Candidate Forum, Action Alerts, PUC Update, Spotlight Organization, and More! |
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Save the Dates: Boulder City Council Candidate Forum
Boulder City Council elections are coming up, and Empower our Future and CEA are hosting a candidate forum on Climate and Energy with two dates: Thursday, October 7 and Monday, October 11 at 6 pm. If you have a question you'd like to ask, please submit it HERE.
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Action Alert: Urge Congress to End Fossil Fuel Subsidies
There are two budget bills currently in progress in Congress, a weaker $1T bill passed recently by the Senate and a stronger $3T "reconciliation" package being put together by the House. Both have significant funding for climate solutions, but both are also still heavily subsidizing fossil fuels.
Now is the time to write your US senators and representatives to urge them to end all fossil fuel subsidies, including carbon capture, storage, and offsets, tax breaks, hydrogen from fossil fuels, and new oil and gas development. You can also ask that they stop funding nuclear development and biofuels (wood) for energy and focus on renewables (wind and solar) and storage, which is now the cheapest and fastest path to carbon-free energy.
Write to Senator Michael Bennet HERE
Write to Senator Senator John Hickenlooper HERE
The most impact tends to be the number of messages about a topic rather than the length, so short and sweet from all of us is better than a lot of detail from a few of us!
An alternative message you can use or draw from is the Colorado Coalition for a Livable Climate's calls for a carbon tax, clean energy jobs, and a phaseout of all oil and gas production by 2030, which can be accessed HERE.
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Action Alert: Change the Name of Sq**w Mountain
This is outside the normal scope of CEA's advocacy, but it underscores the need to honor Indigenous voices and look to them to lead the conversation about how we handle Colorado's lands - which is critical to moving away from fossil fuels. Please support Spirit of the Sun by asking the Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board to change the name of Sq**w Mountain - which is a sexual and ethnic slur - to Mestaa'ėhehe Mountain. They vote on recommending the change to the governor on September 16 and you can add your name HERE.
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Tri-State Needs to Get Back to its Roots
Once focused on transmission, Tri-State Generation and Transmission needs to quickly figure out how to move away from a centralized generation model to a distributed, renewable, and more resilient one. An article by Allen Best on the changing landscape for Tri-State and the push and pull of small and large member electric co-ops can be read HERE.
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CDOT Aims to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
With transportation now being the largest contributing sector of greenhouse gases, the Colorado Department of Transportation is proposing welcome rulemaking that requires projects to comply with reduced emissions targets. Changes still need to be made to explicitly center marginalized populations and ensure enforceability, with public hearings scheduled for September and October ahead of a possible vote in November. Read more HERE.
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PUC Update
Many important activities happened this month at the Colorado Public Utilities Commission:
- A procedural schedule was published for Xcel’s resource plan, and the PUC directed Xcel to model new information (i.e. extreme heat waves, high gas prices, high EV penetration)
- Xcel was directed to model using “actual” data on the expensive, outage-prone Comanche 3 unit
- A new Interconnection of Distributed Energy Resources inquiry will explore how to support local power, potentially through new performance-based rates
- Distribution system planning rules were given a recommended decision, setting up new planning requirements for January 2022 and beyond. These will lead to non-wires alternatives (batteries, microgrids, energy efficiency) to traditional grid investments
- Commissioners affirmed the importance of getting Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) technology “right”
A more complete summary of PUC activities can be found HERE.
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What We Are Reading
Adams County Adopts New Oil and Gas Regulations That Critics Say Will Effectively Ban Drilling
Adams is one of the first Colorado counties to adopt new drilling regulations under Senate Bill 181. “Frankly, the time is now. We are looking at the longest streak of poor air quality in the Denver metro in a number of years,” said Adams County Commissioner Emma Pinter. Read more about the new regulations HERE.
Electric Cars have Much Lower Lifecycle Emissions
In the US, lifecycle emissions for EVs are already 60-68% lower than gasoline. Read more HERE.
Methane News
Colorado completes first airborne survey to monitor for methane. See the survey and more details HERE.
New Mexico follows Colorado's lead to control methane emissions. Read about how these two states are setting the bar HERE.
Oversizing Renewables Could Be the Key to Eliminating Fossil Fuels
With renewables still much cheaper than storage, a new report says the optimal-cost solar, wind, and storage solution is one that oversizes the renewables by a factor of 4. And that this solution will be cheaper than all other energy sources by 2030. See more details and full report HERE.
Groups Call on FERC to Conduct a Study on the Benefits of RTOs
With six states, including Colorado, considering a Regional Transmission Organization, it's important to have the data to make an informed decision. Read more about the call to Congress to address this need HERE.
Line 3 isn't the Only Fight for Indigenous People to Save Their (and Our) Environment
If you love maps along with your social justice like we do, check out Decolonial Atlas and subscribe to their newsletter HERE ("Follow" in the bottom right corner).
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Spotlight on Organizations We Like
Maybe this segment needs a better name, but the CEA newsletter shares news and activities from a variety of sources around Colorado and the US. You've seen many of the names but might not know more than that. Starting this month, we'll periodically highlight an organization that we partner with, get information from, or support.
This month's entry is Allen Best and Big Pivots. Allen has been a prominent journalist on energy matters in Colorado for over a decade. While we have not recently presented much of his content in the CEA newsletter - an error we are correcting now - we have long benefited from and depended on the wealth of reporting that he has provided.
At the beginning of 2020, Allen began a (soon-to-be registered) nonprofit e-journal called Big Pivots, which continues his, and others', valuable contributions to the Colorado energy conversation. You can visit the website and sign up for the email journal HERE. We particularly like the "gleanings" when we don't have time for a longer article.
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Thank you for being a climate advocate!
- The Clean Energy Action Team
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