A bill to repeal Colorado’s “phantom carbon tax” was heard today in the Republican-controlled House Agriculture, Livestock, and Natural Resources Committee. It’s the second time in as many years that State Representative Spencer Swalm (R-Centennial) has sponsored the pro-ratepayer legislation. Both times it was heard in the House Ag Committee. Last year, we documented how [...]
President Barack Obama put a halt to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed air-quality standards just before the Labor Day weekend. The Wall Street Journal opined that the president cited the struggling economy as his main reason for not wanting to tighten ozone regulations at this time:
Come January 2010, the Obama EPA said it wanted [...]
Lawmakers (including those in leadership on both sides of the aisle), Xcel Energy, environmentalists, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Public Utilities Commission and any other group that championed Colorado’s needlessly expensive, likely illegal Regional Haze State Implementation Plan (SIP) have A LOT of explaining to do. We were told repeatedly that if [...]
Xcel Energy enjoys great success at the state Capitol. It seems that whatever Xcel wants legislatively, Xcel gets. Relief for ratepayers is met with opposition.
According to the Secretary of State’s online lobbying information, through March 2011, the utility company has taken positions on 28 different bills this year: opposing 14, supporting 3 and “amending” or [...]
I’ve written before about the Air Quality Control Commission’s outrageous Regional Haze Implementation Plan. In particular, I objected to the plan’s treatment of two small coal fired power plants near Steamboat Springs, Hayden 1 and Hayden 2, because it mandates controls that are at least $100 million more expensive than what is required by the [...]
The Politics Colorado Blog today reports great news:
“Tuesday, Senate Republicans sent a letter to Senate President Shaffer asking Legislative Council to hold a public hearing to review the changes made to the State Implementation Plan (SIP) for implementing regulations for “regional haze”…
…”We think it’s important that Legislative Council hold a public hearing on this effort [...]
Usually, it takes about 18 months for the PUC to deliberate a major acquisition plan for new power plants. For HB 1365, however, the PUC decided on a $1.3 billion plan, affecting almost 1,000 megawatts of electricity generation, in only four months. According to the PUC staff (p 14), the truncated timeline shortchanged the vetting [...]
On January 15, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) submitted to the General Assembly a State Implementation Plan (SIP) to comply with the Regional Haze provision of the Clean Air Act. The General Assembly must approve the SIP before it can be sent to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for final review. [...]
Twice I’ve provided evidence that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Energy (CDPHE) has inflated projections of ozone ambient air concentrations (see here and here).
Those were critiques of ozone projections. This year is the first year that we have a data set against which to judge the accuracy of CDPHE ozone modeling during the [...]
The putative mission of HB 1365 is for Colorado to address “reasonably foreseeable” federal air quality regulations in a holistic fashion, which is supposedly more cost-effective than a piece-meal approach. When it rolled out the legislation, the Ritter administration told the PUC that there were eleven “current and foreseeable air quality requirements (see slides 13 [...]
