Colorado legislators and environmental groups will try to limit the pollution damage from the Trump administration’s reprieves for coal-burning power plants in Colorado, backing a bill requiring new caps on dirty air and transparency on how much extra coal extensions are costing consumers.
“The Trump administration is taking an axe to basic protections of our air, water and climate, and this time they are pushing the impacts even further by punishing Coloradans with higher energy prices,” said Margaret Kran-Annexstein, director of Sierra Club Colorado, in a statement backing House Bill 1226. “We urgently need laws like this to protect our state against the high price — both financial and environmental — the federal government is trying to foist on us.”
The Trump administration has ordered Tri-State Generation’s Craig Station Unit 1, scheduled to close for good last Dec. 31, to operate through the spring, with possible extensions of the kind it has ordered for coal plants in other states. It is also supporting requests by Colorado Springs Utilities, a municipality-owned operator, to extend the life of the Ray D. Nixon coal plant at Fountain beyond the previously announced 2029 closing date.
Federal agencies are also loosening permitting and royalty rules from coal taken on federal lands, and eliminating some toxic limits on mercury and other deadly pollutants from power plants, though it’s not clear yet whether Colorado’s six remaining coal plants will be impacted by those changes.
The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have said forcing Tri-State to keep Craig Unit 1 open for a whole extra year would cost $85 million more than the co-op had planned for generation. Tri-State has said it has no indication yet how it is expected to pay for the extra costs.
“Coloradans should know how much that is costing them, and not have to breathe the dirty air for someone else’s profit,” cosponsor Rep. Jenny Wilford, D-Northglenn, said in a statement when the bill was filed. “There is no justification for these emergency coal orders and it is only worsening the nation’s affordability crisis, so we have to step up and protect our state.”
The bill has three main provisions aimed at different coal units in Colorado, Sierra Club representatives said in an interview:
- One provision, in part a reaction to the unknowns surrounding the emergency orders for Craig 1, would require both co-op generators and investor-owned generators like Xcel Energy to regularly report additional costs for coal units operating after they were initially scheduled to close. They must also report how much electricity the coal units actually generated, since it is not clear yet whether the plants ordered by the Trump administration to stay open are truly needed on the grid in the next few years.
- A second provision would require the Public Utilities Commission to approve enough renewable energy sources like wind or solar in large investor-owned utilities’ long-term energy supply plans, so that coal units can continue to be retired on the state’s approved schedule while still ensuring reliability. Some environmental groups were disappointed that recent PUC decisions did not approve as much wind and solar development for Xcel Energy as they had hoped.
- The third major provision appears aimed squarely at Colorado Springs Utilities. It would require state air pollution regulators to set more stringent rules and require newer scrubbing equipment for older coal units staying open after 2030 cutoff dates. That would include CSU’s Ray D. Nixon plant, if it does stay open past 2029.