improving efficiency, driving down methane emissions.

He also reflected on the three most valued relationships he had in the Colorado Capitol with other legislators.

 

First, can we talk about your decision to take this position at La Plata Electric Association in southwest Colorado while vacating your Senate seat? What did you gain and what did you lose in this career move?

It was a difficult decision. I was absolutely enjoying my time in the Senate. I was poised to be a part of the Joint Budget Committee (again) and was considering running for statewide office. But this opportunity came my way. I understood what the opportunity looked like in late summer and then went through a process with La Plata in September and October, eventually signing a contract on November 9th.

It was a really incredible opportunity to lead a wonderful organization and to sort of translate the policy work that I had done into real-life action. That was really important to me. And as I thought about how to best support my family, how to best move forward in my career, this was a pretty amazing opportunity — but not ideal timing by any stretch of the imagination.

 

What did you lose by leaving the Legislature?

Well, I obviously lost the ability to represent Denver in the State Senate and all of the exciting policy opportunities and responsibilities that come with it. There were many things I was looking forward to working on legislatively. I’ve handed off those efforts to my colleagues. It was a hard decision but I think ultimately the best one for my family.

 

How do you respond to critics who say the timing was not right, that it wasn’t fair to voters.

As I said, I didn’t like the timing either, but this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, and I did my best to make sure that it was easy for the Democratic Party to replace me. It’s why I timed my resignation for January 9, so that they could have one vacancy committee to fill my spot. That person will fill my seat representing Senate District 31 for the next two legislative sessions, and then there’ll be a full election after that. We have a process designed to handle these sorts of situations.

 

You mentioned that in this new position you will be able to implement some of the policies that you created. Could you cite the specific policies that you will be working on in the field?

I think basically every bill that I’ve passed in the legislature provides a good road map for the kind of work that we’re going to be doing at La Plata: beneficial electrification, working hard on getting more renewable energy and zero-carbon energy sited and built in La Plata’s territory — or outside the territory but that we can then purchase through a power purchase agreement and ultimately to get to a zero-carbon system in La Plata Electric’s (service) territory.

We’re on pace to be 97% decarbonized. I really want to bring that into reality. I think myself and a handful of other (electrical) co-ops and muni’s (municipal utilities) in the state are making this work a high priority. I’m really glad to be a part of that larger effort.

I believe the policy work that I’ve done in the Legislature over eight years really demonstrates that commitment, and now I’m excited to bring it into real life as part of a co-op. The decarbonization of our (electrical) supply, the beneficial electrification programs, storage enhancements, more rooftop solar, more community solar gardens — there are just a huge list of opportunities that we can take advantage of at La Plata. Many of these have direct ties to legislation that I’ve helped pass.

 

I had not before heard that figure, 97%.

That’s not an official goal, but I feel really confident that we’re going to be go well above 90% as we do this work over the next several years.

 

Is there a time figure for that, a time that you might be able to hit 97%?

I think we’ll be well above 90% by 2035, and I mentioned 97% because I am seeing a very clear path to get there. That’s not an official goal of my board or of La Plata Electric, but I share that with you because I am just really optimistic that we’re going to be able to deliver a zero- or very low-carbon system for our members and make it reliable and do it at very affordable prices. That is what I think success looks like.

 

You were noted for your authority about transmission in the legislature. What should we understand about your work in southwest Colorado? How much does it depends upon transmission improvements and locally generated electricity?

Success for our state and for our region requires both, and that’s exactly the type of strategy that La Plata Electric will use. I think many of my peer co-ops have the same strategy. La Plata has joined Southwest Power Pool, so we absolutely want to be in a market. We want to use our transmission and sub transmission assets to participate in those markets. As was (evident in my legislative work), I believe that (expanding markets) will be the quickest way to decarbonize the western United States electricity system.

We also need to make sure that we have great local options for wind and solar and batteries and other low-carbon or zero-carbon sources of electricity that can include hydro, geothermal, and potentially carbon capture and sequestration. Everything’s on the table, and I think the mix of regional resources and regional markets with local production is the best way to the finish line here.

