The Colorado Public Utilities Commission recently held its first meeting to discuss the proposed energy plan of our state’s largest utility, Xcel Energy. As mayors of a Colorado city and town serviced by the utility, we are pleased to see the direction the meeting went toward an earlier transition off of Colorado’s biggest coal plant. Earlier this month, 64 of our fellow mayors, city council members, and county commissioners who represent Coloradans in Xcel’s service territory submitted a letter urging the PUC to require our state’s largest utility, Xcel Energy, to retire the unreliable and expensive Comanche 3 coal plant by 2030 and replace it with clean energy.

Understandably, we regularly hear from residents of Broomfield and Frisco who are worried about the climate crisis – just this past year we’ve experienced devastating fires, smoke and reduced snowpack that are impacting the Colorado way of life in our communities. Transitioning off of fossil fuels can help stave off the worst impacts of climate change. Thankfully, Coloradans overwhelmingly support a transition to clean energy in the next decade, according to polling by Colorado College.

While Xcel is making applaudable strides to build new clean-energy projects and reduce climate pollution, its customers are also still forced to buy electricity from several coal-and-gas plants that the utility wants to keep open well past the next decade. Specifically, Xcel has proposed to continue burning coal at the Comanche 3 coal plant in Pueblo until 2035. Comanche 3 is Colorado’s single biggest source of carbon dioxide pollution. Therefore, retiring it is the single largest step we can take to reduce climate pollution in our state.

This isn’t just about Colorado’s air and climate. The Comanche 3 coal plant is expensive to operate at a time when our constituents’ energy bills are already going up. According to a PUC investigative report from last year, the coal unit has already cost $172 million more than Xcel originally proposed. Unfortunately, it’s not Xcel’s shareholders that have had to cover these cost overruns, but Coloradans – many already struggling with high-energy bills – who have to pay for Xcel’s bad fossil-fuel decisions. Notably, Xcel Energy increased profits 8.4% during the pandemic, rounding out 2021 with $1.6 billion in profits.

On top of cost, Comanche 3 is Xcel’s most unreliable coal or gas plant in the state. It has been offline since late January due to a generator failure, and in 2020 it was broken for almost a full calendar year. The most reliable thing about the Comanche 3 coal plant seems to be that it’s unreliable. That’s why the letter we sent to the PUC this month reads:

“For the sake of grid reliability, affordability, and the urgent need to retire GHG- emitting carbon pollution, we ask that you require Xcel Energy to either retire the Comanche 3 unit as soon as possible before 2030 or defer the decision regarding Comanche 3’s retirement to Phase II.”

If the PUC commissioners have the best interest of Xcel customers, and Colorado’s climate-future in mind, they will require Xcel to replace Comanche 3 with clean energy before 2030.

Guyleen Castriotta is mayor of Broomfield and has served on the Broomfield City Council since 2017. Hunter Mortensen is mayor of Frisco has served on the Frisco Town Council since 2014.