Just last year, Colorado was leading the Mountain West in the transition from dirty coal plants to clean energy. Federal funding was assisting on rural clean energy while coal plant retirement dates were on track to meet the state’s critical climate goals.<\/p>\n
How quickly things change.<\/p>\n
This year the Trump administration is resisting coal’s\u00a0decline\u00a0with unprecedented executive orders and by actively canceling and stalling clean energy projects meant to bring down energy prices,\u00a0killing thousands\u00a0of renewable energy jobs.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, some Pueblo County leaders and Congressman Jeff Hurd joined in and informed Colorado regulators that they intend to ask President Trump to keep coal-fired operations at\u00a0 Pueblo’s Comanche 2 and 3 coal units continuing indefinitely.<\/p>\n
The sudden push to keep coal burning is a slap in the face to Colorado voters who have supported renewable energy, more affordable bills, and who are demanding cleaner air. Surely they could expect Gov. Polis to step in to defend the state’s critical climate goals, right?<\/p>\n
Apparently not. In a shocking twist, the state of Colorado just sided with Xcel Energy and\u00a0petitioned regulators to keep the Comanche 2 unit open past its retirement date scheduled for the end of the year to cover for Comanche 3’s most\u00a0recent, massive outage.<\/p>\n
In effect, this agreement would allow Xcel Energy to charge customers for its own mistakes. If approved, Xcel Energy can run Comanche 2 for an additional year without clear guidelines to restrict pollution. This means the company could run Comanche 2 past its retirement date in addition to Comanche 3 once it’s repaired. Instead of one coal unit burning in 2026, there could be two — a full abandonment of previous commitments, which could increase air pollution and potentially raise energy costs for Coloradans.<\/p>\n
Comanche 3 has been a\u00a0reliability\u00a0disaster and its pollution\u00a0contributes\u00a0to disease and cancer.\u00a0 Given its high cost\u2013both financially and in its toll on public health\u2013and its frequent outages, backtracking on coal retirements has nothing but downsides for Pueblo and Xcel ratepayers.<\/p>\n
As a local environmental justice policy advocate, I’ve participated in an enormous amount of debates over what to do about Comanche 3 and have talked to countless people in the community. People want clean energy and good-paying jobs.<\/p>\n
Xcel’s motivations are clear. Coal is expensive and they have a captive customer base allowing them to send big profits to their shareholders and CEOs. These profits are earned off the backs of workers while pollution costs the public millions in healthcare bills.<\/p>\n
A truly \u201cjust\u201d transition should include treating Pueblo with respect, addressing historical inequities like those experienced by the Pueblo community, and giving back to the community for helping to power Colorado for decades at the expense of its own public health.<\/p>\n
A recent\u00a0study\u00a0found an advanced Renewable Energy Park could replace $40 million in lost annual tax revenue and provide 300 permanent jobs. That’s more money and more jobs than Comanche 3 is providing now. Pueblo could continue exporting power in Colorado, but this time with cleaner air and lower costs. Instead of only gratifying profits, we can advocate for utilities like Xcel to prioritize massive buildouts of\u00a0rooftop solar\u00a0to help reduce energy bills for families and businesses.<\/p>\n
In Colorado,\u00a0jobs in the clean energy sector are already outpacing jobs in fossil fuel industries\u00a0and\u00a0wages in renewable energy are outpacing the national average\u00a0which could benefit Pueblo\u2019s economic future while also protecting workers, public health, and the environment.<\/p>\n
If you agree that Colorado needs to move past coal and embrace our renewable energy future, I encourage you to contact the Public Utilities Commission and tell them we don\u2019t need federal and corporate interference in already settled matters. Let them know that you believe a just energy transition should address the historic inequities resulting from Xcel\u2019s coal plant as well as our current climate realities with the implementation of a renewable energy park that can provide jobs and tax revenues with little or no pollution.<\/p>\n
Jamie Valdez is a community advocate from Pueblo and works with GreenLatinos as a Colorado Transportation and Energy Advocate.<\/em><\/p>\n Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more. <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online<\/a> or check out our guidelines<\/a> for how to submit by email or mail.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a shocking twist, the state of Colorado just sided with Xcel Energy and\u00a0petitioned regulators to keep the Comanche 2 unit open past its retirement date scheduled for the end of the year to cover f<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sleepystork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sleepystork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sleepystork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sleepystork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sleepystork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sleepystork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sleepystork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sleepystork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}