 

(Holy Cross Energy CEO) Bryan Hannigan several years ago told me that we can get to 85% to 90% decarbonized electricity without a cost increase. And of course, renewables have been the cheaper option in most places. But he said that it could get more difficult (and costly) as we get above 90%. Do you perceive the same challenge?

I think Bryan and I see these challenges in a very similar way. The last few percent are always the hardest, because you’re talking about trying to have firm supply, and the way you do that, ultimately, is with that regional grid, which is why I was just describing that you need both local production of zero-carbon electricity as well as the ability to access zero-carbon electricity from around the region. That’s how you keep rates low and get to higher percentages carbon-free electricity.

Absolutely, the closer you get to 100% that challenge becomes more difficult. But I’m really optimistic because of the advances that I’m seeing in battery technology and different types of storage technology and the potential for more zero-carbon firm electricity like geothermal, and if you add those up, you know, then we have a path to 100%.

 

Let’s go back to 2016 when you ran for a seat in the House of Representatives. What motivated you to do so?

I wanted to work on climate change. I felt like state capitols were going to be the places that were going to lead on climate. That was certainly the case from 2016 to 2020 and I think will continue to be the case as we head into a second term of President Trump.

That was a big motivator to me, to see if I — because of my background and the things I had learned in my academic and professional life — could help make a difference in improving our energy system in Colorado. I felt like that was a place where I could add value to the process. That was a big motivator for me to run.

I was also really committed to stabilizing and improving our K-12 funding. As you know, I have two kids in public schools, and I was very frustrated by the shortcomings in our school finance at that point. It’s one of the reasons that I dedicated a huge portion of my time in the last four years to work on property tax. The compromise bills that we passed in the 2024 session put us on a solid foundation for delivering K-12 funding.

Those were the two big things on my mind as I ran for office in 2016 and I feel like I’m leaving office having largely accomplished both of those goals.

 

You were in the House until January 2020 when you filled a vacancy in the Senate caused by a resignation. You sponsored seven bills (that became law) during your three years as a state representative, then 23 (that became law) during the next three years as a state senator. By that simple measure, it would seem your time in the Senate was far more productive in terms of energy-related legislation. If true, why was that?

Well, I would disagree. Actually, I think my time in the House was extremely productive, but, of course, we had split chambers at that point. You may remember the Republicans had control of the Senate in 2017 and 2018. That obviously changed the landscape, policy wise, and so I really focused in on just transition legislation and energy storage legislation in my first two years in the Legislature. Those were areas where there was an opening for bipartisan compromise, and many of those were successful.

Some of my bills you refer to were originally introduced in the House. The first just transition bill, House Bill 1037, in the 2017 session, was the first in the country to propose a financing mechanism to pay for worker assistance and backfill for communities that lost coal plants. It got all the way through the House but died in the Senate because none of the Republican senators were going to support anything that would decarbonize the electricity system. I knew that, but it was important to start that debate and to have that conversation in 2017, and I think that’s what set us up for success in 2019.

I think it was groundbreaking legislation, and ultimately led to what we passed in 2019 in the kind of giant energy omnibus that I sponsored. I think Colorado has been a groundbreaking state for this type of legislation.

Some of these tough bills take multiple years.

 

What was the intellectual foundation for that just transition legislation, which, as you’ve described, and I’ve heard elsewhere, may set Colorado apart from other states in the country?

I believe that’s correct. Allen, I think we are a leader in this area and many other states have copied that approach.

The intellectual foundation, I suppose, came from both my doctoral research and my time in the private sector before running for office when I was trying to grapple with these difficult transition problems. Relevant were the consulting engagements that I had in the private sector where I saw repeated pattern of, “How do we finance this? How do we get from point A to point B? We know we need to reduce emissions. We know that renewables are lower cost in almost every case, compared to coal-fired stations. What is preventing us from making this transition?”

