Cañon City electricity, fossil fuel subsidies, and is Colorado a renewables slug?

Cañon City task force outlines options to Black Hills as electric provider

A committee appointed by the Cañon City Council has issued an interim report outlining options if the city wants to separate from Black Hills Energy.

The rates of Black Hills, 34% higher than the state average, are at issue. The utility’s franchise agreement with Black Hills expired in 2017, and voters in 2020 rejected a new agreement by a decisive margin.

The Cañon City Record reports the energy franchise committee has concluded that creating an electrical cooperative is not a viable option. Kirk Suther, a committee member, said they would need to buy the assets of Black Hills within Cañon City.

That value has not been determined, although the Record points out that San Isabel Electric Association in 2018 had offered $1.1 billion for the Black Hills Energy electric assets in Cañon City, Pueblo, and some adjoining areas.

The Record cautioned that the committee had yet to make a formal recommendation, but the discussion in its report to the council suggested the most viable alternative would be to partner in a hybrid municipal utility. The city would have to identify a service area and the assets to be condemned. One committee estimates the cost of a consultant would be $250,000 to $300,000.

Suther said it would require an experienced third-party partner to even consider municipalization. Kathy Worthington, a council member, suggested ratepayers would not save money for 5 to 10 years, although beyond that cost increases would be less than if the city sticks with Black Hills.

Speaker in Aspen says we must end fossil fuel subsidies

Doug Koplow, the founder of Earth Track, told an audience in Aspen recently that fossil fuels still enjoy many more times the subsidies than they pay in taxes even now.

“We’re talking about trying to have pricing on carbon, but at the same time, states and counties all over the world are also providing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. So the two are working at cross-purposes,” he told Scott Condon of the Aspen Daily News.

The International Monetary Fund estimates worldwide subsidies for oil, gas, and coal at $4.9 trillion. That includes externalities, such as the monetary value assigned to local air pollution and traffic congestion. Koplow estimates the direct subsidies at more than a trillion dollars.

His presentation was part of the Aspen Skiing Co.’s Aspen U sustainability speaker series. “In the climate fight, we’re desperate for bipartisan solutions,” said the company’s Auden Schendler. “Not subsidizing a mature industry that is highly profitable is something we can all agree on.”

We’ve used all the time we have, says Becker. We must go with answers we have.

Former Colorado resident William S. Becker had a column in The Hill on March 22 under the headline “Fossil fuels are impoverishing us.”

“We’ve seen all the science we need to see and heard all the warnings we need to hear about the imperative of clean energy,” he writes. “We have all the technologies we need. So now, what will it take to overcome the oil industry’s insatiable greed, formidable political power and futile resistance to change? It’s stealing wealth we may never get back.”

Becker directs the Presidential Climate Action Project, a nonpartisan initiative that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations to Washington decision makers on climate and energy policies.

He points out that energy-related emissions set a record last year. “Countries still provide fossil fuels with trillions of dollars annually in direct and indirect subsidies. The world’s 60 biggest banks provided $4.6 trillion in fossil fuel financing, including $742 billion in 2021, since nations agreed to the Paris climate accord in 2015. The four biggest oil companies had $1 trillion in sales and record profits last year. And 20 of the biggest oil companies plan to spend nearly $1 trillion to develop new oil and gas fields by the end of 2030. Even President Biden, fully aware of the climate crisis, has given the go-ahead to an $8 billion oil project in Alaska.

“In other words, the global oil and gas industry has never been better, while the world has never been closer to simultaneously environmental, economic and humanitarian disasters expected to displace 1.2 billion of the world’s people by 2050 and have violent impacts that will last thousands of years.”

Is Colorado actually lagging in its transition to renewables?

The Center for Biological Diversity issued an analysis that the group contends shows that Colorado is actually lagging behind its neighboring states in its conversion to renewable generation.

Consider wind. According to a story in The Hill on March 1, it was responsible for 29% of Colorado’s electrical generation in 2022. This compares to 55% in South Dakota, 37% in North Dakota, 47% in Kansas, 44% in Oklahoma, 35% in New Mexico and 31% in Nebraska.

In solar, the story offers a comparison only to Utah, where solar provided 12% of electricity. Colorado was 6%.

State officials pointed out that 38% of Colorado’s electricity in 2022 came from renewables, 10^th in the nation. “The facts remain that Colorado continues to be a national leader in clean energy policy while making progress toward achieving Gov. Polis’s bold goal of 100% renewable energy by 2040,” Conor Cahill, a spokesperson for Polis, told the Hill.

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