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The Colorado Energy Office plans to update the state’s greenhouse gas reduction roadmap. Here you can expect the biggest tweaks

 

The Colorado Energy Office this year will update the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap that was originally released in January 2021. The changes that will be incorporated are a reminder of just how rapidly this energy transition is occurring.

For example, little more than a page of the 164-page document were devoted to carbon capture in its various iterations, including sequestration and direct air capture. It’s been a major source of discussion in Colorado this year, including in a legislative bill or two, and new federal funding provides impetus for developers to pursue technologies.

The roadmap was required by the 2019 law that identified economy wide reductions in Colorado of 26% by 2025 and 50% by 2030. A bill passed this week by Colorado legislators further sets interim targets beyond 2030, leading to the 2050 goal of 90%.

The energy office says that by late 2022 more than 95% of near-term actions identified in the plan released not quite two years before have been completed or are underway. Sometimes rulemakings take years to complete. This revised roadmap is to also define a new set of near-term actions that need to be taken.

The update, which is being called Roadmap 2.0, must also provide a new inventory of emissions, identifying how much emissions have been reduced.

Also unlike in 2020, during the height of the covid lockdown, there will be in-person meetings. Those meetings from May 18 to June 22 have provisionally been scheduled for Denver (Montbello), Trinidad, Durango, Grand Junction, Craig, Greeley, and Pueblo. Virtual meetings are also expected to occur.

 

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Dominique Gomez, the deputy director of the Colorado Energy Office, says the roadmap needs to be updated to better reflect the advances in what are called emerging technologies: geothermal, clean hydrogen, carbon capture and utilization and storage.

“We really do need to do more work to prepare for what role these emerging technologies might play,” says Gomez.

This roadmap update will also focus on better listening and incorporating feedback of disproportionately impacted communities. The passage of HB19-1277 and creation of the Environmental Justice Task Force moved the conversation along,. “There is much more to do to make that a major focus,” says Gomez.

A third major new focus will be land use and transportation, a particularly difficult sector to decarbonize.

Gov. Jared Polis made reform of land use in Colorado a key element of his legislative agenda for the 2023 session, but the proposal caused heartburn among even many fellow Democrats, who thought it usurped local control and even worked at cross purposes to its goals. That’s a discussion to be continued — and the revised roadmap will be one place for that.

Gomez says the goal is to have a draft out by this fall and final adoption late in 2023 or early in 2024.

For more details, go to the Colorado Energy Office webpage devoted to the update.

Allen Best
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