What explains the Pueblo nonsense?

Mayor says EVs cost so much more. But there has to be something else going in the proposal to rescind a renewable energy goal. What is it?

by Allen Best

Perhaps the only way to understand what was said at a Pueblo City Council meeting on Monday was to know what was not said.

Why exactly did Mayor Heather Graham want to rescind a resolution that had been adopted in 2017? That resolution said that Pueblo wanted to get 100% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2035.

In her explanation to the Pueblo council, Graham talked about the purchase of electric cars. Her mayoral predecessor, Nick Gradisar, had ordered their purchase for use by police. Graham said the cars were two to three times more expensive than internal-combustion engine vehicles — a statement that Gradisar, in a later interview with Big Pivots, vigorously disputed.

What exactly the purchase of EVs had to do with the resolution was unclear. By definition, EVs use electricity. The 2017 resolution spoke only to sources of electricity, not the fuel used by cars or to heat space and water in buildings.

“I’m really perplexed as to why we’re even doing this,” said Councilman Dennis Flores of the rollback proposed by Graham. He pointed out that the goal was aspirational, not legally binding. Nobody, he said, would be summoned to the gallows if Pueblo failed to achieve the 100% goal.

Councilwoman Sarah Martinez described the goal as being “kind of like a Northern Star.” Repealing the resolution, she said, would be a “step backward.”

Council President Mark Aliff — who supported the repeal — contended the cost of renewables for the city had led to higher rates charged by its electrical utility, Black Hills Energy.

In the last seven years, “renewable energies have cost this community an inordinate amount of money,” he said.

“Those (rates) can directly be attributed to Black Hills adhering to the state mandates and to these — these ridiculous mandates of 2035 that we have to be at certain amounts of renewable energies,” Aliff added.

Black Hills does have among the highest electrical rates in Colorado. See: Will Black Hills get its big rate increase?

But renewables have had nothing to do with the rates charged by Black Hills, according to Joseph Pereira, the deputy director of the Colorado Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate.

The council voted 4-3 against repealing the resolution. By the same margin, the council then defeated an attempt to remove the 100% goal from the work delegated to the city’s energy commission.

Both supporters and opponents had framed the goal as being more than just about electrical generation. Flores, for example, said the steel mill at Pueblo is “completely solar powered.” (It’s not, but on a net-metering basis it’s close). He talked about a community health center that is net zero, selling electricity into the grid because it produces more than it consumes. And he talked about the potential of new data centers coupled with renewable generation.

Pressed to explain why the repeal of the goal was necessary, Graham, the mayor, talked about electric cars. “At this time, I do not feel like it is feasible for the city to continue to purchase electric vehicles,” she said. “I don’t think that we need to get away from renewables, but we also know that renewables are costing taxpayers more money than they’re getting in return.”

The 2017 resolution says nothing about EVs. This is the key statement: “The city of Pueblo resolves to derive 100% of the community’s electric energy through renewable energy resources and associated technologies by 2035.”

Black Hills derived 26% of its electricity from renewables in 2017 and had specified a goal of 60% by 2035. Renewables today provide 30% of the electricity. Black Hills expect that will rise to 75% by 2030. (That will be an 82% reduction compared to 2005 levels. As such, it complies with a state law).

What is going on in Pueblo? The new mayor obviously wants to repudiate the agenda of the previous mayor. But why exactly?

The former mayor, Nick Gradisar, represents old Pueblo. His grandfather, an immigrant, worked at the steel mill (then called CF&I), walking to work. His father also worked at the mill. Gradisar broke family tradition, getting a law degree, but then returned to Pueblo.

If the mayoral position is ostensibly non-partisan, Gradisar clearly comes from the Democratic side, the old Pueblo side

Graham is also a Pueblo native and owned three restaurants when the covid epidemic began. She helped organize protests of the city’s policies that restricted operations at the restaurants. She’s a registered Republican, according to an interview conducted by Colorado Politics in February, but not rigidly so. She endorsed Adam Frisch, the Democrat from Aspen, in the last congressional election. Aspen and Pueblo are in the same district.

Graham handily beat Gradisar in the January election, 62% to 38%.

I called Gradisar to get his version of what happened on his watch. Not surprisingly, he had a different take than what Graham had told the council.

The resolution, he said, was adopted before he was mayor, although he had supported it. “I felt like it was a good goal. There were no penalties if we didn’t do it. I felt it was something we should work toward.”

As mayor, he supported vehicle electrification of the city fleet. Not every vehicle could be electrified. Electric trash trucks weren’t available. But the city when he was mayor did get 20 to 30 EVs for police cars. There was some push back from police, who thought the cars were too cramped when transporting prisoners. Police also got some electric F-150 Lightning pickups.

Range was a concern, but it turns out the police cruisers normally will travel 100 miles a day, well within the range of their batteries. Plus, Black Hills agreed to put in chargers at the police station.

Cost was not an issue, said Gradisar.

“When (Graham) said it cost two to three times more to buy an EV, that is simply not the case,” he said. “After we get the (federal) tax credit, they might cost less.”

