Once upon a time, a humble environmental journalist took his family over the river and through the woods to the snow-covered hills of glorious Golden Gate Canyon State Park, and cut the perfect Christmas tree.
Since that idyllic time, the cruel winds of fate have seen our favorite local winter sports teams exit the playoffs early, and your humble environmental journalist shut out of the Golden Gate lottery.
Not that we’re bitter.
Wallowing self-pity added 5 pounds of Halloween candy and pumpkin pie to the waistline, but food therapy also jump-started a psychological recovery. We’re taking the “L” with good cheer and heading instead for South Park. If you happen to drive by, I’ll wave to you right after I’ve safely staked out the best tree.
But seriously, there’s plenty for everybody, and there’s no better way to get into the holiday spirit and remind yourself why we love Colorado than a ramble up and over Kenosha Pass, and that one of a kind breathtaking view of South Park.
The South Park Ranger District’s handy map, a portion is shown above, even describes exactly what tree you can find in which open parts of Pike National Forest. Blue is short-needle Colorado blue spruce, and orange is longer-needle ponderosa. Let the family arguments begin.
In the meantime, there’s still plenty of news to absorb. We recommend reading The Temperature aloud in the car, right after a rousing Michael Buble version of “Good King Wenceslas.” We’ll sound great by comparison.
Reporter
TEMP CHECK
CLIMATE
Xcel runs out of EV rebates
1,176
Number of new and used EV rebates funded by Xcel program
Do you want the good news first, or the bad?
Let’s go with the bad: Xcel Energy has spent the $5 million set aside for new and used EV purchase rebates for income-qualified Colorado customers, leaving 100 people still in the system with rebate approvals but no checks in the mail.
And Xcel doesn’t plan on asking the Public Utilities Commission for more rebate money, which is funded by Xcel’s 1.5 million energy customers in the state under a system that needs PUC approval.
Hey, Temperature headline writers, that seems bad! How can you possibly balance that with “good” news?
Let’s try: Colorado EV shoppers snapped up 1,176 Xcel rebates for a PUC-approved total of $5 million, many of them in a 2024 sales push by automakers striving to meet both customer demand and the mandates of states like Colorado requiring higher percentages of EV sales to clean the air.
As we reported earlier this month, fully electric vehicles made up 22% of Colorado new car registrations in the third quarter of 2024, a big leap from last year.
“I think Xcel running out of money in this program is a good thing,” said Colorado Auto Dealers Association CEO Matthew Groves. “It means they’ve been fulfilling their mission more efficiently than anticipated. No one expected the meteoric rise of EV adoption that we’ve seen in the last 12 months. The partnership has left 46 other states in the dust. Xcel has played a huge part in that.”
While Xcel is saying it has no plans to request more EV money from the PUC, the company did finally acknowledge some of the disappointment in a series of emails with communications staff.
“We understand the end of the EV income qualified purchase and lease rebate program may present challenges for some of our customers. To be clear, checks that have been mailed or received at the dealership will still be honored,” Xcel spokesperson Michelle Aguayo wrote.
“We are in the process of analyzing and understanding the full customer impact. In the meantime, we’ve been communicating with those customers who may have requested a rebate, but hadn’t finalized the process of receiving a rebate.
Xcel’s entire base of ratepayers in Colorado “fund the rebate programs available through Xcel Energy, and we are keeping affordability in mind as we manage our budgets to the levels approved by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission,” Aguayo said.
“We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this may cause.”
Groves said he has not heard whether Xcel wants to somehow extend the rebate program, but he and his dealers aren’t concerned.
“Do we all wish there was more free money to go around and keep consumer costs low? Of course,” he said. “But the market is moving on us. Anyone that doesn’t try to stay ahead of it could get blindsided. I think we view Xcel’s message here as ‘mission accomplished.’“
Read more about the end of the Xcel rebate program over the holidays at ColoradoSun.com.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
WASTE STREAM
Colorado finally improves its recycling record . . . probably?
6.9 million tons
Colorado waste sent to landfills in 2023
When is 6.9 million tons of trash a good thing?
