On Tuesday night, around 25 people gathered at Old Colorado City Brewing to celebrate Ray Nixon’s retirement. Nixon is only 46 years old, but the retirement has been expected for several years. The crowd delivered toasts and signed a poster-sized retirement card.

“It’s just not ‘cool’ to hang on too long, like a pro athlete who plays too many seasons,” one guest wrote.

“Did you know smoking is bad for you? Happy retirement!” said another.

Decades ago, Ray Nixon was the director of Colorado Springs Utilities, but the retirement event was thrown for the large coal-fired power plant named after him south of Colorado Springs. Environmental groups held the event as a way to pressure Utilities to stick by the previously announced deadline for the power plant to be decommissioned by the end of 2029.

The retirement party angle was planned by Olivia West, one of the organizers for Sierra Club Colorado. West said the event was both a sincere celebration of having Ray Nixon join other decommissioned coal power plants and a way to bring awareness to its future.

“Discussing climate change can be serious and discouraging. I wanted to create an event that has a different mood and has a way to celebrate something,” West said.

Utilities staff compared the power plant to a retirement-age worker who was being forced to stay on the job because of the economy. The municipal utility is looking for a temporary delay through a bill in the state legislature, which would keep the plant operating until potentially 2035 while they pursued new angles to replace its power.

“The most affordable option for the community is to hold on for a little longer and get to a situation where transmission can be built to access a better suite of resources,” said Daniel Hodges, Utilities general manager for government affairs.

Ray Nixon produces around 260 megawatts of power from its coal-fired generators. The plant also has natural gas turbines that were added in 1999, providing an additional 54 megawatts of power.

Colorado Springs Utilities announced in 2020 that Nixon would be brought offline in order to meet the state requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80%. The same process led to the Martin Drake Power Plant on the southwest side of downtown Colorado Springs being decommissioned in 2023, slightly ahead of the original timeline Utilities had set.

Utilities CEO Travas Deal announced last year that they were struggling to afford the alternative power sources that would replace the coal generators after multiple bids came in well above expectations. The utility is now looking to the state legislature to open the door for a temporary reprieve keeping Ray Nixon open.

“A mandatory power plant retirement, without reliable, affordable sources of replacement power, will threaten electric reliability and drive already high electric rates even higher,” Deal said in a January blog post about the bill.

Senate Bill 22 would allow Colorado Springs Utilities and other public utilities to file a new greenhouse gas reduction plan that would push back the 2030 deadline. The utilities would have to provide reasons that the original deadline was unworkable and would increase customers’ power bills by a significant amount.

More than halfway through the four-month session, the bill has not received any public hearings. Hodges said that Utilities had worked with environmentalists and state officials to come up with a new deadline for Nixon’s retirement. The new proposal would move the retirement date back to 2033, with a one-time option to delay it until 2035.

Hodges pointed to developments that happened Wednesday and opened up new pathways for the Nixon replacement. That was the day Colorado Springs Utilities officially joined the Southwest Power Pool, a regional transmission organization that includes utility providers in portions of 17 states.

Hodges said that one of the biggest issues with decommissioning Ray Nixon was that Colorado Springs had limited connections to transmit power from outside the city limits. The regional pool was planning to build new transmission lines connecting Colorado with Wyoming or Kansas, with the cost split between the member organizations. The same cost-sharing pool could also potentially bring down the cost for new renewable energy projects.

How soon can the 17-state group deliver on the goals?

“Now I can request project bids in those zones and if it doesn’t cause new transmission to be built, we can get much more affordable bids than we would have seen even 24 hours ago,” Hodges said Wednesday.

Wednesday was also the day the Sierra Club organizers delivered the retirement card prop to Utilities headquarters, along with 1,000 signatures from Colorado Springs residents and messages from 30 local businesses in support of closing the power plant.

West said the transition away from coal power plants seemed to be broadly popular in the city.

“This is the outcome we all want. We want to invest in the resources for my generation and the generations that come after me,” West said.