How can Colorado add this much renewable energy by 2040?

State needs to triple wind and quintuple solar. Role of state government vs. local control being sorted out in bill expected shortly

 

by Allen Best

Kerry Jiblits and many of her neighbors in Elbert County became inflamed this winter when they learned of a bill being drafted for consideration by Colorado legislators that proposed to remove at least some local control over siting of renewable energy generation.

Some of her neighbors live on five-acre lots; others have more than 1,000 acres. Some of the residents around Elizabeth, where Jiblits does her grocery shopping, work from home. Others tend to livestock. Still others commute to urban centers. Downtown Denver is about an hour and 20 minutes to the northwest and Colorado Springs a similar distance to the southwest. Parts of the county are on the edge of the Black Forest.

What the disparate neighbors mostly prize is the wildlife of the area. The rolling hills amid the headwaters of Kiowa and Bijou creeks teem with wildlife. They have pronghorn, mule deer, and elk, plus mountain lions and turkeys, bald and golden eagles, too.

Jiblits worried that the bill would lead to hurried and bad decisions. She and other members of the Elbert County Environmental Alliance were writing letters to a state legislator that had been reported to be authority the bill to urge him to back off.

“We are not saying that we don’t want a transmission line or that we don’t want wind and solar,” she said in a telephone interview Sunday afternoon. “We’re just saying let’s put them in places that make most sense for our county.”

The fear was – and remains even now, after it has been substantially modified — that the bill would usurp local land-use authority, leading to unintended consequences as the state tries to erect enough wind and solar to meet 2040 decarbonization mandates.

State Sen. Chris Hansen, a Democrat form Denver, said he had not authored the language in the original bill. He said the bill will be posted to the General Assembly website by Monday, April 22.

That said, there is every reason to believe that the bill that had county commissioners and managers across Colorado wary has been pruned of its sharper edges. The revised proposal has been described as a “study bill.” Any “thou shalt” language has been pruned.

According to one source who has helped shape the bill, the major provisions will include:

1) a repository for model codes. Some counties have already been crafting land-use codes applicable to renewable energy. Weld County, for example, has come up with a code governing solar developments. Consultation services will also be offered.

2) Habitat maps, such as have been done for oil and gas development, will be prepared but with renewable energy projects, both wind and solar, in mind.

3) A report to the General Assembly will be conducted addressing the state of permitting for renewables and the potential wildlife impacts; and

4) A statement will be included honoring tribal sovereignty but offering consultation.

This closely hews to what was said at a public meeting last week. Hansen on Friday confirmed the outline of what is being reported above.

Advised of the nature of the proposed changes, Logan County Commissioner Mike Brownell described them as helpful changes from what he had seen in February. “Honestly, if they take away some of the setbacks and other restrictions that are different than what the counties have already spent of lot of time and effort adopting, that would be helpful.”

But, Brownell added, he is not sure why any bill is needed. “Let the counties take care of it. Unless they ask for help.”

 

Lots of renewables to build

Why is any of this needed? The scale of infrastructure development that lies ahead. One participant in the shaping of the draft law calls the expansion of renewable energy the largest in the United States since construction of the interstate highway system. Another comparison is to the moonshot effort of the 1960s.

“We’ve got a lot of renewables to build over the next 20 years,” said Will Toor, director of the Colorado Energy Office, in an April 9 meeting requested by the Pitkin County Board of Commissioners.

“From the state perspective, we are very interested in making sure that we have a permitting regime that is both able to address the legitimate land-use issues that need to be addressed as this renewable capacity gets sited, but also to ensure that there are reasonable pathways to allow deployment of renewables for the scale that is going to be needed in order to preserve our climate.”

Colorado electrical utilities have been rapidly adding first wind and now solar. Toor, a former county commissioner in Boulder County, said those utilities are now on a pathway to achieving an 84% to 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The coal plants will be replaced by wind, solar, and battery storage while essentially keeping the existing network of gas plants to provide stability.

The Colorado Energy Office recently released a study that examined pathways to deep decarbonization by 2050. The modeling conducted by Ascend Analytics – summarized later in this e-journal and in a March 26 posting at BigPivots.com — found that massive amounts of renewable generation will be needed, even with a natural gas as a backup.

Twenty years ago, Colorado had only a few wind farms, including one near Peetz, in northeast Colorado, and another south of Lamar, in southeast Colorado, plus the test turbines between Golden and Boulder . Now Colorado has thousands. Rooftops have had solar panels for many years, but the largest story lies in the utility -scale solar farms of Pueblo County and elsewhere. The numbers for 2023 were amazing – and will only get bigger in the next decade.

