And what if Donald Trump was elected?

Would a return to the White House by Trump slow Colorado’s clean energy train?

By Allen Best

The polls foretell a very close presidential election. What if Donald Trump is elected president again—and carries with him Republican pluralities in both the House and Senate?

How much might a Republican supermajority slow Colorado’s progress toward its clean energy goals?

I asked that question of Will Toor, who directs the Colorado Energy Office. He said he suspects that Trump’s election will do little to slow Colorado’s big pivot in energy.

“On the regulatory side, most of what we do in this space is very strongly within state powers. Think about SB19-236,” he said, referring to the foundational bill adopted in 2019 that set the target of 80% reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by Xcel for 2030 and 100% by 2050.

“The one place in the regulatory arena where the federal government can make a real difference lies with our vehicle standards,” he continued.

Colorado’s zero-emission vehicle standard and the advanced clean-truck standard both rely on a provision of the Clean Air Act that allowed California to adopt its own standards and other states to piggyback on those rules. Seventeen states have – including Colorado.

When he was president, Trump revoked the waiver, which produced a court battle. Joe Biden restored the waiver when he became president.

“That’s the one place where there would be the biggest regulatory uncertainty for us,” said Toor.

“The other big question is what would happen with various (federal) clean energy tax credits,” he continued. “Those have really put wind in the sails in just a bunch of areas.”

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided great amounts of money for the tax credits – and Colorado has been getting substantial sums in this program and that. Just the week prior to our conversation, both U.S. senators from Colorado had been at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Denver to talk about the $329 million in grants to Colorado.

Those grants and other programs will go under contract this year.

“I think a lot of the IRA funds that are actual direct allocations will essentially be committed in ways that would be very, very difficult for the federal government to somehow claw those back,” Toor said.

“Even if you had a Republican House and Senate, would they really want to repeal those tax credits that have benefits in just about every state in the country? You are supporting a lot of domestic investment, much of it happening in red states. I think the area that might be most at risk would be the electric vehicle tax credits.

“But there’s so much EV manufacturing investment going into red states. Would the senators in those states actually support repealing tax credits when they’ve got billion-dollar factories being built that kind of rely on the demand from those tax credits?

“The structure of the IRA provides so much benefit to every state in the nation that I think it becomes a lot harder to repeal.”

The last time around, Trump came in wanting to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It turned out to be really hard to do because so many people around the country benefit from it.

“Tax credits are very important to accelerating clean energy deployment in Colorado and everywhere else. But I just think that they would be hard to repeal, because they provide such strong benefits to every state in the country.

“Easy to talk, in theory, about repealing them, as sort of a culture war anti-climate thing, but I think it’s a lot harder in practice when you have ratepayers who are benefitting from billions of dollars of investment that is lowering their costs or businesses that are investing in new manufacturing facilities in red states. They are not going to be supportive of removing those tax credits.”

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