“I’d be OK if there were never any more coal,” retiring Xcel Energy CEO Dick Kelly recently told the non-profit news site MinnPost.com.

Kelly, who’s apparently moving from Minnesota (where Xcel is based) to Colorado (where Xcel is the state’s largest electric utility), went on to question those in Congress denying the science behind global climate change and the need to move away from fossil fuels.

Dick Kelly

Counters MinnPost interviewer Don Shelby: “But, there are a lot of people in Congress who wouldn’t agree.” That pretty much describes the four Republicans who make up Colorado’s GOP majority in the House.

Kelly responds: “I know it. All they are worried about is the next two or six years when they run for reelection. They just keep kicking the can down the road.”

Critics in Colorado, however, say Kelly has engaged in some pretty solid can-kicking of his own, investing heavily in coal and not proceeding as quickly on alternative fuels as he could have.

True, Xcel is now the No. 1 utility in the nation for wind generation, recently procuring 200 proposed megawatts rejected by Boulder in a bid by Xcel to keep the city from forming its own municipal utility (something voters will decide in November). And Xcel is well ahead of the state-mandated target of 30 percent renewable energy generation by 2020 – one of the most aggressive renewable energy standards in the nation.

But on Kelly’s watch the utility invested more than $1 billion on the new Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant in Pueblo – slated to churn out electricity (and heat-trapping emissions) until the year 2069. Xcel has steadily raised rates to pay for Comanche 3.

The state’s largest and most ardently climate-change-denying rural electric co-op, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), invested $366 million in Comanche 3, and one of the state’s most progressive co-ops, Holy Cross Energy, chipped in another $100 million.

Leslie Glustrom of Boulder-based Clean Energy Action put the outgoing Kelly interview “in the vein of ‘I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.’ Burritos are only $3 mistakes and the indigestion lasts for a day. Coal plants are $1 billion mistakes and the ‘indigestion’ lasts for decades.”

House Bill 1282, introduced late in the legislative session that ended Wednesday night, was sponsored by Rep. Steve King, R-Grand Junction, Rep. Laura Bradford, R-Collbran, and Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction. The Grand Junction area lawmakers were trying to buy time till a new coal mine could come online to save about 100 mining and trucking jobs, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

An Xcel Energy official told the Colorado Independent last week it was too late to keep the plant open given staffing and budgeting constraints. Expansion of the McClane Canyon Mine that supplies coal to Cameo has been held up during environmental review by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

“There’s nobody that’s said, ‘No, we don’t want to help. No, we don’t want to save these jobs,’” King told the Sentinel. “Whether it’s the governor’s office or Xcel or the mine company or the trucking company, everybody wants to find a solution. Legislation just isn’t it.”

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Most of that would cover the new Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant near Pueblo, but, initially at least, some of it was targeted to cover lavish board dinners and luxury spa retreats. These protests might not have been so polite had that information been a more widely disseminated last spring.

Xcel protest, Denver, 3/11/2009 (Photo: Doug Grinbergs)

That’s the difference between Coloradans and, say, New Yorkers, who are always claiming we’re too damned mellow. Compare and contrast, for instance, a Glenwood Springs hearing on natural gas drilling Monday and a similar “meeting” in New York City the next day.

According to ProPublica, “it didn’t take long for a New York City public hearing on natural gas drilling to descend into near chaos. Just seconds after the first speaker took the microphone at the Department of Environmental Conservation’s hearing, a man in a suit and tie jumped onto the stage and yelled, ‘We want a statewide ban! The gas drilling is dangerous!’”

Ah, to be in a New York state of mind.

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Xcel just got a $112 million increase in July, a settlement of its 2008 rate case in which the utility originally sought $159.3 million. Negotiations with PUC and staff and parties such at the Office of Consumer Counsel resulted in a $47 million reduction, but the average residential bill still went up $2.94 a month.

According to the Denver Post, the latest increase, scheduled to go into effect at the beginning of next year if it’s approved, would jack up rates another $4.92 a month, or about a 7.6 percent increase.

The biggest ticket item Xcel’s hoping to recoup costs on in its latest rate case? The utility wants another $110 million to offset its investment in the new Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant near Pueblo – scheduled to go online later this year.

Part of the last rate increase went toward Comanche 3 – the state-of-the-art third phase of the power plant, which is already being challenged in court by environmental groups for its mercury emissions plan. And rural electric co-ops such as the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), which is the state’s largest, and Holy Cross Energy have chipped in on Comanche 3 to the tune of $366 million and $100 million respectively.

But environmentalists and renewable energy advocates say the cost of coal will undoubtedly skyrocket in coming years because of looming shortages and the likelihood of climate-change legislation that would hit coal the hardest since it emits the most carbon dioxide. The Denver Post cites Leslie Glustrom, a private citizen challenging the latest rate case.

Glustrom is a former biochemist with Boulder-based Clean Energy Action who says supplies of coal in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin will likely start to run out in the next 20 years, making coal-fired power plants a poor long-term gamble.

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According to a BLM spokeswoman, CAM-Colorado LLC pulled its state permit application for the Red Cliff Mine near the proposed Hunter Canyon wilderness area because the BLM has decided to require a revised draft environmental impact statement (DEIS).

“We did determine that it will be necessary to prepare a revised draft EIS on their proposal with us, and they are aware of that and they did cite that that was the reason they are withdrawing the [state permit] package,” said Erin Curtis, BLM public affairs director for western Colorado. “It sounds like they want to make some changes to it based on our decision.”

Further delays are not likely to please state Rep. Laura Bradford, R-Collbran. According to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Bradford was trying to pressure Gov. Bill Ritter and U.S. Rep. John Salazar to intervene in order to speed up the process or slow the closure of an Xcel power plant supplied by coal from local mines. Bradford is trying to prevent the loss of local jobs.

