Led by Berkeley, several dozen jurisdictions in California and other states have forbidden new natural gas connections to buildings. Colorado has embarked on a gentler, more complex but still firm approach to reducing emissions from buildings.
The state’s path is outlined in a 62-page decision issued by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission on Oct. 1. The decision explains why existing regulations governing Xcel Energy and the three other investor-owned utilities must be revised but also expanded. The utilities deliver natural gas to heat homes, warm water, and for cooking.
PUC commissioners and staff will be addressing “really big questions and really big challenges,” says Justin Brant, co-director of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project’s utility program. He calls this effort “ground-breaking,” a description echoed by others.
Other states – particularly California, Massachusetts, and New York, but also Minnesota, Nevada, and Washington – have been having broad conversations about the future of natural gas utilities and decarbonization of buildings. And in Europe, some countries, particularly the Netherlands, have created a framework for decarbonizing gas networks across the country. But none have gotten very far yet. With the work now underway, Colorado ranks among the nation’s leaders, Brant and others say.
Utilities must reduce the carbon intensity of the fuels they provide 22% by 2030, which they can do by providing alternative fuels. Another strategy is to improve efficiency of buildings, so that they require less natural gas to warm.
Colorado’s journey to decarbonization of buildings began with a 2019 law that specified 50% economy-wide reductions in greenhouse gases by 2030. That same law targeted a 90% reduction by 2050.
(See also: State Sen. Chris Hansen, a key architect of Colorado’s decarbonization agenda, says this pace needs to be picked up. See: State senator says climate change demands Colorado elevate its decarbonization goals.)
Transportation and electrical generation are the top two sources of climate-warming pollution, according to the “Colorado Greenhouse Gas Reduction Roadmap.” But “fuel use in residential, commercial, and industrial buildings is not far behind,” added the document.
A pie chart in the document suggests that buildings, both commercial and residential, cause about 10% of the state’s emissions.
Decarbonization of electricity is already well underway. Coal combustion as a source of Colorado’s electricity dropped from 68% to 36% between 2010 and 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By 2030, utilities plan to close all but one coal-burning unit in Colorado. Xcel Energy wants to operate that final coal plant, Comanche 3, at only one-third of capacity.
Colorado also has 23 natural gas-fired plants that generate electricity, but they are expected to be used selectively as electric utilities expand their use of renewables to at least 75% and conceivably 100% in the coming decade.
Buildings, with their dependence on natural gas or, in rural areas, propane, pose arguably a far greater challenge. Unlike a handful of coal plants, there are perhaps a million buildings in Colorado. Nor is this as simple as trading in a car with an internal-combustion for one with an electric motor—not that that is particularly simple, at least not yet.
Technologies exist, among them air-source heat pumps, as an alternative to gas-burning furnaces ordinarily found in basements. The replacements will be costly, though.
Easier will be to cease installing natural gas pipelines, stoves, and hot-water heaters in new buildings. That has started to happen, but most of the 30,000 or more houses built each year are connected to natural gas pipelines. That compounds the problem, as depreciating the infrastructure can take decades.
“The issues are complex and they are new, as no one in the world has decarbonized a gas system, but that is what needs to happen one way or another,” says the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Mike Henchen, who specializes in building decarbonization.
“This is a big transition that nobody has done yet,” he says. The goal will be to create a transition that works for everyone. “We want the system to be decarbonized, but we don’t want to do it in a way that raises people’s bills. That might require some creative solutions that go beyond what we typically see.”
Colorado’s approach to decarbonizing buildings was defined by two laws adopted in June.
SB21-264, sometimes called the clean-heat law, requires the state’s four regulated gas utilities to submit clean heat plans that show how they will reduce emissions 22% by 2030 as compared to the 2015 baseline.
The law assigns responsibility to the PUC to oversee this process governing the private gas utilities with an Oct. 1 deadline for launching the rule-making process. Municipal utilities that provide gas will be governed by the state’s Air Quality Control Commission. The AQCC has until September 2022 to kick off its process. Yet another provision applies to the agency that regulates the oil and gas industry.
A second law, HB21-1238, orders regulated gas utilities to institute demand-side management programs to reduce need for natural gas, such as by improved insulation in homes or other efficiency measures. In evaluating such programs, the PUC must use metrics that favor work that, if more expensive in the short term, provides long-term savings.