See: A huge year for solar in Colorado. And it’s only beginning

Former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter told the Pitkin County commissioners at the same April 9 meeting that the pace of adoption will need to accelerate.

“We would have to triple the rate at which we’re building renewable energy projects between now and 2030, and then we’d have to probably triple it again between 2030 and 2050. Those are pretty staggering numbers to think about (in terms of) what’s necessary for the power sector to play in its role in reducing emissions.”

Keep in mind that the role of electricity will broaden as it begins to replace combustion in transportation, buildings, and still other sectors.

Toor, later in the same meeting, put it slightly differently:

”From the state energy office perspective, our focus really is on how do we have an approach to siting that will allow us to reach the state climate goals. We are very focused on what is the approach that will make it possible to quintuple solar and triple wind deployment over the next few decades while having appropriate protections in place for communities and habitat.”

 

Seed for bill planted in 2022

One well-placed source tells Big Pivots that the thinking behind the bill being introduced this week began in February 2022 when conservation organizations began meeting to start understanding what renewable energy build-out in Colorado would look like, and whether the state was positioned to realize its goals while protecting the wildlife and other values of natural and working landscapes. Some organizations reported being consulted by local groups who wanted support to help block renewable energy projects.

Pushback to renewable energy has become a national story. In February 2024, USA Today reported that it had found 15% or more of counties in the United States have effectively halted new utility-scale wind, solar, or both. Some bans were outright, but other counties had instituted moratoriums, construction impediments, and other conditions.

“The opposition to renewable energy isn’t as simple as left vs. right,” the newspaper reported. “There’s no one group fighting renewables. Instead, there are many, with a range of objections. But the overall result is rapidly increasing the limits on clean energy.”

Two states — Illinois and Michigan – had responded by imposing statewide standards to overcome the counties. Responses of those two states likely influenced early drafts of the bill that drew protests from particularly rural areas of Colorado.

Colorado has had few cases of pushback. They include the Durango area, south of Pueblo, and in Delta County.

“While there have been some localized conflicts, I think that the system in Colorado has been working pretty well,” Toor told the Pitkin County commissioners. “That said, we’re looking at significant expansion of renewables and have been watching and seeing what’s been happening in many other states where, as Gov. Ritter noted, there’s what seems to be well-organized and well-funded efforts to oppose renewable deployment.”

The advocacy groups hired Ritter and his Center for the New Energy Economy to conduct stakeholder meetings with a wide variety of what they called stakeholder groups:

Utilities, clean energy developers, trade organizations, rural agriculture representatives, labor organizations, tribal representatives, and state agencies. Meetings were held in Longmont and elsewhere.

Polling indicates broad support for renewables. New Bridge Strategy, a polling company commissioned by the environmental groups, reported in July 2023 that a strong majority of Coloradans support renewable development. Solar enjoyed 71% support on the Western Slope, 61% on the Eastern Plains, and 74% for Colorado altogether. Support for wind was less pronounced: 46% on the Eastern Plains, where all or nearly all the turbines would be placed.

Natural gas had a little less support and coal far less, although the support varied by region.

A different question painted a somewhat more nuanced response: Suppose a local farmer, rancher or large landowner in a rural area in your county wanted to lease some of their land to a renewable energy company that would produce energy to be sold to your electricity utility or co-op and used by residents and businesses here in Colorado.

In fact, most of the wind and solar will get to the Front Range, not to the local utility. As is evident in the procurement by Holy Cross Energy, some of it will go to Aspen and Vail.

Still, with those caveats in mind, 76% of those on the Eastern Plains said it was acceptable and a smaller figure, 46% said it was “completely acceptable.”

But the support came within the context of values. Of greatest importance is having the impact on wildlife on the Eastern Plains, 73% agreed and on the Western Slope, 80%. Having little or no impact on neighboring properties in terms of drainage, dust or noise, 61% of those on the Eastern Plains and 63% on the Western Slope rated that extremely or very important.

No question was asked about the visual impacts.

Armed with this information, renewable advocates set out to initiate the conversation. The basic premise was that while conflicts have been minimal, the status quo needed to be modified. The question was how could they accelerate the deployment of renewables as necessary to achieve Colorado’s clean-energy goals while protecting wildlife and minimizing conflicts over preferences – all this in a way that communities could support.

 

Pushback from the counties

Colorado has 64 counties, and most of them are wary. That includes in places that are gung-ho for renewable energy.

Consider Alamosa County Commissioner Lori Laske. Her sunny, high-elevation San Luis Valley has the best solar in Colorado. It has a number of projects already but lacks transmission for export, something she is working to change.

