The director of sustainability for Aspen Skiing Company on Monday trumpeted the results of a rural electric association board election that saw the local co-op flip to “a supermajority of progressives who support clean energy and energy efficiency, stable prices and fiscal prudence.”

Aspen’s Auden Schendler sent out an email that echoed a pre-election campaign to “Vote the Women” in the Holy Cross Energy Board Election, where incumbent Lynn Dwyer won the western district over a field of four that included alternative energy advocate Randy Udall.

Dwyer got 1,522 votes to 1,105 for Clemons Kopf, 968 for Udall and 422 for Thomas McBrayer. In the northern district, which includes Aspen’s rival ski town of Vail, Megan Gilman won with 1,516 votes to 1,267 for Eagle County surveyor Dan Corcoran, 521 for Erik Lundquist, 445 for former Eagle County Commissioner Arn Menconi and 384 for Scott Prince.

“This year marks the end of a four-year period in which the board flipped from extremely conservative to remarkably progressive, likely the single most important step we could have taken in our region to address climate change,” Schendler wrote.

Holy Cross is already one of the state’s more progressive rural electric co-ops, with 55,000 members stretching from Vail to Aspen. Co-op board elections have become contentious local battlegrounds in the ongoing debate over global climate change, with the state’s largest co-op, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association on the state’s Front Range, steadfastly resisting efforts to reform its board.

The state’s largest rural election association last week once again elected just one green candidate in a bloc of three members looking to reform policies currently geared more toward conventional power sources.

Mike Kempe

Two other candidates who favor conservation and more renewable energy sources – Mat Matson and Janet Spooner – didn’t fare as well. Spooner narrowly missed out in District 6, losing to Robert Graf by a margin of 2,057 to 1,856. Matson lost 2,510 to 2,262 to Duke Dozier in District 2.

Last month, Kempe told the Colorado Independent (TCI) that entrenched old-energy management and board members of the IREA were working hard to stave off green challengers, spending lavishly on advertising for the campaigns of Dendahl, Dozier and Graf.

“The idea is that if they can get me off the board, then this movement to reform IREA could be squashed. That’s what’s at stake,” Kempe told TCI. “What’s at stake is real oversight over the co-op from my perspective.”

Kempe said that over the years he has daylighted and helped curtail such suspect practices as paying consulting contracts for groups and individuals working to cast public doubt on widely established scientific data about global climate change.

“The bigger thing is making the co-op accountable to its members and getting a board that actively questions management,” Kempe said. “I’ve been on the board for four years and in that time I’m the only one who’s ever voted no on anything and that’s not normal for a co-op board.”

Colorado Sen. Mark Udall has walked a fine line the last several years, advocating for new nuclear energy because of global climate change concerns while running the risk of alienating his Democratic, environmentalist base, many of whom still bitterly oppose nuclear power because of its legacy of mining pollution in the state.

In the wake of the Japan’s ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant northeast of Tokyo, more than just the so-called “dirty front end” of nuclear power – Colorado’s rich but sometimes toxic uranium mining history – is being called into question. The issues of waste storage at the state’s only nuclear power plant – the now-defunct Fort St. Vrain – and a lack of water to cool future reactors also are being hotly debated.

Sen. Mark Udall

“Our need to tackle climate change hasn’t gone away,” Udall said. “I’m a realist, and if you want to substitute electricity for petroleum in transportation, nuclear has to be part of the equation. However, any new nuclear power plants that are built — be they in Colorado or elsewhere in the United States — must involve lots of input from the local community and include robust permitting requirements, safety protocols and oversight.”

In Germany, that kind of cautious but continued backing of nuclear power just cost Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat Party control of a state to the anti-nuclear Green Party.

Just three days before the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed thousands and wreaked havoc at the Fukushima Daiichi plant on March 11, Udall joined with Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, in offering up the Nuclear Power 2021 Act (Senate Bill 512).

Industry analysts say the bill, similar to legislation approved in committee in 2009, would facilitate the development, testing and construction of smaller, modular reactors (300 megawatts) that would be easier to finance than traditional 1,200-megawatt or larger reactors, which reportedly cost $10 billion or more.

“Let’s just scatter [reactors] all over the place,” said Sharyn Cunningham of Colorado Citizens Against ToxicWaste, a grassroots activist group that’s been fighting expansion efforts and urging cleanup of the Cotter Mill uranium processing facility at Cañon City. “I’m just so put out with Udall’s position on this, and it’s all driven by the idea that we’ve got to do something about climate change and nuclear is the only answer.”

Contaminated well water on her property near the U.S. EPA Superfund Cleanup site at the Cotter Mill leads Cunningham to strongly believe the billions that would be spent on nuclear power should be pumped into much cleaner forms of renewable energy such as wind, solar and geothermal.

“That’s where Udall should be focusing his attention instead of buying into this nuclear is the only answer on climate change,” Cunningham said. Udall has advocated strongly for renewable forms of energy, including lobbying hard for the voter-approved Amendment 37, which saw Colorado adopt a renewable energy standard in 2004.

But since then Udall continues to make headlines with his support for nuclear power, risking the wrath of the environmental community and raising eyebrows by supporting new nuclear plants, even in his arid home state, where nuclear is seen by many as a bad bet because it consumes the most water of any of the thermoelectric technologies.