[Two] other bills also address building energy use. SB21-246, the beneficial electrification law, directs the PUC to oversee energy saving targets by regulated electric utilities that use efficient electric equipment in place of less efficient systems that burn fossil fuels. HB21-1286 addresses energy performance of buildings 50,000 square feet and larger.
Three of the five laws order that the social costs of carbon and methane be used in evaluations of programs by utilities.
PUC commissioners and staff will have to work through many issues while consulting with environmental groups, consumer advocates, and the utilities themselves.
One major issue will be that of stranded assets. If we’re going to abandon some of the existing natural gas pipelines and other infrastructure, who pays? Do natural gas customers pay for that infrastructure that is no longer needed but which hasn’t been fully depreciated? Or do the electricity customers pay for this transition through their rates?
This transition challenges the existing business model of gas utilities. Installation of pipelines to new housing developments and other buildings typically assume a payback of up to 50 years, explains RMI’s Henchen. Existing customers, through their rates, subsidize this extension of natural gas lines to new customers.
A closely related question is why do we add natural gas infrastructure, including the pipelines that underlie most residential streets, if we’re going to start abandoning them?
Colorado gas utilities during the last decade has added an average of 20,500 residential, 7,000 commercial, and 350 industrial customers of natural gas per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It now has 1.8 million residential gas customers.
Hydrogen will also be part of the discussion. Can green hydrogen, made from water and renewable energy, displace natural gas? Can it be blended with natural gas? Or can hydrogen made from natural gas and the carbon sequestered underground be used? A study, “Opportunities for Low-Carbon Hydrogen in Colorado: A Roadmap,” by the consulting firm E3 recommends developing a pilot project.
Costs will invariably be an issue. The clean heat bill, SB21-264, caps the increase on customer bills caused by this transition at 2.5%.
Among those already carefully monitoring the proceedings is the Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate. The state agency has the statutory responsibility to represent residential, small-business, and agriculture consumers in proceedings before the PUC.
“It’s huge,” Cindy Schonhaut, the director of the agency, says of this building decarbonization effort now underway. The challenge, she says, will be “how can we decarbonize our natural gas system in a way that is cost-effective and that minimizes imposing costs on consumers?”
Consumers will pay for this transition, says Schonhaut. “It’s a question of how much.”
Schonhaut also points to a dramatic shift in the business model of gas utilities. The utilities currently must deliver natural gas to new customers in their service territories. This conflicts with the goal of decarbonization.
Too, she sees a safety issue that differentiates this natural gas transition from electric resource planning. “For example, abandoning a pipeline isn’t a matter of simply turning off the valves, because gas will remain in the pipe,” she explains. If a contractor using a backhoe broke a pipe, there could be mayhem. Decommissioning pipelines will involve many questions.
Looming over this decarbonization are rising prices of natural gas. In September, prices surged above $5 per million Btu, about double the price of six months ago, and the highest September price since 2008, Inside Climate News reported.
Not least in the months and years ahead will be the question of what happens to the natural gas utilities themselves as they decarbonize. The journey will perhaps be most difficult for Atmos Energy and Colorado Natural Gas, the two investor-owned utilities in Colorado who do nothing but sell gas. Two others, Xcel Energy and Black Hills Energy, sell both gas and electricity, if not always in the same places.
“They have invested millions of dollars in the ground in Colorado, as has happened across the country,” explains SWEEP’s Brant. “If we are to meet the state’s roadmap decarbonization goals, there will be a need to change the business model of natural gas. Underlying a lot of these decisions will be how do you do that in an equitable manner?”
Both the gas utilities and the PUC commissioners have been preparing for this process even before the laws were adopted in 2021.
In September 2020, Black Hills Energy issued a 109-page analysis conducted by the Gas Technology Institute titled “Assessment of Natural Gas and Electric Decarbonization in State of Colorado Decarbonization Sector.”
That analysis argued for a core focus on energy efficiency, with a special emphasis on creating tight building envelopes, to help reduce energy use. But the analysis warned of rising overall energy costs by electrifying and warned of the intense energy use of space heating.
“There is no evidence wind or solar resources can address prospective seasonal energy-intensive space heating electricity peaks during Colorado winters,” the Black Hills study concluded.