Even though it makes obvious sense from a business standpoint, and the answer was, “Well, there’s a lot of inertia in the system. How do you handle the remaining book value on what are, in many cases, billion dollar assets like Comanche 3?”

That really the foundation that I had built from to work on that legislation.

 

That dissertation was at Oxford, correct?

That’s right.

 

Tell us more about that dissertation.

I was studying electricity system planning in western India, in the state of Gujarat. To be specific, I was looking at a bottom-up model of deregulation that would allow more trading between excess power reserves on the industrial side and the residential load. Gujarat then had, and probably still does have, the highest amount of captive generation in the world, meaning electricity generation behind the gate of the plant.

The factories would build their own power plants because the grid power was not reliable enough. That also meant they had a lot of extra capacity and would often be next door to a village that had no electricity at all. So I was really focused on, okay, how do you make this transition to cleaner sources, and how do you have an electricity system that is more reliable for all of its citizens?

That was kind of the foundation of my doctoral work at Oxford,

 

The 2019 legislative session was remarkable. What was it like, from your perspective? I interviewed (Senate President) Steve Fenberg in September, and he talked about the fight to set goals and said  that the Republican minority said, “No, we can’t have that. We can’t achieve it.” And finally, we had sessions that went until five in the morning, right? What was that like?

It was amazing. The Republicans had control of the Senate in 2017 and 2018. We then got a majority in the 2019 and 2020 General Assembly, and it just opened up possibilities that were impossible when the Republicans had control.

You’re absolutely right. The Republican caucus was never going to support anything that was going to set clean energy targets.

Many parts of the Republican Party do not think that climate change is even a problem or exists. As I like to remind people, climate change is not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of recognition, and if you recognize it, then making a decision about what you want to do with it. I think the word belief should be saved for Sunday morning, deciding what God you want to worship, belief in something unseen. If you look at the dictionary, belief is about the unseen and the unprovable. And you know, we have more than enough scientific evidence to support the fact that climate change is a reality.

That was a tough political situation, and the Republican Party was not going to support climate goals. There are some exceptions, but that has largely been the case. And so the session in 2019 was incredible because we Democrats finally had majorities in both chambers, and it gave us the ability to move forward on important legislation, including the decarbonization of the electricity system.

As I zoom out over the eight years that I served, that was the big generation bill. We then did the big transmission bill in 2021 with Don Coram. And then the big distribution bill is the one that I did with Steve (Fenberg) last session.

So I did the G, the T and the D (Generation, Transmission and Distribution). They are the three parts of the electricity system. So I felt like I finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy or something.

You anticipated my next question when I say that you had 41 bills focused on energy and 13 that more broadly involved environmental matters.

Those are the ones that passed. I sponsored a lot more. I sponsored 78 total.

 

Well, let’s start with the energy legislation. You mentioned three of them, the three areas. But do you want to go into more depth on three, four or five of these bills and talk about them, why they were important, and what was interesting about the sausage making?

Oh, gosh, yes. It’s a little bit hard to kind of pick out the top five. The G, the T and the D bills all stick out because they were all massive, multi-year efforts to pass each of those bills. We’ve remade the electricity system in Colorado. I think those three bills will pay dividends for the state for decades to come.

But there was also lots of work on transportation electrification and EV charging infrastructure and credits. Lots of work on distributed generation, lots of work on beneficial electrification, on heat pumps and other upgrades to residential and commercial properties that I think will pay massive dividends for the state.

It’s hard to pick the top five because I really tried to do it as a cohesive picture, as a puzzle that we were putting together piece by piece, year after year. And that’s one of the reasons I thought about the G, the T and the D. How do we stitch all this together to have a coherent strategy and electricity?

Because ultimately, if we don’t have an electricity strategy, we have no decarbonization strategy, because that is what undergirds everything else we’re doing in every other sector of the economy.

I mentioned beneficial electrification. Who’s the largest consumer of electricity in the state of Colorado? It’s Chevron, because they are electrifying their upstream operations. So decarbonizing industrial and commercial sectors, transportation sectors, it all relies on a zero-carbon electricity system to accomplish that goal. That, to me, was foundational.

