Hard-pressed Colorado ratepayers won’t be the only ones who get the shaft under a proposal by the state’s largest utility to stick them with the $140 million tab for a new network of electric-vehicle charging stations. The EVs’ owners will get shortchanged, too.

As reported this week by The Gazette, a national coalition of consumers and businesses contends utility-run charging stations like those planned by Xcel Energy in Colorado are unfair to prospective competitors as well as EV motorists looking to charge up.

That’s because the 460 charging stations Xcel aims to open by 2030 will be subsidized by the investor-owned, publicly regulated monopoly’s 1.7 million Colorado electrical ratepayers. They’ll have to fork over that subsidy through a rate hike in their monthly power bills assuming the Colorado Public Utilities Commission agrees to Xcel’s request.

The arrangement would let Xcel use ratepayer revenue to fund startup costs for its charging stations, undercutting other private-sector providers that must risk their own capital to serve the EV market. It also could limit the locations at which EV drivers could recharge – once private providers have been elbowed out of the market.

“EV drivers will have fewer options, as very few EV charging operators will open up shop in Colorado if a state-backed monopoly is allowed to unfairly compete by using ratepayer funds to build an EV charging business,” Charge Ahead Partnership Executive Director Jay Smith said in a press statement.

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And that’s not to mention the fundamental unfairness of requiring Colorado household ratepayers to foot the bill for Xcel’s new venture in the first place. Families of modest means, seniors on a fixed income and even households below the poverty level – i.e., Coloradans who are the least likely even to have set foot in a $60,000 electric car – would be forced to fund the charging fees for EVs’ disproportionately upscale owners.

“This proposal hurts Coloradans. Everyone, including people who don’t own an EV, will pay higher power bills,” Smith said.

Gov. Jared Polis’ Greenhouse Gas Reduction Roadmap calls for hitting a target of 940,000 EVs on the road statewide by 2030. That may be an overly ambitious goal, according to experts who talked to The Gazette’s news staff. It assumes a boom in electric vehicle sales amounting to roughly half of all new cars and trucks purchased annually in Colorado.

Arguably, the sticker shock accompanying most EVs remains a hurdle to expanded sales; so is prospective buyers’ fear of running out of juice while on the road.

Despite that uncertainty, entrepreneurs are seeking to tap into the market for charging up the vehicles. It’s a market that appears underserved right now, and the most effective, and fairest, way to anticipate future demand is to leave it to private-sector investors risking their own capital. They can proceed most efficiently – and without leaving others on the hook.

Xcel’s attempt to front-load the EV-charging market on the backs and meager budgets of its customers is unjustifiable, and the Public Utilities Commission should just say no. The Polis administration’s efforts to fast-track electric cars shouldn’t be used as an excuse to railroad Xcel’s ratepayers.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board