Xcel Energy in November 2020 also issued a report, “Transitioning Natural Gas for a Low-Carbon Future.” That 27-page paper urged a go-slower approach, one devoid of mandates, because of the need for technological breakthroughs plus the need for time to create the electrical infrastructure needed to replace natural gas on a broad scale.
Photo credit: Allen Best/The Mountain Town News
The paper was one for all eight states in which Xcel operates. In Colorado, it lost that argument about mandates. But perhaps it scored points in the pacing.
The PUC commissioners have also been prepping themselves. Beginning in November 2020, they heard from experts in such diverse topics as leak detection, coal-mine methane, and hydrogen pipeline gas in an effort to better get their minds wrapped around the challenge of methane, the primary constituent of natural gas.
Commissioners have been told that baseline information that will be needed for evaluating progress remains scarce. Even basic definitions have yet to be worked out.
Environmental groups are eager to begin wrestling with the challenge.
“As daunting as these issues appear, it’s really important to take them on now,” says RMI’s Henchen. “There are steps that make sense to get us started, like cutting back on spending on expanding the gas system, targeting funding to help the most vulnerable customers shift to cleaner and more stable alternatives than gas, and piloting new approaches to ‘non-pipe solutions’ instead of replacing old pipes with new pipes.”
Some mountain ranges have already received more than 2 feet of snow in the first three weeks of October…
So far, that snowpack measurement is way above the average for this early in the season.
Those early-season numbers look pretty dramatic, but that’s just because the averages are very low this early on. We usually don’t see too much snowpack in our mountains in October.
Colorado snowpack basin-filled map October 25, 2021 via the NRCS.
For example, the Grizzly Peak weather station on Loveland Pass has an average of just two-tenths of an inch of SWE for this day, which is about two inches of snow. But there are 1.1 inches of SWE currently being measured, which is about 11 inches of snow. That equals 550% of the average.
All the stations combined in the South Platte River headwaters are currently at [99%] of average.
These big early season numbers are not just fun to look at, but they also have importance. When Colorado has good early-season snowpack, it increases the chances of finishing the season in April at or above average.
When there is ground exposed with no snowpack, the darker mountainside can absorb more sunlight, and melt more snow. The earlier in the season that ground gets covered by snow, the more snow we’ll keep through the year, because the white snow can reflect more than 80% of sunlight.
Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map October 25, 2021 via the NRCS.
Few in the American West have been spared the effects of the region’s long-standing drought, but on the frontlines of the sere conditions are those who work most closely with the land — farmers, ranchers and other agricultural producers. San Miguel County created a program, Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) that compensates landowners for implementing practices in “drought resilience and other soil health improvement projects,” according to the county’s Parks and Open Spaces page n the county website. The Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) got an update from the department’s director, Janet Kask, and contractor Chris Hazen, on their efforts to enlist landowners in the forward-thinking program.
The county was awarded a grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board to enhance the PES program, Kask explained…
The pilot program is seeking six partners and is currently in earnest talks with several interested landowners. Hazen, an independent contractor with The Terra Firm, is spearheading the administration of the CWCB grant in order to “continue with our soil health initiative,” Kask said…
While talks with landowners are ongoing, Kask and Hazen reported there have been delays.
“We’re disappointed that we haven’t had the landowner commitments that we initially set out to have,” Kask told the commissioners Wednesday. “We were looking at a total of six this year, but just based on active conversations Chris has had with certain landowners, some of them are on hold and hesitant to join and we do have somebody who’s almost ready to go, but waiting for their USDA number. There are some criteria that the landowners need to meet and adhere to on our end.”
Norwood farmers Tony and Barclay Daranyi of Indian Ridge Farm are closest to qualifying as of Wednesday. Other participants close to being green-lighted are the owners of Laid Back Ranch and of Lizard Head Wilderness Ranch, Hazen said…
Some of the practices the county is looking for in property being proposed for participation includes cover crops, intensive till to no-till or strip till, improved fertilizer management, conservation cover /cropland conversion, forage and biomass planting/convert cropland to grass/legume/biomass, convert cropland to permanent grass/legume cover, windbreaks, nutrient management, and other practices as called out by the Natural Resource Conservation Service…
Some hiccups in meeting the goal of six participants include delays in submitting a USDA number, mapping challenges, the pandemic and other delays.