Big Pivots has reached out to the Pueblo fleet manager and the Colorado Energy Office, in addition to on-line sources to get clarity on the costs of the EVs in Pueblo vs. internal combustion engine vehicles. We’ll update this story once we know.

Gradisar said he insisted on net-zero operations for new buildings, employing heat pumps and solar collectors. The city built and financed three new fire stations when he was mayor.

“I think as a government we should sort of lead by example if we are going to ask people to reduce our carbon footprints,” he told me

As mayor, Gradisar saw the energy transition being an important meal ticket for Pueblo going forward. It already is.

The steel mill defined the old Pueblo, and in a way it still does. Awater feature in the downtown area has proved greatly popular.

The world’s largest factory for the manufacture of wind turbine towers opened on the outskirts of Pueblo in 2010. Then owned by Vestas, a Danish company, it is now owned by SE Wind, a South Korean company. Last year SE Wind broke ground on a 900,000 square-foot expansion that will allow the company to double production and result in the hiring of at least 850 new employees. The expansion is expected to be completed in three phases ending in 2028.

Solar energy was very specifically the cause of another economic success: a $700 million expansion of the steel mill to manufacture quarter-mile-long rails from recycled steel. The key to Evraz, the current owner of the mill, pulling the trigger on the new plant in Pueblo was the availability of renewable energy. The 20-year agreement with Xcel Energy gave Evraz a known price, unlike that of electricity produced by burning natural gas, whose price can fluctuate. The cost of solar will not.

“It’s not true that renewable energy costs more,” said Gradisar. “I don’t know where that comes from. It’s cheaper energy.”

Aliff, the city council president, blamed Black Hills Energy’s electrical rates on state mandates.

“There is a kernel of truth to that, but it does not have to do with renewables,” said the Office of the Utility Consumer Advocates’ Pereira in an interview with Big Pivots.

Colorado, explained Pereira, adopted legislation in 2010 called the Clean Air, Clean Jobs Act, which sought to replace coal generation with cleaner sources of energy. In both Denver and Pueblo, it resulted in coal plants being replaced by natural gas. Black Hill’s gas plant east of Pueblo was quite expensive and, according to Pereira, gets used rarely.

Black Hills, which already has some of the state’s highest electrical rates, wants to raise its rates to customers by 13%. The case was heard by the Public Utility Commissioners last week. They have made no decision.

None of the renewable energy or climate requirements have been in play in the current proposal, said Pereira. He sees the primary drivers of the high-priced electricity being the desire by Black Hills to spend money on transmission and distribution so it can claim the need for higher rates. He also blames what he describes as the inefficient business operations of Black Hills. “That is what drives this (current) rate case.”

SE Wind last year broke ground on a 900,000 square-foot expansion that will allow it to double production.

The council resolution in 2017 was the result of a national Sierra Club campaign called Ready for 100. The goal was to shift the narrative around clean energy by enlisting local governments around the country through the adoption of resolutions. Instead of insecurity, scarcity, and pessimism, the club hoped to create a storyline of optimism, abundance, and possibility.

Helping support that storyline were the plummeting prices for wind, especially. Costs dropped an average of 10% a year. Solar was just a few steps behind.

Bryce Carter had joined the Sierra Club staff in late 2011. He began scoping out the aging coal-burning plants in Colorado. When the national organization opened the door to 10 pilot projects, Carter and the club’s Pueblo-based Sangre de Cristo chapter set out to seek a $50,000 grant. He and others in Colorado saw it as a long shot. To their surprise, it was approved. The money was used to hire a field organizer for 18 months to facilitate the conversation with both Pueblo and Pueblo County.

Already, a campaign to secure commitment from the nation’s mayors had yielded affirmations from the usual suspects among Colorado municipalities. Carter liked Pueblo precisely because it was not Aspen, Boulder, or Denver.

“Pueblo was important because, when you think back, people said that renewable energy was a premium product, (and) only privileged people can do that,” says Carter. The Sierra Club wanted to build a story that it could be for all communities.

Pueblo was and is known for its blue-collar work force —and its smoke stacks. One in downtown Pueblo was no longer in use by then. Dominating the skyline to the southeast were the three towering smokestacks of Comanche Generating Station. One of those units, Comanche 3, had begun operation only a few years before, in 2010, and was projected to continue operations until 2070.

Larry Atencio was persuaded to carry the torch for the resolution in the city council chambers. He represented one of Pueblo’s lower-income neighborhoods, east of Interstate 25 and south of the Highway 50 bypass. This is proximate to the steel mill. Its residents tend to be more vulnerable to high electricity rates. He saw renewables as a matter of social justice.

David Cockrell, a member of the Sierra Club chapter and an affiliated group called Pueblo’s Energy Future, was deeply engaged in the effort. He believes the effort fundamentally changed the conversation in Pueblo and influenced the work of the Gradisar administration.

