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November 12 Colorado Energy Cheat Sheet: Colorado hit hard by CPP; Bennet defends pro-Keystone stance; CSU report rejects “sky-is-falling” contamination claims

Colorado would be the 18th hardest hit state, and fourth most expensive for the cost of carbon reduction under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, according to a new report from Fitch Ratings:

Wide-ranging voices—in politics; in business; consumer advocates like our coalition—have been warning of the potentially crippling costs of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s soon-to-be-implemented Clean Power Plan. Its ripple effects will be felt nationwide, and Colorado is by all indications squarely in harm’s way.

As we have contended for some time now, the proposed federal mandate for air standards will impact every type of consumer—residential, small business, agricultural and industrial—in every community in Colorado. That includes consumers served by public utilities, municipal providers and rural cooperatives. And the changes to Colorado’s statewide power generation contemplated by the EPA’s mandates may ultimately cost many billions of dollars.

Rather than heed or, at least, consider some of these urgent concerns, however, defenders of the oncoming Juggernaut have sought in many cases to dismiss the criticism as coming from interests that are supposedly too close to the debate. Stakeholders involved in energy development of fossil fuels, for example, or power generation, are accused of having a vested interest and thus, presumably, are less than objective. Fairly or not, policy debates often turn on such considerations.

Well, now, another authoritative voice has entered the fray, and this time it is one without a discernible horse in the race. It is the voice of a truly neutral arbiter—one of the financial world’s “big three” credit-rating agencies—and it is sounding the alarm on the Clean Power Plan.

Fitch Ratings’ new report, “The Carbon Effect 2.0,” released just weeks ago, raises troubling concerns about the impact of the Clean Power Plan on the financial stability of the nation’s electric utilities. More troubling still, in the report’s state-by-state assessment, Colorado is among those facing the most formidable challenges, and potentially steepest costs, in complying with the Draconian EPA rules.

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Governor John Hickenlooper continues to maintain his position that Attorney General Cynthia Coffman should defer to the governor on the matter of the AG’s lawsuit over the Clean Power Plan:

On his petition to the state Supreme Court to review Attorney General Cynthia Coffman’s authority to sue over the federal Clean Power Plan:

“I think the way the system’s meant, was designed, is that the governor and the attorney general should be consulting together on legal issues facing the state. But ultimately, the attorney general needs a client, and I think the governor was intended to be that voice, to speak for the agencies, the departments, to speak for the people. And I think if the attorney general and the governor don’t agree, my reading and [that of] the lawyers in our office is that this was intended ultimately to be the governor’s decision.”

Hickenlooper filed the petition to the Colorado Supreme Court last week.

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The eco-inquisition is here, and the practice of selling environmental indulgences won’t be far behind:

Executives at publicly traded companies like Exxon Mobil may soon be talking more about climate change. Financial regulators are taking a closer look at how these companies disclose the impacts of climate change.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Monday that Peabody Energy didn’t tell its investors all the financial risks from climate change and potential regulation. Peabody Energy, which owns a mine in Colorado, admits no wrongdoing, but it says it will now make disclosures that accurately and objectively represent climate impacts.

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Methane regulations touted as saving money for companies, say regulators and companies hired to find methane leaks:

“What that means to the industry is substantial lost revenues,” he said.

He estimated that loss at about $1.2 billion a year even at today’s low natural gas prices.

Methane also is a potent greenhouse gas, and typically leaks in combination with volatile organic compounds and other pollutants. With that in mind, Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission last year passed what’s known as Regulation 7, imposing the nation’s first rules specifically targeting methane emissions by the industry. Now the Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Land Management are considering rules targeting methane at the national level.

“Colorado … is the leader in the country on this issue by passing and enacting Regulation 7. We’re paying real close attention to how that’s going because there are several rulemakings on the federal level,” Von Bargen said.

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U.S. Senator Michael Bennet defended his pro-Keystone XL stance even as his party’s leader, President Barack Obama, went the other way on the project last week:

Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet stood behind his vote earlier this year in favor of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline after the Obama administration rejected it on Friday after seven years of study and contentious debate.

“For years, the Keystone XL pipeline has been overhyped on both sides of the debate,” Bennet said in a statement to The Colorado Statesman. “The number of jobs it would create and the amount of carbon emissions it would facilitate have both been exaggerated.”

The proposed 1,200-mile pipeline would have transported 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska and ultimately on to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Bennet voted for a Senate bill approving the project in January.

“Based on scientific analyses that showed building Keystone XL would have little or no bearing on whether our nation will materially address climate change, I voted to move forward with the pipeline,” Bennet added. “The president vetoed the bill that Congress passed and has now administratively rejected the project. This is an issue on which the president and I disagree.”

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A new CSU report concludes that, contrary to the popular line put forward by anti-fracking activists and other environmentalists, water-based contaminants from the fossil fuel industry aren’t seeping into wells in northern Colorado:

A new Colorado State University report says there is no evidence water-based contaminants are seeping into drinking-water wells over a vast oil and gas field in northeast Colorado.

A series of studies, led by CSU civil and environmental engineer professor Ken Carlson, analyzed the impact of oil and gas drilling on groundwater in the 6,700-square-mile Denver-Julesburg Basin, which extends between Greeley and Colorado Springs and between Limon and the foothills.

The studies were done under the auspices of the Colorado Water Watch, a state-funded effort started last year for real-time groundwater monitoring in the DJ Basin. The basin shares space with more than 30,000 active or abandoned oil and natural gas wells, say CSU researchers.

They primarily looked at the 24,000 producing and 7,500 abandoned wells in the Wattenberg Field, which sits mainly in Weld County.

“We feel that our results add to our database of knowledge,” Carlson said. “There isn’t a chronic, the-sky-is-falling type of problem with water contamination.”

Methane contamination was found in a small percentage of older wells, but according to the story, “it’s not toxic and isn’t a huge factor in terms of drinking-water safety.”

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Many of the most well-known National Parks in the western United States would violate the new 70 ppb ozone regulation finalized last month, with the most egregious violator located along the Colorado-Utah border:

But national parks are among the worst offenders, with one maintaining levels of more than 100 ppb.

The 26 offenders are mainly in the West, with only a handful in the East, where coal-fired power plants dot the landscape.

The biggest violator is Dinosaur National Monument, home to 1,500 dinosaur fossils and a popular white-water rafting destination on the Colorado-Utah border. Its ozone level is 114 ppb. The runner-up at 90 ppb is the 631-square-mile Sequoia National Park in Northern California, a pristine forest boasting 3,200-year-old trees that are among the tallest in the world.

The Grand Canyon? It barely squeaks by at 69 ppb.

In all, 11 states have national parks that are in non-compliance with the new ozone standard: Arizona, 3; California, 9; Colorado, 2; Connecticut, 3; Illinois, 1; Maine, 1; Massachusetts, 1; Nevada, 1; New Jersey, 2; Pennsylvania, 1; and Utah, 2. Ozone levels are calculated over a three-year period.

The Grand Canyon narrowly missed violating the rule when the EPA went with the 70 ppb level instead of the lower end of the 65-70 range suggested in earlier drafts of the rule.