The CWCB grant totals $34,646, with the county matching at $34,646 for a total of $69,293.
For more information, contact Hazen at The Terra Firm 970-708-1221, with questions or to schedule a meeting to identify partnership opportunities.
As the Colorado’s 2022 water forecast indicates, it appears there is more dry weather ahead, which does not bode well for Colorado’s water resources…
Weather forecasters are now predicting that another La Niña is likely to materialize, but barely. This means it is likely to deliver less moisture to the state than last year. According to a recent story in Fresh Water News, this means that just as occurred last year, the moisture we do get will simply sublimate, or soak into our ultra-dry soils, leaving little to run into our creeks and rivers. This is particularly worrying to water forecasters, as the west enters its 20th year of regional drought…
Water planners are worried…The current water year began Oct. 1; the fourth quarter time frame. This leads into the period of critical mountain snows and the spring runoff they generate, and estimations of what it will yield help farmers, cities, and others determine how much water they will have to work with.
“The seasonal outlook is not pointing in a favorable direction,” said Colorado State University’s Colorado Climate Center Specialist Peter Goble. But he reminds Coloradoans that last year’s devastating fires aren’t necessary something to measure against. “We’re a lot better off than we were a year ago. Having blue skies as opposed to smoke is a big improvement, but we are going into water year 2022 on shaky footing.”
[…]
[The] Colorado Water Availability Task Force, is now saying the state is likely to experience another La Niña this coming year. That weather pattern can often bring healthy moisture to the Northern Rockies, but this pattern has also been know to leave the southwestern portion of the state dry. This was our pattern last year, but since it’s year two, water experts say this often means less moisture.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced in a Sept. 22 report that storage levels are continuing to drop in the Colorado River Basin…
As AVV reported earlier this year, storage at lakes Powell and Mead is down to a combined 39 percent full. Last year at this time the two storage reservoirs were at a then-record low 49 percent full. Electric turbines generate power for a large swath of the Western U.S at those two reservoirs. Without a snowy winter and spring, hydropower generation at Powell’s Glen Canyon Dam could come to a halt as early as July 2022, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
For the first time since the historic Cameron Peak Fire charred a record breaking 208,000 acres in 2020, and since the rain on the burn scar caused fatal flooding in the Poudre Canyon in July of 2021, wildlife officers with Colorado Parks and Wildlife are seeing the detrimental impact the blaze had on the fish in the Cache la Poudre River. As feared, recent surveys of the river showed thousands of fish were killed as a result of the fire and its lasting impacts.
Cache la Poudre River. Photo credit: Allen Best
“The runoff events we saw this summer, post fire, have had a detrimental impact on the fishery,” said Kyle Battige, Aquatic Biologist with CPW…
CBS4’s Dillon Thomas was invited to join CPW staff as they conducted their first fish testing of the year along the Poudre River.
Battige and his team conducted Standardized Electrofishing Surveys along the Poudre River in mid-October, their first time surveying the region since the fatal flooding and Cameron Peak Fire…
The fatal landslide in July claimed the lives of four people near the Black Hollow Road area. CBS4 was invited to join CPW as they surveyed their two nearest stations, one upstream and one downstream from the slide.
Kelly Flats is a campground and recreation area just downstream from the landslide.
“Last year we caught approximately 200 fish,” Battige said of the roughly 40-yard stretch of the river they survey at Kelly Flats. “(This year) we caught zero trout.”
Not one single fish was found near Kelly Flats, just one year after hundreds were located there. Battige said he expected there to be fewer fish due to the impacts of the past year. However, he said he was shocked to not catch one single fish…
Though the results of the electrofishing were upsetting for the staff at Kelly Flats, greater signs of hope were unveiled a mile upstream from the landslide.
Within 30 seconds of entering the Poudre upstream from the slide and turning on their electrofishing system, multiple fish were being caught for counting…
At the survey station upstream more than 50 fish were caught during one pass. More were caught during a second pass. CPW staff were thrilled to see the fish were still in the region, even if not at the same population of previous years…
Battige said the Poudre River is typically not stocked with trout. The ecosystem has long thrived on its own even after natural disasters. The fish have historically repopulated and redistributed along the river without human intervention.
