Renewables siting bill passes first hurdle

Bill stripped of most objectionable provisions to local government gets approved in first legislative hearing in final days of this session

by Allen Best

Oh, there was outrage.

Shad Sullivan, a fifth-generation cattle rancher from east of Pueblo, called SB24-212 “collectivist and socialistic” and anti-American, too.

The bill is “contrary to Colorado being a local-control state,” Park County Commissioner Amy Mitchell told members of the Colorado Senate Transportation and Energy Committee on April 24, the first stop for the bill after its introduction less than 48 hours before. “This bill is a solution in search of a problem.”

Washington County had strong representation. “There is no substitute for local knowledge,” said a planning commissioner form the county about 120 miles northeast of Denver. A county commissioner, Giselle Jefferson, said the county already has sufficient resources for figuring out where renewable energy projects should – and should not – go.

The bill was perhaps a year in the making. Conservation groups have been seeing pushback by local governments in other states to renewable energy and decided Colorado needed to create state standards governing such things as setbacks. Former Gov. Bill Ritter and his Center for the American West was retained to convene perhaps a dozen stakeholder meetings among many groups: energy developers, agriculture organizations, labor, local officials and others.

The background issue is that Colorado will have to build enormous amounts of additional renewable generation in the next 15 or so years to meet its decarbonization goals and also replace combustion of fossil fuels in transportation and buildings. A miracle might arrive in nuclear energy, but because of the costs, that looks like a long-shot. A study commissioned by the Colorado Energy Office found that Colorado needs to triple the amount of wind generation and quintuple the amount of solar energy.

Two versions of the bill floated around this winter, and they provoked strong opposition from Colorado Counties Inc., which saw the proposal as infringing on local control. The bill that was finally introduced was pared back, offering carrots with such things as providing a repository for model codes and withdrawing any thou-shalt sticks.

For background on this story, see: How can Colorado add this much renewable energy by 2040? Big Pivots, April 18, 2024

At an April 9 meeting in Aspen, The Nature Conservancy’s Chris Menges told the Pitkin County commissioners that there is no intent ot return next year after this compromise bill is passed with mandates.

Still, that was the subtext for many questions asked by State Sen. Byron Pelton, a former Logan County commissioners who now represents much of northeastern Colorado. He also wondered why the Colorado Energy Office would be the lead agency when county governments are accustomed to working with the Department of Local Affairs. But he most of all hammered at the question of why the bill was even needed.

In the end, he voted no, as did the Sen. Cleave Simpson, the other Republican on the committee, but he conceded that the provisions that had caused him to write an op/ed of objection in the Denver Post in January were absent. Had they not, he said, “you would have had three times as many here today” to protest.

The bill’s sponsors Sen. Chris Hansen, a Denver resident and Sen. Steve Fenbeg, from Boulder, have been responsible for many of Colorado big pivot bills regarding the energy transition.

“This is really a bill that is going to help local government do this work better by providing state resources, state expertise from places like the Department of Natural Resources and Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the great wildlife experts that they have, the habitat experts that they have,” said Hansen in introducing the bill. “But ultimately, this does nothing to change local control when it comes to siting decisions.”

He said that the energy office will take the lead because no single state agency has all the knowledge. “CEO is essentially playing quarterback here.”

Notable among the several dozen offering testimony was the lack of enthusiasm from some of those who might have been expected to be cheerleaders. “Today we are navigating the relations with the county governments and communities very well,” said Rikki Seguin, executive director of the Interwest Energy Alliance, which represents wind developers.

In his wrap-up, Hansen noted that he had grown up in western Kansas and had worked on farms when he was young. “I am familiar with the problems of agriculture,” he said.

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