This will be different. It will begin with the downsides. But ultimately what is the answer for life after Comanche 3?
by Allen Best
Now comes another meeting in Pueblo focused on the possible role of nuclear energy in Colorado as Xcel Energy prepares to close the state’s last coal-burning unit, Comanche 3, in late 2030.
This one, though, will have a different tilt than three other events held earlier this year in Pueblo. A speaker has been allotted 10 minutes to make the case why nuclear almost certainly should not be considered a viable option before the floor is opened to public comment and questions.
The Pueblo County commissioners are sponsoring this 90-minute town hall on Wednesday, Sept. 25, which starts at 5:30 p.m. at the Colorado State Fairgrounds. The event can be seen on the commissioners’ Facebook page.
Anthony Mestas, the interim public information officer for Pueblo County, stressed that the county commissioners have no authority over what will follow the retirement of Comanche nor is the meeting an endorsement of nuclear. That should be obvious in the choice of the single expert speaker.
The backstory:
Xcel Energy is required to submit plans to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission on Oct. 15 for how it intends to meet electrical demands after Comanche 3 closes. Xcel is required to look at the options for Pueblo first, and hence the plan is called the Pueblo Just Transition Electric Resource Plan.
Xcel has previously committed to paying property taxes on Comanche 3 through 2040. When the plant began producing electricity in 2010, it had been expected to operate until 2070.
In early 2023, Xcel Energy created a committee in cooperation with certain parties in Pueblo of its choosing. The city government was essentially ignored. This committee met seven times before issuing a report in early January that concluded that the best option for Pueblo was a nuclear reactor. It would create a handsome property tax base far into the future and deliver better-paying jobs. The second-best option was a gas-fired power plant coupled with carbon capture and storage.
Two subsequent meetings were held. Big Pivots attended the first, along with several hundred others, many of them wearing T-shirts given them by their unions affirming their support. The committee took testimony both for and against. One was from a local individual who had actually worked at a nuclear power plant in another state. He called into question the economics of nuclear, pointing to cost overruns.
A meeting in late February was well attended, with some supporters wearing yellow-green T-shirts to attest to their embrace of the conclusions found in the report issued by the Xcel Energy task force in January.
But the most blunt testimony came from Leslie Glustrom, who said that Xcel customers in Boulder (where she lives) would not tolerate paying the high cost of a nuclear power plant. Her words provoked an angry response from panel members. See: “Theater in Pueblo about nuclear…” March 15, 2024, Big Pivots.
A one-day conference in June was also heavily devoted to space for proponents of nuclear energy, who almost entirely managed to avoid discussing costs. See “What was left unsaid in Pueblo?” June 26, 2024 Big Pivots.
What will be said:
David Schlissel directs resource planning analysis for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, or IEEFA. It’s a global outfit that, according to its website, conducts “market-based research that shows how the rise of the new energy economy, where renewable energy sources are steadily eroding reliance on fossil fuels, makes financial sense for investors, governments, businesses, communities and ratepayers.”
I talked with Schlissel Saturday morning, but before we talked he pointed me to a report he co-authored that was published in May 2024: “Small modular reactors: Still too slow, too expensive, too risky.”
Schlissel cites the financial risks of nuclear. “The history of nuclear is overpromising and under-delivering,” he said. “Plants are more expensive than the industry claims and take a lot longer to build, and that is the reality.”
Now comes the claim that smaller reactors in standardized designs will reduce costs. They’re called SMRs.
“There is really no evidence of that,” he said. “France built 56 reactors – not exactly the same design, but a very similar design – and there is no evidence of declining costs.”
Natural gas coupled with carbon capture? There is a State Land Board site northeast of Pueblo that has been identified as a suitable carbon capture site.
Schlissel also sees significant risks with this idea. Gas costs are somewhat risky, and carbon capture has never been done at scale. Too, it assumes that the C02 will remain underground.
