Author: Mark Jaffe
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Xcel gets green light from Colorado for $2.5 billion clean energy plan
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The Colorado Public Utilities Commission on Monday approved a $2.5 billion plan by Xcel Energy to close coal-fired power plants and add a hefty dose of wind and solar generation so that 55 percent of the utility’s electricity will come from clean energy by 2026. Xcel, Colorado’s largest electricity provider with 3.2 million customers, got…
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Colo. oil and gas commission works on new safety rules
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The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission will focus this fall on developing financial and safety guarantees for wells, orphan wells and flow lines in rule makings and working groups, Julie Murphy, the commission’s executive director, said Tuesday. Most of the initiatives stem from the home explosion in Firestone caused by a cut oil and…
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COVER STORY | Rural electric cooperatives look at cutting the cord
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Luis Reyes drove up to Durango from Taos, New Mexico, on a sunny April day in 2017 to tell folks how the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, which he heads, left its interstate wholesale power provider and struck out on its own – and the room where he spoke at Durango’s Strater Hotel was packed. Kit…
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Initiative 108 could blunt local land-use rules, officials warn
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Local officials and municipal attorneys warn that a proposed constitutional amendment – backed by the Colorado Farm Bureau and the oil and gas industry – will blunt the ability of cities, towns and counties to make many land-use decisions. The measure is Initiative 108. Backers are currently gathering signatures in hopes of placing the measure…
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Tight timetable on federal oil and gas lease sales is scrambling protests
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Oil and gas leasing on federal lands is revving up in Colorado and across the West, with shorter time frames for comment and bigger lease sales as environmental groups rush to meet Monday’s deadline to get in their protests on the upcoming September lease sales. “We’ve gone from a 30-day protest period to a 10-day period…
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Petroleum Institute’s Gerard in Denver: Policy is key to oil industry’s future
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As U.S. oil and gas companies continue to improve efficiency and productivity, the key to the industry’s future will lay in host of publicly policy decisions from foreign trade to an initiative on the Colorado ballot, Jack Gerard, the head of the American Petroleum Institute, said during a stop in Denver Thursday. “If we get…
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COVER STORY 2: Sage-grouse conflict is fiercest in neighboring states
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Across the West, the Trump administration is pushing for sweeping changes to greater sage-grouse protection plans and bringing oil and gas development closer to the bird’s key habitats. While only modest changes were proposed in Colorado, the amendments to existing plans in Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Oregon are more substantial. All the plans were…
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COVER STORY: Battle brews across the West over sage-grouse protections
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While the big, ground-dwelling bird known as the greater sage-grouse relies upon the West’s sagebrush steppe for its living, its survival may rest on a delicately negotiated set of agreements – agreements that the Trump administration, as with so many things, is set to upend. But the situation may be different in Colorado – at…
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Drilling setback ballot measure would keep rigs off of most Colorado lands
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About 85 percent of the state and private land in Colorado would be unavailable for surface development by the oil and gas industry if a ballot measure adopting a 2,500-foot setback for new wells from homes and schools is adopted, according to an analysis by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. The analysis was…
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Colorado regulators raise Xcel’s energy-efficiency target by 25%
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The Colorado Public Utilities Commission has raised the energy-efficiency bar for Xcel Energy Inc. even as Colorado’s biggest power utility sought to hold it steady. Under a 2007 state law, investor-owned utilities, like Minneapolis-based Xcel, have to implement programs to cut the demand for electricity-known as “demand-side management” or DSM- in return for financial incentives.…
