The Selective Skepticism of "Colorado’s" Green Lobby

Last year, after the third try, the Colorado General Assembly passed a law adding nuclear energy to the state’s statutory definition of “clean energy.”

Despite the howling from the deep-pocketed and largely non-Colorado based Malthusian Non Profit Industrial Complex¹ with claims in bill testimonies ranging across the wide swath of well-debunked anti-nuclear hysteria, the bill said nothing about building nuclear power plants in the state.

This year, the legislature is back with moving the needle in that direction.

Just this week, HB26-1337 (Facilitating Nuclear Energy Development) made its way into the beginning of the sausage making process in Colorado legislature. It would do three simple but consequential things: centralize nuclear permitting within the state, encourage the state’s utilities to identify potential reactor sites and, most importantly allow investor-owned utilities to charge ratepayers for up to $20 million in early-stage development costs like feasibility studies and site analysis.

This is not a commitment to build a nuclear plant. And even if the State of Colorado paves the path for future nuclear plants, there’s still a lot at the federal level that needs to be addressed.

But back in Colorado, it’s something more foundational. HB26-1337 extends the existing energy financing model to a nuclear. Utilities would be, with PUC approval, allowed to begin spending—and recovering those costs from customers well before a plant is sited, funded, and built.

Naturally, this entire thing is rife with controversy, from the usual groups. The Colorado Sun has, given Sun standards, a decent article on the “controversy.”

The Sun, in their typical framing make it sound as if there’s a large swath of environmental groups in opposition but spends the majority of their article on the infamous GreenLatinos, an woke green (allegedly) Spanish-speaking NGO who once demanded media censorship of “climate change deniers.”

Here’s how the Sun’s article introduces this illustrious group:

“It’s so tone-deaf, it’s ridiculous,” said Colorado GreenLatinos’ Ean Tafoya, who said a broad environmental coalition is angry at bill sponsor Valdez, for a “betrayal” of environmental justice values in promoting nuclear development.

Xcel and some Pueblo economic development leaders have talked about siting a nuclear project on the grounds of the sprawling coal-powered Comanche Station as those fossil fuel units close over the next few years, Tafoya noted. Xcel doesn’t even serve the Pueblo area, he said.

“So the pollution stays in the community, and the power doesn’t power the localized community. So if you were to put one in Pueblo, it wouldn’t even lower the rates for the people who live there,” Tafoya said.

(Tafoya’s quip that “Xcel doesn’t even serve the Pueblo area,” is true in a sense that Xcel isn’t the electricity provider to Pueblo but it’s Xcel who currently operates Comanche. Utilities owning large power plants far from their service territory is nothing out of the ordinary. Comanche is hardly “sprawling” either at approximately 700 acres. The nearby Neptune Energy Center Hybrid, a solar farm with utility scale battery storage occupies nearly 3,500 acres.)

Mockery aside, Greenlatinos’ Tafoya eventually got to something resembling a point:

Far from opening up a freer market, Tafoya said, Colorado’s bill tilts the energy field toward one form of technology.

“Basically, what they’re saying is, let’s build a project on a fast pace, picking winners and losers, all at the same time we’re rolling back safety,” Tafoya said. “That should be very concerning for environmental justice communities.”

Tafoya is actually onto something here.

It goes like this:

• Ratepayers are being asked to assume risk for that is, at least in Colorado, speculative infrastructure. (For a deep dive in Colorado’s previous attempt at nuclear power, see here)

• Utilities are being allowed to socialize early-stage costs while retaining upside through regulated returns.

• And once the spending begins, there is a strong institutional incentive to continue spending. What starts as a $20 million “pilot” study can evolve into a much larger, harder-to-stop capital project.

In a state already struggling with rising electricity costs thanks to failing green promises, blackouts, and supply constraints, that concern is not irrational. It reflects a broader skepticism of how large infrastructure projects are financed under not just Colorado, but the general utility regulatory model.

But here’s where the argument begins to narrow in a way that deserves scrutiny. Because the mechanism embedded in this bill—early cost recovery, ratepayer-backed development, and policy-guided investment is not new. This is the same structure that has been used repeatedly to finance generation, transmission expansion, and other projects with virtually every electric utility across the country regardless of technology.

And in those cases, many of the same groups raising alarms here have supported, lobbied for, or at minimum accepted the underlying model provided it helped bring on board their preferred technology.

That doesn’t make their current concerns invalid but it does raise a more difficult question:

If it is problematic for utilities to charge ratepayers for “speculative” nuclear development, why is it acceptable to do so for other technologies?

Nuclear indeed has a history of cost overruns and long timelines and such are in many people’s opinions disqualifying risks never mind the significant and unnecessarily restrictive regulatory regime. But why are those risks treated as manageable, or even necessary, elsewhere?

Perhaps much of this due to the blatant propaganda which drowns out the legitimate concerns with “green” energy and the blatant and well debunked anti-nuclear hysteria.

But at some point, the distinction stops being about financial structure and starts being about preferred outcomes, which is what’s been happening time and time again with the replacement of reliable electrical sources with so-called renewable ones.

The same “green” organizations that raise alarms about ratepayer exposure (but only when it’s an icky “for profit” utility), cost overruns, and “picking winners and losers” in the context of nuclear has largely supported the exact same mechanisms when applied to wind, solar, transmission expansion, and electrification programs.

They’ve further demanded premature shutdowns of paid off existing assets over the hysteria these assets are somehow contributing to significant local air pollution or global climate change. These projects are routinely financed through the same structure: upfront capital, guaranteed recovery through utility rates, and risk ultimately borne by the public on top of massive subsidies from both the State and Federal governments.

Greenlatinos is making a bit of a point but cannot seemingly see the massive log in their own eyes.

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