A case in Illinois in recent weeks will surely cause frowns among advocates of carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS. Archers-Daniels-Midland — also known as ADM — operates a facility in Decatur that injections carbon dioxide into deep rock formations more than a mile underground. The C02 leaked from its intended reservoir but stayed about 5,000 feet below ground, far below drinking water aquifers. That still raises questions about the ability to keep CO2 where it is injected. The company runs the only operating Class VI well permitted through the EPA, reported Politico’s E&E News.
In Colorado, a company hopes to capture emissi ons from ethanol plants in Sterling and in Yuma, which are about 95% pure C02, and sequester them underneath a State Land Board parcel southeast of Akron.
Schlissel argues that a better option for Xcel Energy customers than a nuclear or natural gas plant will be conversion of the Comanche site to battery storage, which can be coupled with the high-quality solar in the Pueblo area. The Pueblo area already has 1,000 megawatts of solar, and the Colorado Power Pathway transmission network will deliver even more wind and solar from eastern Colorado in the next four years.
One of the slides that will be presented to attendees of a meeting scheduled for Pueblo on Sept. 25.
The United States in 2019 had virtually zero battery storage. Capacity reached 20 gigawatts in July, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, which projects 40 gigawatts of capacity by the end of 2025.
“It’s a viable solution,” said Schlissel.
Schlissel contends both nuclear and natural gas would paint Xcel Energy and its customers into a corner for the long term while the world of energy gets transformed.
“Flexibility is important in times like this,” he said.
What can provide the tax base and the higher-paying jobs that Pueblo wants? Schlissel suggests Pueblo should try to secure federal money through the Inflation Reduction Act or the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to help create manufacturing capacity for battery-storage or solar.
Room for innovation?
The question from the beginning has been whether Xcel can possibly be serious in running nuclear up the flag pole? Nuclear has a horrendous track record on cost. Thoughtful, knowledgeable people say that it is THE answer, in the words of one Colorado utility manager. But it almost certainly will require a federal backstop on the costs. That is extremely unlikely.
Coupled with that cost risk of extreme high costs is a growing resistance to rising prices for electricity. The transition to clean energy has been promoted as cost-effective, but Xcel rates continue to rise.
Might Xcel come up with some more innovative ideas? In shaping its last electric plan, it played with various ideas for replacement of generation at Hayden, the plant in northwest Colorado that will close in 2028. Among the ideas was molten salt for storage and electrical generation through combustion harvested in local forests. Neither survived the cut.
One argument I hear is for hydrogen — and very specifically green hydrogen made from water. Pueblo — and Xcel – are relatively flush with water rights even if – as some will surely note – some of this abundance comes via transmountain diversions from the Roaring Fork and Fryingpan rivers.
In this line of thinking, Xcel could store excess renewable energy and then use it to generate electricity as needed. It could also be used for other off-takers in the Pueblo area, including the steel mill.
Rocky Mountain Steel, a plant in Pueblo owned by Evraz, is one of Colorado’s top consumers of energy.
The steel mill, now owned by Evraz, is actually supplied by Xcel while Pueblo and much of the surrounding area is supplied by Black Hills Energy. Black Hills has notoriously high rates. Might there be some juggling of serviced territories that would allow Xcel to be able to supply other areas – and perhaps draw in manufacturers who might want to use hydrogen?
I also hear about enhanced geothermal and other technologies that mostly aren’t ready for prime time.
The key thing is this Pueblo Just Transition electric resource plan may need room for innovation.
Maybe Xcel needs to take a risk, with approval of the PUC, but not the enormous risks of nuclear or even another natural gas plant coupled with carbon capture.
Precedence exists for such small-stakes risk-taking. About a decade or more ago, using legislative authority, the PUC approved an “Innovative Clean Technologies” program for Xcel, allowing the company to spend $24 million over four years. The general intent was to encourage accelerated and Colorado-specific deployment and demonstration of technologies. This is in contrast to letting the Electric Power Research Institute, a research and development organization, figure out the answers or letting the market deliver verdicts on emerging technologies.
The first project that Xcel tried was using solar power to pre-heat the water used for the Cameo coal generation plant prior to its retirement.