 

You mentioned cosponsoring something with Don Coram, who represented a rural district on the Western Slope. You yourself had origins in rural America. I’m wondering what you can say about understanding this rural-urban divide. You have your feet equally in both places. Are there lessons you would share about working with rural America?

I really appreciate that question. I always thought that that was something perhaps special that I could bring as a representative of Denver. In fact, my very first committee assignment was to the House Ag and Natural Resources Committee. There, we dealt with statewide water issues, among other things. And so, understanding the rural issues I think helped me tremendously during my eight years of the Legislature. And I think it helped me tremendously in being able to do bipartisan legislation. I’ve had 100-plus bipartisan bills out of the several 100 that I’ve sponsored.

That was super important for my success at the Capitol and brought the state better solutions. I always tried to do bipartisan bills. Every single bill. In some cases, that option was available, like in the transmission work that I did with Don Coram, or the (water) storage work that I did with Jerry Sonnenberg (of Logan County) and John Becker (of Morgan County) in 2017. We did a lot of great bipartisan work (in the House) and continued that throughout my eight years at the Capitol.

I think growing up in Goodland, Kansas, right on the Colorado border, really helped me to do that. And I worked for farmers during my time in high school.

To your point about the divide, we could see it in this last election. During the last three presidential elections that divide has been stark, and unfortunately, I think, has gotten deeper, not better. I tried my best at the state Capitol to bridge that divide.

Well, what then do we need to understand about rural America? What does somebody living in North Denver or East Denver or Boulder need to understand about places like Cheyenne County or La Plata County?

In my new life, that is front and center for me. I think what is often misunderstood, perhaps by some of my neighbors in Denver, is that, if you don’t know someone or know something, it’s very easy to disparage it or to undervalue it. The more you understand something, the better chance you have of valuing it and seeing it’s worth.

That, to me, is the root of our urban and rural divide. There’s not a lot of communication. There’s not a lot of conversation between those two worlds. And it’s very easy for both sides to say, oh, you know, the other side is not worth anything, or that’s not valuable, or their perspective isn’t valuable.

And to me, that’s ultimately just not taking the time to listen and understand. Not  to say I’m perfect at that. But I think my background really helped me, because I grew up there and I understand how wonderful it is to get up at sunrise and ride your horse across the prairie. I mean, it’s an amazing thing, and that is part of the tradition and lifestyle and what makes rural America great. Many of my neighbors in Denver have never experienced that, and I think that just makes it harder to understand each other.

 

You had your nonprofit for a while. Maybe you still have it. It covered both energy and water, but you’re not known necessarily as a guy that was engaged in the water sphere. That being said, I did happen to listen to one of the legislative sessions last winter where on the floor of the Senate, you took the occasion to make a little joust or something with one of your fellow senators about water efficiency and agriculture operations. My question really comes down to you obviously understand some things about water, but you put your efforts into energy.

I did run some water bills my first two years because of that committee assignment. When I went to the Joint Budget Committee, I was still involved with water, but it was from a budgetary standpoint. I think I was able to put that knowledge to use. But it just made sense for other legislators to take the lead on specific water reform bills. In thinking about where was my comparative advantage, or where did I have the most background, it was in energy and environment and tax policy and finance.

I joke with people. There’s a little bit of a Harry Potter sorting hat when you get to the Capitol. You get put into the places that make the most sense for you, and where your background and interests overlap. I think my strongest background was in finance and economics and energy, and so it made a lot of sense to spend the majority of my legislative time in those areas, and then, of course, being on the Joint Budget Committee for nearly four years. As a member of the JBC, you sort of get involved with everything.

In the second half of the interview, to be published in the next issue, Big Pivots 99, Chris Hansen talks about transmission, why he thinks efforts to end oil-and-gas drilling are misplaced, and what it’s like to work with Gov. Jared Polis.