Colorado has achieved a big chunk of its greenhouse gas reduction goals by taking 95% of the actions recommended three years ago, but must double down on more change to reach final targets, a new state study said Monday.
Actions from lawmakers, state regulators and the private sector moved Colorado to 80% of its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, the study released by Gov. Jared Polis said. But with six years left to actually hit the 2030 interim target, Colorado must add rapid transit, build passenger rail up and down the Front Range, plug more old oil wells, foster renewable energy on state-owned land and more, the study adds.
Polis called the climate change targets laid out in state law years ago “ambitious but achievable” in releasing the updated “Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap 2.0,” three years after the first plan.
The plan lists 49 near-term actions for lawmakers and regulators to pursue over the next three years, above and beyond a long list of greenhouse gas reduction strategies already in place that range from well-plugging to electric vehicle subsidies. Critics of current state law say that achieving only 80% of the reductions needed by 2030 still pumps millions of extra tons of carbon dioxide and accompanying ozone pollutants into Colorado’s air.
Gains under current law start flattening out in about 2030, and by 2040, without further changes, Colorado would lag tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year above the original targets. Colorado’s nine northern Front Range counties are also in “severe” violation of EPA limits on toxic ground-level ozone, which is created by some of the same industrial, commuting and oil production activities that produce carbon.
Though reducing carbon dioxide often reduces components of Colorado’s toxic ozone, advocates want faster changes to regulations on oil and gas production and driving fossil fuel cars. One idea floated in a recent package of ozone-fighting bills is a summer-long “pause” on oil and gas site development and drilling, when Colorado’s sun bakes ozone chemicals to dangerous levels.
A coalition including Conservation Colorado, Natural Resources Defense Council and Colorado Sierra Club praised some of the policy changes detailed in the updated roadmap, but said the state’s own modeling shows even those would fall short of the targets.
“Now is not the time to be content with only making it most of the way to our climate targets,” the coalition statement said. “Colorado urgently needs a policy agenda calibrated to achieve or beat our climate targets in order to bring more clean energy opportunities to Coloradans while also protecting them from climate harm.”
The Roadmap 2.0 is part summary of successes so far, and part instructions for further policymaking to achieve 50% cuts by 2030 and 90% cuts by 2050, from a 2005 baseline. Some sectors of the economy have been able to move faster than others; Colorado’s electrical generation utilities, for example, are well on track to achieve an 80% reduction in their carbon emissions by 2030.
Colorado now ranks fifth in the nation for electric vehicle adoption, seventh in wind energy production, and 12th in solar energy production, the report says. Power generation from renewable sources has shot from 22% in 2019 to 37% last year.
The next set of carbon-cutting options suggested in the 2.0 report include many that are tied to a Polis administration push in the 2024 legislature for new land use and affordable housing laws. Some of the proposed bill provisions would reduce local governments’ ability to cap density, and others would create new financial incentives for local governments and developers who concentrate community building around mass transit stops. (Polis scheduled the report release at a Westminster transit station.)
Other additional cuts to greenhouse gas emissions discussed in the updated report include:
- Expansion of the recent zero-fare program for public transit across Colorado; some big transit agencies like RTD in the Denver metro area offered free fares to all riders for all of July and August. RTD is now waiving fares for youth for the 2023-24 academic year.
- Building of the Front Range Rail passenger train system, which as currently conceived would run commuting trains from Pueblo through Colorado Springs and Denver, then toward Boulder and Longmont, and up to Fort Collins.
- Enforcement of recently passed “intensity” regulations on oil and gas production, which require a decline in overall carbon emissions from each unit of oil produced. The recommendations also call for completing abandoned well caps and reducing emissions from the trucks and machinery associated with oil production.
- Creation of a “clean mile” minimum for big fleets of cars and trucks, combined with incentives to buy electric vehicles already provided by the state and federal government. (A past effort to create a cap on vehicle miles traveled for large company commuters and fleets was quickly killed by business interests.)
- “Modernizing” the process of choosing sites for clean energy projects such as solar and wind farms and transmission, to avoid the delays of NIMBY objections and bureaucracy. State regulators would also speed up leasing of renewable projects on properties like those controlled by the State Land Board.