Low temperatures broke cold weather records Wednesday making it the coldest Feb. 19 in recorded history. Can’t wait to see what my electric bill has to say about it. Even though I’m an energy-saving zealot — keeping my house between 62 and 65 degrees in the winter — I could barely afford my last electricity and gas bill.
Thanks to so-called clean energy mandates set by Gov. Jared Polis and the General Assembly, it’s only going to get worse. A new report by the nonpartisan Common Sense Institute projects that within five years under the new law, the average household will spend as much as $500 more a year on the home power bill.
Think inflation is bad? The report’s projections make inflation look gentle by comparison. The price of electricity will grow at more than three times the rate of inflation.
One of the authors of the report, Trisha Curtis, CEO of PetroNerds, LLC, told me the estimates in the report are conservative. Future energy costs could, in fact, be much higher. “Coloradans have felt the cost going up and this report quantifies what is happening. If you take all of the coal out and put in wind and solar the reality is that costs will go up. It’s a shame no one is looking out for the customer,” she said.
Over the next 15 years, families could pay $9,280 more to power their homes. The extra cost for commercial businesses could exceed $60,000 and the extra cost to industrial consumers could surpass a million dollars.
Electricity bill hikes like this can only hurt the economy. The report predicts the result will be 25,000 fewer jobs and a slowdown in the state’s gross domestic product of $2.6 billion. The high cost of living and doing business here has already driven away some businesses; imagine what massive rate hikes will do.
Researchers arrived at these conclusions when they combined the Colorado Energy Office cost projections for attaining zero carbon emissions and the state Public Utilities Commission’s (PUC) 30-Year Rate Model, a long-term rate forecasting tool. Together the reports make clear, the state’s carbon emission reduction goals will cost rate payers $108 billion through 2050. That estimate is also conservative. The state report gives several alternative scenarios that increase costs 21% to 42% above the initial baseline.
The reason for the rising costs is that the state intends to triple electricity generation and storage capacity while retiring the state’s natural gas and coal plants in order to reach zero emissions for electricity by 2040. Currently, the state’s electric grid is powered by coal (37%), natural gas (26%), wind (28%) and solar (6%). The state plans on closing coal and natural gas plants while greatly expanding the number of wind turbines and solar panels. It isn’t just a case of replacement. The state will need to greatly expand generation and storage because wind and solar have lower capacity and operate intermittently.
On these icy cold, overcast days, power generation falls while demand rises. Same goes for those blazing hot days when there isn’t even a gentle breeze. Also, rising demand isn’t just weather-related. The power demands of artificial intelligence far exceed that of regular computing, placing more pressure on the grid as it is increasingly adopted. More demand combined with unreliable sourcing raises costs.
Wind turbines have other negative impacts. Nationally they kill half a million birds and nearly a million bats. The enormous fiberglass blades are difficult to recycle and take up space in landfills. For these reasons, wind should supply a portion of the grid’s power but not the majority of it as our politicians intend.
Colorado needs a more balanced approach that retains some natural gas and coal production instead of moving to an untenable renewables-only portfolio with its high costs and environmental impacts. This would keep prices stable and prevent families and businesses from fleeing the state for places where energy is more affordable.
If our politicians aren’t willing to rethink these energy cost-driving mandates, we need to leave them out in the cold come election time.
Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.
Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.