Colorado Must Choose the Right Path to A Regional Energy Market

Posted by Brian Turner on Feb 20, 2025 2:47:48 PM

Colorado Must Choose the Right Path to A Regional Energy Market

Just as you wouldn’t set off on a great American road trip using a 50-year-old paper map, Colorado shouldn’t be making decisions about regional electricity markets using 20-year-old assumptions about the western grid. Choosing the wrong market could lead to some very expensive mistakes, burdening ratepayers with higher costs and lower reliability and steering Colorado’s clean energy ambitions into a dead end.

A regional electricity market is among the most powerful tools in the toolbox for lowering electricity costs, improving reliability and resiliency to extreme weather events, and integrating Colorado’s abundant renewable resources into a 100% clean grid. In the next few months, Colorado utilities like Xcel Energy and Tri-State will have the opportunity to join with neighboring states and utilities in a regional market, and the benefits have the potential to be great. Colorado’s participation in a regional market could allow the state to trade electricity across the West, tapping into resources like hydro from the Northwest or geothermal from Nevada. In return, it could sell excess clean energy produced by local wind and solar.

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Topics: State Policy, Western RTO, Colorado

What Colorado’s First-Ever Gas Infrastructure Plan Teaches Us About Gas Planning

Posted by Sarah Steinberg on Mar 25, 2024 12:45:00 PM

Key Takeaways from Xcel’s First Gas Infrastructure Plan 1

In May 2023, Xcel Energy Colorado filed its inaugural Gas Infrastructure Plan (GIP). Not only was this a first for Colorado, but in a national regulatory landscape light on gas utility oversight, it was also among the first of its kind nationwide. With the gas industry facing unprecedented headwinds – and in light of changing policy, technology, and market conditions – states are looking for new tools to understand and evaluate gas infrastructure investments. Colorado is at the forefront of that change, with state, city, and county emissions reduction policies and programs layered on top of generous state and federal rebates and incentives for clean appliances. In addition, gas commodity and infrastructure costs are rising, and innovation and scale are happening in the cold-climate heating solutions marketplace. All of these beg the question: how do we align long-lived, ratepayer-funded utility infrastructure investments with these long-term trends while still providing for our energy needs in the near term?

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Topics: Energy Efficiency, Colorado, Building Electrification, Building Decarbonization

States Take the Baton in Race to Improve Electric Transmission

Posted by Verna Mandez on Jun 6, 2023 12:00:00 PM

Blog States take the lead in supporting transmission build-out

This past weekend, President Biden signed a bill to raise the national debt ceiling that also included modest improvements in the permitting process for building clean energy projects. As part of the negotiation process, Congressional leaders considered policy changes to speed up the buildout of large-scale electric grid transmission, such as expanding transmission capacity between regions. Ultimately, and unfortunately, those reforms were not included in the bill.

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Topics: State Policy, Arizona, Transmission, California, Maryland, Colorado, Federal Priorities

A Green Light For Green Trucks: Colorado Enacts Advanced Clean Trucks Rule

Posted by Elizabeth Stears and Emilie Olson on May 1, 2023 3:00:00 PM

Blog Green Light for Green Trucks Colorado Enacts the Advanced Clean Trucks Rule

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Topics: Advanced Transportation, Colorado

Charging toward the EV transition. Part 2.

Posted by Elizabeth Stears on Jan 18, 2023 2:00:00 PM

Top Trends in EV Legislation 2

In our previous post, Charging toward the EV transition. Part 1. we covered the first three trends in EV legislation—looking back at 2022.

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Topics: Advanced Transportation, Indiana, California, Missouri, Vermont, Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, West Virginia, Hawaii, Louisiana, New York, Colorado

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