It also has a water problem. Irrigated acreage must be trimmed substantially for Colorado to meet terms for the Rio Grande Compact. Laskey sees renewable energy as one way to help make “Alamosa County and the San Luis Valley a vibrant and viable place.”

Will this bill help? Laske thinks not.

“I feel Alamosa has done a very good job of setting up our land-use regulations,“ she said. The process is detailed and long, she added, and “to try to over-standardize it is a little bit of what gave me concern.”

She adds: “I think we have shown that we are quite capable of doing this at a local level.”

Colorado has traditionally vested land use authority in local governments. Boulder County and Weld County, cheek and jowl, see the world very differently in most ways, such as how they view oil and gas drilling. Ditto Pitkin County commissioners and the dryland wheat and grazing counties of eastern Colorado that couldn’t be any more unlike each other. Yet beyond both being in Colorado, they largely agree about the fundamental principle of local control.

“A strong tenet of CCI is that local control is really important, because we are so different,” said Kelly Flenniken, the executive director of Colorado Counties Inc, or CCI, on Tuesday.

Illustrative of the CCI’s attitude is that it rejected being called a “stakeholder” as feedback was being solicited. Renewable energy trade groups might be stakeholders. “We are partners,” Flenniken said.

This partner rejects any one-size-fits-all-approach, whether it be around renewable energy or property taxes because of the differences from one county to another.”

She emphasized that providing models for codes would be far better than having one singular model code.

“We think it would be best to highlight the work that is happening around our state rather than having an agency delivering a model code. I suspect you will see something like that .

Still, CCI remains dubious of the bill, fearful that will interrupt good work already underway or create solutions where none are needed.

“What problem are we trying to solve? Colorado is consistently ranked in the top 10 of renewable energy deployment in sheer numbers of renewables. We know we have over 500,000 acres of renewables and over 700 megawatts of renewable energy capacity. So what is the problem we’re solving with this legislation?”

At the meeting in Aspen last week, Jon Peacock, the manager for Pitkin County, said his “blood pressure went down a lot” when he saw the compromises incorporated into the bill and vaguely outlined earlier in the meeting by Toor and Chris Menges, director of climate action for The Nature Conservancy, one of the groups had has been pushing for altering the status quo.

Pitkin County supports the intent of the legislation but worried about the execution. Would the bill, for example, leave counties time to process renewable energy projects while balancing interest.

“I think this is still an area of conversation,” said Peacock. “There’s that balance point of being able to move projects forward that achieve your goals, but also allow you enough time and due process to balance the different interests.”

Peacock said he sees the draft language in the revised bill that will provide a repository for model codes being of value. “I think that’s going to be an important resource. And also the technical support for counties, especially those that don’t have as deep a bench to work with” (as Pitkin County).

 

The story in Sterling

In Northeastern Colorado, Logan County has a short bench, to use Peacock’s analogy. The courthouse in Sterling has only two planners.

Logan County had one of Colorado’s first wind farms. Just across the border in Nebraska lies another wind farm that delivers electricity to Aspen Electric. And it has been adding both wind and solar.

The county has also adopted regulations governing both wind and solar. The latter regulations took effect last summer after hearings before both the planning commission and the county commissioners.

“We are comfortable with them. We don’t feel they are excessive in any way,” says Brownlee, the county commissioner. He welcomes state expertise but doesn’t want the state telling Logan County what it must do.

Public perception is changing. He believes that property owners should be able to use their land as they see fit.

“But I tell you what, whenever we bring this up, both at the planning commission and the board of county commissioners, we spend hours and hours of hearing public testimony from folks who are against new wind and solar and don’t want to live next to these projects,” he reports.

“Honestly, you have people in tears. I am sure I have neighbors and people I have known my whole life who won’t speak to me again because I voted in favor of these wind and solar regulations. “

If most people support renewable generation, those who are opponents tend to be vehemently opposed. The challenge, he added, will be to “try to find the middle ground to all those projects while still protecting neighboring land owners.”

He lives in Fleming, located east of Sterling, too far to see the mountains. But some of his neighbors prize their empty landscapes just as much as those in Denver and Boulder prize the mountain skyline.

 

Also worth reading:

Opinion: Environmentalist could stop the clean-energy transition. Washington Post, April 6, 2024.

Analysis: County Land-Use Regulations for Solar Energy Development in Colorado. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, April 2024.

 

This story originally identified the author of the draft bill that had been discussed as State Sen. Chris Hansen. He told Big Pivots after this story was posted that the original bill was not his, although he is a sponsor of the revised — he called it a different — bill.