March 3 Colorado Energy Cheat Sheet: EPA’s McCarthy ‘good news about Gold King’; a Tesla will improve your ‘quality of life’
March 3 Colorado Energy Cheat Sheet
November 5 Colorado Energy Cheat Sheet: Hickenlooper seeks CO Supreme guidance on Coffman EPA lawsuit; divestment movement is back at CU; WOTUS opposition in U.S. Senate
Governor John Hickenlooper finally filed his request with the Colorado Supreme Court to determine which office–governor or attorney general–has the final say in Colorado’s lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, joined the lawsuit with approximately two dozen other states in October. Via the BARN blog: Gov. John Hickenlooper […]
July 16 Colorado Energy Roundup: Sec. Jewell adds Colowyo Mine visit; renewable energy mandate upheld
A week after the Department of the Interior declined to move forward with an appeal in the Colowyo Mine case, and facing mounting pressure to visit the northwest portion of Colorado during a scheduled trip to Aspen, Sec. Sally Jewell appears to have conceded to a meeting with county commissioners: Moffat County Commissioner John Kinkaid […]
Sputtering Wind Energy Prompts Transmission Cost Concerns from Xcel
Growing transmission costs for wind-generated electricity have prompted Xcel Energy to seek approval for rate hikes to smaller utilities using Xcel’s transmission lines to reach their consumers: Xcel wants the utilities to pay for its costs associated with having supplies of reserve power ready to go in case the wind suddenly dies, said Terri Eaton, […]
Colorado’s cruel approach to energy policy
By Amy Oliver Cooke “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun,” wrote environmental doomsday prophet Dr. Paul Ehrlich in 1975. That’s a cruel statement directed at people who simply want electric lights so their children can read at night, a refrigerator to keep food from […]
Should Xcel Energy be worried about high cost of electricity? Competition?
Conventional wisdom would believe that Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) such as Xcel Energy would have lower electric rates than Rural Electric Associations (REAs) and Municipally Owned Utilities (MOUs) because IOUs have the advantage of population density that allows for maximization of capital investment. But that is not the case as the Colorado Association of Municipal […]
The Great Solar Rip-Off: By the Numbers
According to Xcel Energy’s regulatory filings, the utility spent $275 million in ratepayer subsidies for customer-sited solar panel systems from 2008-2012.* That breaks down to: $196 Cost of these solar subsidies for each of Xcel Energy’s 1.4 million Colorado customers. .7% Percentage of Xcel Energy customers (approximately 9,200) that benefit from lower electricity rates by […]
Highlights and lowlights of SB252 testimony
Despite close to seven hours of testimony on SB13-252, a bill to raise the renewable energy mandate 150 percent on rural electric co-ops, it is very clear that the bill’s prime sponsors Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and Senator Gail Schwartz (D-Snowmass) do not understand their own bill and didn’t bother to consult those […]
Colorado Hydro Fails to Put the “New” in Renewable
By Brandon Ratterman Colorado is having trouble defining hydroelectricity. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers it to be a renewable resource, and the Colorado Energy Office calculates hydroelectric power’s emission rate as equal to wind and solar. Despite these two distinctions, Colorado’s renewable energy standard defines hydroelectricity as renewable only if the generating facility is […]
Eco-left prepares to double down on renewable mandate
By Peter Blake This column appeared originally on Complete Colorado Page 2. When the runners are closing in on the finish line, move the tape farther back. That’s the usual strategy employed by greens when it comes to establishing renewable energy standards for electricity production. It’s a marathon that never ends, and the added cost […]
Country can breathe sigh of relief. We’re still stuck with him…
By William Yeatman and Amy Oliver Cooke As Coloradans we thought we might have to apologize to the rest of the country if President Barack Obama nominated former one-term Colorado Governor Bill Ritter to head the Energy Department. If the President wanted to make electricity costs skyrocket and the eco-left community happy, Ritter was his […]
Natural gas double price of coal in Colorado
According to the most recent Form 10-K that Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest investor owned utility (IOU), filed with the Security and Exchange Commission dated December 31, 2011, electricity generation from natural gas was more than double the price of electricity generated from coal in Colorado. A table on page 18 of the report shows that […]
