Study will seek to provide 18 counties with facts to help shape best outcomes in the next 20 years
by Allen Best
The 18 Colorado counties lying east of the Front Range get few tourists and almost never make the calendars or books extolling Colorado’s eye-candy scenery. Wind and now solar installations on these eastern plains, though, already provide the bulk of Colorado’s renewable energy.
One example: Glenwood Springs-based Holy Cross Energy likely had close to 85% of its energy from renewable sources during 2025. During May, it hit 97%. Where did that renewable electricity get generated?
Some if came from a hydroelectric plant at Palisade, more from solar projects near Basalt and Battlement Mesa. But the 72 wind turbines in the Bronco Plains II wind project were a key source. Located about two hours east of Denver, the project can meet needs of 40,000 homes.
Far more wind, solar and perhaps other energy sources will be developed as Colorado works toward its 2050 decarbonization goals.
A study that aims to assess both the opportunities and negative impacts has now been launched. It is targeted for completion in March 2027.
Energeia, a California-based company that recently added a Colorado office, was selected to oversee the study and has teamed with two other consultants. The request for proposal described a maximum budget of $500,000.
The kick-off meeting, which was originally scheduled for Limon, was instead held virtually on Jan. 9 owing to the snowstorm of the previous night.
The original version of this story said this study was triggered by HB23-1247, a law passed in 2023. The law said the director of the Colorado Energy Office or a designee must conduct studies of electric transmission and advanced energy technologies in rural Colorado.
Actually, that study was completed in December: “Exploring Advanced Energy Solutiosn for Rural Colorado” can be found here.
Key sponsors of the law passed in 2023 were Sen. Rod Pelton, a Republican from Cheyenne Wells whose district includes about 25% of the state’s land mass, including all of southeastern Colorado, along with Rep. Ty Winter, a Republican from the Trinidad area. Both have attended meetings sponsored by Action Colorado, the Pueblo-based organization that has been trying to prolong the coal era in Colorado. A third sponsor, Sen. Dylan Robers, a Democrat, represents northwestern Colorado.
This new study, I am told on background, is actually the result of a different appropriation through the Department of Local Affairs. It overlaps with the study commissioned by the Colorado Energy Office.
I had reached out to the Colorado Energy Office and the Southeast Colorado Council of Governments, but the results did not divulge that this was a new and different study.
The RFP issued in 2025 by the council of governments for Southeastern and South Central Colorado, spoke to one element of the discussion:
“These projects will entail substantial capital investments by utility companies, which in turn raises questions regarding energy cost increases for the State’s ratepayers as existing carbon plants are retired before the completion of their original anticipated debt service.”
In other words, will this shift to renewables cost consumers money? (The answer to that is very complicated and, depending upon the political context, has different takeaways).
At the Jan. 9 video gathering that launched the study, Ezra Beeman, the managing director of Energeia, said the study will provide recommendations for best practices, including land use.
Beeman put the future development expected on the eastern plains into two contexts. One is Colorado’s in-state decarbonization goals.
The second is the broader, more regional markets for renewable energy. Most of Colorado’s electrical utilities, for example, have joined or soon will join the Southwest Power Pool’s day-ahead market. All Colorado utilities must, by law, join a regional transmission organization no later than 2030.
Increasingly Colorado is part of a regional market, so in “trying to understand how Colorado is going to meet its state ambitions requires having a strong understanding of regional dynamics,” Beeman.
The legislation is relatively agnostic, as long as the technology does not result in greenhouse gas emissions. That means that not only are renewables on the table, but also natural gas coupled with carbon capture, geothermal, clean hydrogen, and advanced nuclear.
Some of these technologies may be easily dismissed but they do indicate the lay of the political landscape. For example, “advanced nuclear” has very strong support in urban and rural areas, but particularly the latter. Whether it will make financial sense any time soon is another matter. Ditto for natural gas generation coupled with carbon capture. The technology exists now but has not been cost competitive.
Beeman said the study intends to provide a fact-based analysis for how eastern Colorado will engage in the energy transition.
The study is to dive into property values and taxes, workforce needs, and impacts to assets (presumably meaning the fossil fuel plants).
Other elements of the study are to include:
- projections of renewable energy production in the region
- impacts to agriculture and ranching
- workforce housing needs
- transportation infrastructure impacts
- wildlife impacts
- projected carbon offset timelines
What caught my ear most significantly was Beeman’s mention of the opportunity to study community ownership models, including microgrid business models and solar-plus-storage project ownership.
What might this idea of “community ownership” look like, and where might it be applied? I did not stick around through the full meeting to ask the question, but it intrigues me.
We have four different utilities serving these 18 counties.
- Xcel Energy services Sterling and a few other municipalities.
- Most of the rural areas are members of electrical cooperatives, which get their power from Tri-State Generation and Transmission, itself a wholesale cooperative.
- Some individual municipalities, including Fort Morgan, which get power from the Municipal Energy Association of Nebraska.
- The Arkansas River Power Authority provides power to six municipalities from Trinidad to Holly, and in turn is or soon will be getting power from Guzman Energy.