When it’s a slight improvement from the 7 million tons of Colorado trash sent to landfills in previous years, according to state recycling officials.
Solid waste officials, private composters, nonprofits and First Gentleman Marlon Reis celebrated the eighth annual “State of Recycling” report last week, calling it the first improvement in waste diversion after years of stagnating Colorado efforts.
“I’m excited to announce that for the first time this year, we have seen our overall waste go down slightly, while our population continues to rise,” said Randy Moorman of Eco-Cycle, the largest recycler in the state and a leading waste education nonprofit. “Our total waste generated in Colorado went from just over 7 million tons in 2018 to less than 6.9 million tons in 2023, so our efforts as a state to reduce waste are starting to pay off now.”
Pressed by reporters on how Colorado can draw useful conclusions from a waste and recycling system with so many moving parts and so many possible measurement points, state officials acknowledged there’s some art mixed in with the science. They are calling the progress a trend, if not necessarily a bankable raw number. They rely in part on waste intake statistics from regulated landfills.
And they were quick to note Colorado has a long way to go just to catch up with other states that are better at recycling, as we’ve reported at ColoradoSun.com over the years.
“Our recycling and composting rate is still too low at 15%,” Moorman said. “But Colorado is on the brink of a major change.”
State, city and private recycling leaders used their press conference outside a city of Denver gravel storage dome to cite a litany of state laws and local rules that should boost Colorado numbers in coming years. We’ll go deeper into each of those, with some new details about how Denver is trying to improve its own recycling program, in the next week at ColoradoSun.com
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
WATER
Enough water in Arapahoe County? A heavily qualified “yes.”
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Arapahoe County has enough water to meet its needs through 2050, according to a new study, but major steps will need to be taken to reduce future demand and protect the county’s groundwater supplies.
Arapahoe County Commissioner Jeff Baker said in a statement that the study is a cautionary tale, showing that while existing supplies generate 141,000 acre-feet of water each year, future growth could strain those supplies.
“If they want to build, they need to make sure there is enough water to provide adequate water resources to people. This is not a green light to develop,” Baker said.
Arapahoe County is home to 656,000 people, who use 83,400 acre-feet of water a year. By 2050, those numbers are expected to soar, with population topping 900,000 and water demand increasing to as much as 116,000 acre-feet a year, according to the new report.
As with other counties, Arapahoe County does not deliver water, relying instead on 12 separate water districts and agencies to supply its communities, according to Anders Nelson, a spokesman for the county. Some of its supplies come from renewable surface water — primarily runoff from mountain snowpack — while the more rural parts of the county rely on groundwater.
The study outlines several steps that should be taken to protect the fast-growing community southeast of Denver from future water shortages. The county will require developers to document adequate water for new construction projects; implement county-wide water-efficient landscaping rules, and encourage regional partnerships and water sharing agreements.
Section by Jerd Smith | Fresh Water News
MORE CLIMATE NEWS
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CHART OF THE WEEK
While Western nations debate how fast to give up their coal-fired electricity for renewable energy in order to slow climate change, it’s easy to forget that a sizable chunk of the planet has no such luxury in their discussions. In fact, they have no electricity access at all. That reality covers 750 million people, to be almost exact about it.
The great majority of those without electricity in the modern era are in Sub-Saharan Africa, in nations rich with people but lacking in infrastructure, such as Nigeria or Democratic Republic of the Congo.
That’s a huge challenge for international development officials hoping to close those cultural and economic gaps. In some years, only a few million people are added to the grid. But it’s also a big opportunity — what if those 750 million could be brought online with clean, cheap and flexible electrical technologies like microfarms of solar panels and wind turbines?
The International Energy Agency estimates “ensuring universal access to electricity by 2030 will require an investment of $50 million (US) each year on average.” That actually seems cheap, in a world where tech IPOs mint new billionaires seemingly every week.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
Thanks for hanging in with us. Hope you got your Golden Gate permit, if that’s what you really wanted. If not, go to the Pike National Forest tree page here, or go to Recreation.gov and see all the easily-accessible Christmas tree locations in other Colorado national forests. Don’t forget your hot cocoa – sweet, not bitter.
— Michael & John
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