That Section 123 provision also was used to approve a concentrated solar project in the San Luis Valley, but the project failed to materialize.
Iron-air storage pilot project
Of special note is Xcel’s partnership with Form Energy (a company in which it indirectly has a small ownership). Xcel received permission on May 10 from the PUC for a pilot project at the Comanche Generating Station to test iron-air batteries. The goal is to be able to store electricity generated by renewable energy for up to 100 hours.
“The iron-air battery system uses a modular design, is made of abundantly available materials – iron and air – and is scalable,” according to an Xcel filing with the PUC cited in the decision.
However, it needs to be proven. It has not been deployed by any utility or at utility-sized scale and thus has not been tested in real-world circumstances similar to Public Service’s planned deployment,” according to the PUC decision issued in May.
That is what the PUC has approved. Construction of what is necessary for the testing is to occur in the first quarter of 2025, according to Xcel spokesperson Tyler Bryant. The PUC document suggested “commercialization” of the project in 2026. The timeline is a bit fuzzy.
If this technology proves out, it would appear to be a game-changer. That underscores what Schlissel says about the need for flexibility.
This is a company that was not created until 2017. By this spring it had received more than $800 million, including a big chunk of change from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Catalyst. See story from 2023.
Hyper-localization
This discussion about Xcel investing in some BIG thing at Pueblo flies in the face of some of our most interesting thinking about local power generation vs. imported power.
Instructive might be a look at the work of two of Colorado’s most innovative electrical cooperatives.
Holy Cross Energy has started integrating home batteries and the batteries of electric vehicles in its service territory in the Vail-Aspen-Battlement Mesa triangle. They constitute distributed storage. At the same time, a very important piece of its decarbonization strategy is importing wind but also solar energy from eastern Colorado.
In other words, there is no ONE answer to how Holy Cross intends to achieve its goal of 100% decarbonization by 2030.
United Power also stands out for its boldness and innovation. The Brighton-based electrical cooperative has invested big in storage but also has bought into a natural gas plant that is being constructed in its service territory along I-76 northeast of Denver. It has no emission goals comparable to those of Holy Cross.
Mark Gabriel, the chief executive, compresses his plan into a phrase: “hyper-localization.”
In Boulder, Leslie Glustrom has been sort of hammering on the same theme for years. She argued against the full investment by Xcel Energy — $1.7 billion and still counting — in new transmission in eastern Colorado. Instead, she has talked about local production and storage of electricity balanced with a certain amount of imported power.
It doesn’t give Xcel Energy the big expenditures that translate into the base from which Xcel Energy’s ability to charge for electricity is determined. And that lies at the center of this story but is a story unto itself.
What’s good for Xcel and what is good for the taxing districts of Pueblo is not necessarily the best for Xcel customers.
It will be interesting what Xcel has come up with when it submits its electric resource plan on Oct. 15. And just as interesting to see the discussion that ensues.
The first version of this story misstated the original projected retirement of Comanche 3. It was 2070.
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I am against nuclear at all costs. It will hurt all of us. I want my grandchildren and great grandchildren to live. Nuclear is a killer.
In Australia the mines and smelters and refineries are hollering for faster renewable development and fighting back against nuclear fantasies which they understand will lead to increased electric costs and delays in being able to market their materials as carbon-free. The Aussies are going all in on storage and demand response and time of use pricing, so these classic “baseload” users are fine with renewables. The nuclear push in Australia has momentum like here, but it’s almost all political and media driven. There are no Silicon Valley billionaires and billion dollar bomb-building agency in the government pushing assisting.
I’m sorry for the thermal steam power plant operators, and the towns and cities which have relied on power plant taxes. If politicians in Pueblo and Colorado would not keep getting distracted by this, or inefficient geothermal, they could focus on getting energy storage/backup generation, and manufacturing for more wind components, industrial heat pumps, the steel rails and posts for solar racks, high temperature bricks for heat storage…
Craig is a harder place to imagine new manufacturing.
The mtn west should look to Australia for inspiration. Check https://reneweconomy.com.au/