This story was amended on Jan. 12, and the changes are reflected in the above text.
- Ridding Denver-area homes of gas - February 5, 2026
- Gearing up for data centers - February 3, 2026
- How Colorado sees the Colorado River stalemate - February 2, 2026
OMG! Another “study*!”
Projections of Eastern Plains renewable generation by 2040ish:
2000 wind turbines @4-6 MW/ea. = 10,000 MW
150 sq mi of solar @ 100 MW/sq mi = 15,000 MW (1 out of 200 sq mi.)
Impacts to ag and ranching:
$30,000/yr-turbine to land owners, essentially no appreciable reduction in yields.
$1,000,000/yr-sq mi of solar to land owners, possible grazing/crop continuation with agrivoltaics systems (That’s ADVANCED!)
About 30% of this as county/district taxes?
Some revenue to farmers from repurposing water use when replaced w/solar
Some net ag revenue loss to farmers from replacing grazing or crops $1-200,000/yr-sq.mi?
Workforce housing:
Judging by my recent trip to Klines Corners and Corona NM (Sun Zia & Western Spirit, 5000 MW total), a lot of that can be handled with RV parks.
Transportation:
For wind, some road/corner widening. On and off wide load traffic holds that needs to be orchestrated thoughtfully.
For solar, not much is needed.
Internally, wind farms get a gravel road to each turbine, often improving rancher productivity. Most solar farms will have a perimeter road. All of these can be used as fire breaks, and fire truck access.
Wildlife impacts: Small land wildlife is minimally effected by either. Solar replacing plowed crops often improves biodiversity. Grouse have been observed foraging within solar. Grouse have been shown to remain near wind turbines, despite “concerns” that grouse are scared by tall structures. Raptor collisions can be avoided using Identiflight system made in Boulder. Migrating birds appear to be good at avoidance. Bats have the most to lose. Various “shutdown on conditions” strategies and avoidance of specific locations and bat deterrents are helpful but none 100%.
Aircraft Detection Lighting Systems (ADLS) available from all turbine makers, keep the skies dark 99.9% of the time.
Can I have my $500,000?
Oops, I submitted before finishing.
For wildlife, I forgot, yes, deer, elk and antelope are fenced out of most solar. There is a well-publicized solar farm in WY that blocked an antelope migration corridor and forced them into a state highway, resulting in lots of road kill. On land used by these critters, newer designs (including Axial Basin) divide solar farms into 100 acre “blocks” separated by wide, open corridors between them so the project remains “permeable” to transiting by larger wildlife.
There is the possibility that solar farms designed for cattle can also allow large wildlife. Fencing could be replaced by camera surveillance and signage. (Thinking About Copper Theft? Warning! Property Protected by Armed Drones!)
“Projected Carbon Offset Timelines:”
I assume this means payback of embodied emissions by avoided emissions. The fact anyone asks for this now is a tribute to fossil fuel mis/dis-information. It has been measured, researched, written up in “Life Cycle Assessments” ad nauseum. Current, modern, “advanced” wind and solar both projects pay back in about a year, maybe less against coal. About two years against gas combined cycle. This includes mining, milling, manufacturing, transport, construction etc. Adding batteries adds about 50% to the payback time. (As far as I can tell, these #s don’t assume much recycling, which is OK now, and getting better all the time for wind and solar components.)
Because CO2, and electricity, are both kinda invisible, folks see tall turbines or sprawling solar and it’s easy to overestimate how much it takes to make these big objects, while underestimating what otherwise happens at the fossil generators. Also, there were indeed solar or wind projects 20 or 30 years ago that required 10 or more years to pay back emissions. (The components used more materials and often the studied projects were in places without good sun or wind, unlike CO’s Eastern Plains.)
Two of my fun comparisons:
A solar farm here generates equivalent electricity to three inches of coal each year on its overall footprint. So a “seam” eight feet deep before the project needs a major renovation (replacing half inch thick panels on 40% of that overall land area) in 30ish years.
In the past I called wind turbines, “A semi-on-a-stick with wings.” The new ones are more like “A locomotive-on-a-tower with wings.” Five megawatts is 7000ish horsepower. In good locations they run the equivalent of 3500 full load hours per year. A semi at 7 mpg is using only about 150 hp of its 500 hp peak power, so a wind turbine is putting out the equivalent of 50 semis running those hours or 20 semis blazing down the highway every hour of the year.
I guess I didn’t look at “workforce.” Judging by plates on trucks, in NM this mostly consisted of crews from TX or SD or ND . Certainly they can be from here if our business climate is otherwise friendly. Pay for most positions probably won’t be as good as for a boiler engineers overseeing high-pressure steam turbines and valves that can blow up with the wrong turn of a wrench wreaking millions in damage and great bodily harm or death.
Impacts on assets could also involve trying to predict the effect of wind and solar and battery banks on nearby property values. As far as I can tell, results show very small declines, but often just during/after construction with them going back to near equivalence after a few years. Perhaps any inconvenience is outweighed by other economic benefits to the counties and districts, decent if not overwhelming employment, and the spreading of the wealth by the project landowners.