Battige said he was hopeful the fish would soon make their way toward the Kelly Flats area, repopulating that region…
The fish that are caught in the electrofishing process are weighed, measured, listed for species and then returned to the same waters.
Now, with stats in-hand, CPW will weigh their options for the future. Either let the river bounce back on its own, or try and shock the system by stocking the river with fish.
Natural resources experts who surveyed the fire’s impacts on the watershed, which [northern Colorado relies] on for drinking and irrigation water, believed the Cameron Peak Fire will have impacts on the Poudre River for at least 10 years.
The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Shawna Bethell is a freelance essayist/journalist covering the people and places of Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri.
I’m not a fish person. They aren’t even on my radar until my nephew catches them, cleans them, and fries them up into a fabulous meal with hushpuppies and slaw. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t understand the role they play in both our natural ecosystems and in the Kansas economy via the sport fishing industry. I understand, too, that both hang in the balance depending on decisions being made north of our state border.
Under the Republican River Compact, Kansas is considered both an upstream and downstream state. Born on the eastern [plains] of Colorado…the Republican River flows east across the plains, tipping our northwest corner before entering Nebraska. There the river continues eastward until it drops south again, re-crossing our border and eventually emptying into Milford Reservoir before finally meeting up with the Smoky Hill River in Junction City to create the Kansas River.
The 1934 compact was supposed to ensure allocations of water for each state through which the river flows. However, historically, both Colorado and Nebraska have — at times — overused their shares.
In an effort to prevent such occurrences in the future, entities affiliated with water and irrigation districts in Nebraska made a 2018 application to the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources to transfer water from the Platte River Basin to the Republican River Basin to meet the requirements of allocation. The application was denied due to objections by interested parties, including those of Kansas’ then-Gov. Jeff Colyer, who cited the negative effects of invasive species to our waterways should an inter-basin transfer move forward.
The plan did not die, however, and a revised application was filed. Met again with objections, Nebraska conducted a hearing in July 2021, where it again gathered testimony from concerned parties. According to the agency’s legal counsel, Emily Rose, there is no set date for a final decision.
Like her predecessor, Gov. Laura Kelly also objects to the inter-basin transfer. According to Reeves Oyster, a spokeswoman for the governor: “There are too many potential impacts to the health of our state’s vital natural resources.”
Oyster also said that “as it stands right now, this is a matter that first needs to be addressed in Nebraska. We hope our neighboring state will make the right decision, but should the transfer gain any traction, we will respond and engage accordingly.”
I should hope so.
“Our most pressing concerns are Silver and Bighead Carp and White Perch,” wrote Chris Steffen, aquatic nuisance species coordinator with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. “All three species have proven in Kansas to be incredibly detrimental to the waters they invade and are located within the Platte River near the proposed point of diversion.”
According to Steffen, other states that have seen an influx of these species have experienced declines in their sport fish populations of more than 80%. If the species were allowed to take hold in Lovewell and Milford Reservoirs, it could risk the state’s $210,000 fishing industry. Aside from economics, changes to the river’s ecosystem could affect critical habitat for species such as the Shoal Chub and the Plains Minnow, which are already deemed threatened in the state.
“Kansas Wildlife and Parks has been working diligently to prevent the spread and limit the impact of aquatic invasive species,” Steffen wrote. “This project would undermine those efforts and place our natural resources at risk.”
Last spring I traveled to Nebraska, where I spent a morning at Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary that sits along the Platte. Eagles and herons hunted the shallows, while the songs of meadowlarks and red-winged blackbirds pierced the air.
According to Audubon’s website, the Platte River is also critical habitat for endangered and iconic species, including the piping plover and the sandhill crane, and like the Kansas department, they and their partners have invested heavily to preserve their state’s natural resources. Reducing water flow via a transfer would alter the ecology of nesting grounds and food sources relied upon by both native and migratory birds. Although the sanctuary is not in Kansas, as residents of the Plains, we need to recognize that the entire eco-region and its wildlife are treasures to protect.
In that light, I encourage our current administration to stay informed and ready to engage as they have said they would. Not only for the state’s economic benefit, but for the assurance that the progress we’ve made so far in preserving and protecting our natural assets is sustained and encouraged hereafter.
Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