The latest delay, however, has nothing to do with environmental concerns voiced by Earthjustice, an environmental law firm dismayed by the lack of methane venting or flaring plans for the proposed Red Cliff Mine.

“It was related to public comments we received during the public comment period on the first draft EIS that was released in January that was questioning the competitiveness of the proposed lease tracts,” Curtis said. “We are required to have a lease tract that is as competitive as possible so that we get the best possible bid for the taxpayers for that coal resource.”

Several of the comments on the original DEIS questioned the competitiveness of the BLM lease because it didn’t explore alternatives for larger lease tracts. Curtis said there is no timetable yet for completing the revised DEIS.

Earthjustice has legally challenged a U.S. Forest Service permit allowing the venting of naturally occurring methane at the West Elk Mine in the North Fork of the Gunnison valley.

Highly explosive methane has to be vented to safely mine for underground coal, but environmentalists want the methane either captured for commercial use or flared (burned off) to reduce its impact on global warming.

Methane is 20 times as potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA.

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The Telluride Daily Planet reported Monday that Felicelli joined three other green board members on the seven-member SMPA board, giving energy conservation and renewable energy advocates a majority.

“I think we finally have a green majority,” incumbent board member Michael Saftler told the Daily Planet, “and we’ll push that agenda as far as we can.”

Many of the state’s 22 rural co-ops have seen intense new interest in recent board elections as green candidates have tried to unseat entrenched incumbents determined to keep electric rates low through increased investment in coal.

SMPA buys most of its power from Tri-State Generation and Transmission, based in Westminster, which is pushing to build a new coal-fired power plant near Holcomb, Kansas.

The state’s largest rural electric co-op, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), recently went through a contentious board election, and Holy Cross Energy on Friday concluded a hotly contested race for two seats. Results of that election still were not available as of Tuesday evening.

In a little-publicized board election to be determined June 5, Turnbull is being targeted by Glenwood Springs businessman and Carbondale resident Marshall Foote, who has the endorsement of the most environmentally aggressive ski company in the state, Aspen SkiCo.

Vail real estate broker George Lamb faces off against Eagle County environmental building planner and overall sustainability guru Adam Palmer in the other contested race, and Aspen’s Hal Clark — an Aspen SkiCo-backed candidate last year — is running unopposed.

Don’t look for the fireworks that accompanied the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA) board election last month, when the state’s largest (138,000-member) co-op managed to hold the line on its anti-renewable, global-warming-skeptic agenda.

But do look for far more attention to be paid to this REA board election (Holy Cross has 43,000 members stretching from Aspen to Vail) than ever before. While Holy Cross championed a bill in the State Legislature this session allowing higher charges for bigger consumers (read, mountain McMansions), CEO Del Worley opposed an unsuccessful bill that sought to mandate more renewables and efficiency for the IREA.

And both co-ops invested heavily in the new Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant near Pueblo, with the IREA, which covers the suburbs stretching from Denver to Colorado Springs, ponying up $366 million and Holy Cross chipping in another $100 million.

Turnbull defended that off-the-radar outlay of membership money, telling the Aspen Times it was part of a balanced approach to energy distribution that keeps rates lower for consumers. But his comments in a recent newsletter came close to echoing the sentiments of IREA management, making him a potential target in an area of the state immensely dependent on cold temperatures and abundant snowfall.

“There is no doubt that we are witnessing a warming trend but, historically, civilization has benefited and thrived in warmer periods as opposed to ice ages,” Turnbull wrote, according to the Times. Try telling that one to Aspen and Vail voters who keep seeing ski seasons get shorter every year.

The state’s chief executive and chief lawyer have teamed up to fight the belching coal-fired Four Corners Power Plant and the planned Desert Rock plant located just over the state’s southwestern border with New Mexico.

According to a press release from the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, the dynamic duo is taking two tacks — push the Environmental Protection Agency to require stronger emission controls on the Four Corners Power Plant on Navajo Nation lands near Farmington, N.M., and halt an operations permit for the nearby Desert Rock Power Plant.

Says CDPHE: “The Four Corners Power Plant is the largest single nitrogen oxide source in the nation, emitting more than 40,000 tons of the ozone-causing pollution annually.”

Our colleagues at the New Mexico Independent get to the real crux of the problem with the so-called “clean coal” Desert Rock project:

Mary Yuhl, Air Quality Bureau Chief at the NM Environment Department, though, told the Independent the primary problem in the Four Corners region isn’t sulfur dioxide, it’s ozone, which the company’s mitigation plans don’t address.

It’s the ozone levels in the region, she said, that are near the maximum when it comes to the National Ambient Air Quality Standard.

Colorado officials are concerned that the northwestern New Mexico power plants, those in operation and planned, will continue to violate EPA ozone and mercury emission limits that affect our own state’s clean air standards — violations that can come with hefty fines.

In several stories on the Desert Rock EPA permit saga reported by the New Mexico Independent, the health-threatening bottom line for Colorado becomes apparent:

In ‘econ-o-speak,’ an externality is an external cost or benefit that is not reflected in the market price. Electricity generation from coal-powered power plants is a perfect example of a negative externality; the cost of generating electricity does not reflect the health and environmental impacts that arise from using coal. Thus, these costs are ignored by producers.

…

On the regional level, coal use contributes to acid rain. Where the acid rain occurs is highly dependent on wind and weather patterns. At the local level, coal use can impact communities and ecosytems through increased smog and mercury levels. Thus, when we consume energy from these sources, the external costs can impact very different communities.