After the resolution, utility-scale solar spread rapidly in Pueblo County. It is well positioned for solar. It has the transmission lines in place. Plus, it has a solar resource rated as 7 or 8 on a scale of 10, according to the chief executive of a renewable energy company who was interested in 2021 upon the completion of a 350-megawatt sea of photovoltaic panels around the Comanche station called Bighorn. Cockrell says Pueblo County has 20,000 acres covered by solar panels now. He thinks the resolution helped set the stage.

Once again, what explains the poorly argued case for repeal of the resolution in Pueblo?

This might be an echo of the national conversation about energy. Democrats once won Pueblo County’s votes handily. That continued into the 21^st century when Democratic presidential candidates won Pueblo County by margins of 6% to 14%

Then, in 2016, Donald Trump carried the county by 470 votes. He lost in the 2020 election in Pueblo County, as well as nationally. But he came back even stronger in 2024 when he defeated Kamala Harris by a margin of 51.3% to 46.2%.

Trump speaks glowingly of fossil fuels and disparages renewables.

One of the three burning-coal units at Comanche Generating Station has closed and the two others are scheduled to follow during the next six years.

Then there is the issue of what will succeed the tax base and jobs provided by Xcel Energy’s Comanche Generating Station. One of the three units closed in 2023, a second will close in 2025, and the third – the last in Colorado – is scheduled to close by the end of 2030. The power from Comanche gets exported to Xcel customers, primarily to metropolitan Denver. In Pueblo, only the steel mill gets electricity from Xcel.

A report issued in January 2024 by an Xcel Energy task force after nine months of monthly meetings recommended a nuclear power plant as the best answer by far for Pueblo in terms of tax base and well-paying jobs. The task force described a natural gas plant coupled with carbon capture and sequestration as the second but much less recommended choice.

Xcel, in the just transition electric resource plan that it submitted to the Colorado PUC in October, calls for neither but does see a potential for nuclear generation in the 2030s. It did not specify Pueblo.

Both nuclear and carbon capture were foreshadowed by a resolution adopted by Pueblo County in 2021.

The county commissioners in 2017 had adopted a resolution that was nearly identical to that resolution adopted by the Pueblo City Council. The new resolution adopted by commissioners in 2021 replaced the call for “renewable energy” with one for considering a “full suite of low or zero-carbon technologies.” The resolution went on to include the use of “fossil methane,” i.e. natural gas, with or without carbon capture utilization and storage, bioenergy, or use of renewables to produce hydrogen, nuclear power or long-duration energy storage.

“It is unclear what the best technological solution will be for this challenge. Colorado will work with electric utilities to ensure that a full suite of low or zero-carbon technologies can compete to fill that role,” says the new resolution.

Might the effort in Pueblo to scrap the 2017 resolution be part of the same thinking? Is this part of an effort to open the door for energy resources beyond renewables?

Nuclear, of course, has its fans, as was evident at a meeting in late February when the Xcel task force presented results of the study. And looking back, Cockrell believes he and others over-sold renewable energy as a benefit to Pueblo’s economy. Few of the contractors that erected the panels were from Pueblo, he says, and few people have been needed to maintain the panels. “I just don’t think renewable energy has lived up to the initial promise that we touted,” he said.

Atencio, the city council member in 2017 who championed the resolution in the city council chambers, told me that Pueblo has fallen short of what he had hoped. Asked whether the resolution had achieved anything, he at first said no then corrected himself, pointing to the police EVs and the new fire stations. But he had hoped for more.

Of course, after sponsoring the 2017 resolution, Atencio surprised many in Pueblo by opposing an effort to leave Black Hills and form a municipal utility.

Meral Doe Renee Jones, though, thinks the resolution has already succeeded. A mechanical engineer by training, she was hired by the Sierra Club for 16 months beginning in 2016 to do the field work in the campaign. She found that “people were hungry for this.”

She calls the resolution a declaration, and a declaration can be “really powerful when it comes from the people. A lot of what we wanted to accomplish already has happened,” she said.

That said, she’s open to the idea of nuclear. She’s not necessarily for or against, she says, but supports having a full conversation. She doubts that renewable energy can totally answer the growing demand for electricity.

For his part, Carter — who left the Sierra Club in 2018 —makes the case that the Pueblo resolution of February 2017 had outsized impact. It helped foster a network of relationships. Not all pathways are obvious. But it helped foster conversations at the community level and beyond that even now continue.

But there’s also another line of causality. About 15 months after Pueblo’s announcement, Jared Polis announced his candidacy for governor, adopting a platform of 100% renewables by 2040. He announced his candidacy at the Solar Roasters coffee shop in downtown Pueblo.

In early December, just a month after his election, Xcel Energy announced a goal of 100% emission-free electricity by 2050 across its eight-state service territory. The company, which is based in Minneapolis, chose Denver for the announcement, and fortuitously the day was full of sunshine.

The governor-elect was invited to the stage that had been set up at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to say a few words. “Elections have consequences,” he said. Six months later, Colorado had a new law that laid a foundation for scores of new laws. Together they seek to define pathways for eliminating emissions from Colorado’s economy by 2040.