Last year, Udall created a stir by supporting a new nuclear proposal by Xcel Energy – the state’s largest electric utility. His office later backed away from those statements when Xcel officials said they had no concrete plans for a new nuclear plant.

Udall last week did not directly address a proposal for a clean energy park in Pueblo that could accommodate a nuclear power plant, nor did he rule out reviving nuclear power in Colorado – dormant since Fort St. Vrain near Platteville went offline in 1989. Fourteen metric tons of spent nuclear fuel remains onsite, in a separate facility about a quarter of a mile from Xcel’s gas-fired power plant. The U.S. Department of Energy owns and manages the storage facility.

Fort St. Vrain near Platteville is still an active gas-fired power plant but also a defunct nuclear plant with spent fuel stored nearby. Photo by Elizabeth Weinstein

“One of the strongest arguments for nuclear generation is zero air emissions,” said Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz. “That is the same case made for wind and solar generation. One major item to keep in mind in Colorado is that we are blessed with an abundance of solar and wind, or renewable energy resources.”

For now, the company appears focused on renewables and natural gas over nuclear and coal, recently adopting a controversial plan to convert several aging coal-fired power plants to primarily gas, with some contribution from wind and solar.

“Assuming at some point technology develops to the point where our industry can mitigate the intermittent nature of renewable resources — which means we can match up renewable generation with our peak demand periods, by storing the generation capabilities of renewables — then that seemingly would be the way to go,” Stutz said.

A public affairs spokesman for the state’s largest rural electric co-op, the 139,000-meter Intermountain Rural Electric Association, expressed some interest in nuclear but admitted to having to follow Xcel’s lead on the issue. Several years ago the co-op drew fire from some member-owners for investing $366 million in Xcel’s new Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant in Pueblo.

“As far as buying into [nuclear], we still have an exclusive contract with Xcel Energy on energy, so chances are it’s not something we would be buying into unless Xcel does,” said IREA’s William Schroeder. “With what’s going on in Japan that’s created another conversation about that product.

“We still think it has a viable place and we’ll just have to wait and see what engineering does and science does to address some of the concerns and things that happened in Japan to settle that. You look at the United States today, we have 104 nuclear [reactors] and they’ve all functioned efficiently and without any problems for a long, long, long, long time.”

Despite producing 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, nuclear power has been dealt a serious public relations setback by the Japan disaster, and polling in the United States reflects that renewed mistrust. Some analysts say natural gas, abundant in Colorado and 50 percent cleaner burning than coal, will be the biggest beneficiary. Opponents of Colorado’s uranium mining revival say nuclear power has always been a risky investment.

“While the tragic disaster in Japan will certainly have an impact on the uranium industry, ultimately the industry, especially in the U.S., is a highly volatile market regardless of nuclear accidents,” said Hilary White of Sheep Mountain Alliance, an environmental group suing to stop a proposed uranium mill in Montrose County.

Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series on the future of nuclear power and uranium mining in Colorado. Part one is here.

Mike Kempe has been an embattled figure on the board of the Intermountain Rural Electric Association the last four years. He’s arguably the only green-minded board member for a rural electric co-op famous for casting doubt on climate-change science and tenaciously resisting former Gov. Bill Ritter’s “New Energy Economy.”

Kempe, a chemical engineer and research scientist for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, often is the sole dissenting vote on measures opposing federal and state energy conservation and renewable energy policies. And he says he’s day-lighted and helped curtail more than $260,000 in co-op spending on conservative think tanks and contributions to renowned climate change skeptics.

But now Kempe is facing a bitter re-election bid – one in which he says the co-op’s old guard is fighting hard to unseat him and forever end any meaningful reform at the state’s largest rural electric co-op (about 139,500 members). Ballots have gone out and voting will continue up until the IREA’s annual meeting on April 9.

“The idea is that if they can get me off the board, then this movement to reform IREA could be squashed,” Kempe said. “That’s what’s at stake.”

His challenger is John Dendahl, a former engineer for a company that makes radiation monitoring systems, but Kempe says he’s facing exorbitant campaign spending and relentless attacks from the board’s outgoing general manager and board members. Two other clean-energy candidates – Jan Spooner and Mat Matson –also are seeking election to the seven-member board in what’s become an annual battle for the philosophical heart and soul of the sprawling service area that spans the Front Range suburbs between Denver and Colorado Springs.

Stanley Lewandowski Jr. served as IREA’s general manager for more than 38 years. He’s officially retiring on May 1, but not before delivering a parting shot to Kempe in an ad that recently ran in local newspapers.

“[Kempe] works in a government-funded renewable energy facility,” Lewandowski stated in the ad. “Support from renewable energy interests helped elect him four years ago. His actions on the IREA board show he wants higher energy costs to allow renewable to compete.”

Kempe counters that his actions are merely in line with a majority of Coloradans who want a greater mix of renewable energy and less dependence on coal-fired power. IREA invested heavily in Xcel Energy’s Comanche 3 coal-fired plant, which provides about 43 percent of the co-op’s power, according to an IREA official.

“On the renewable energy front, all I want is for us to keep our renewable portfolio standard and on the federal level keep the production tax credit, and if we can do that, that will do phenomenal things,” Kempe said. The state’s rural electric co-ops are required to obtain 10 percent of their power from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2020.

Besides trying to curtail co-op spending on lobbying and think tanks, Kempe says he has questioned the GM salary of $330,000 plus an annual $60,000 bonus, voting against Lewandowski’s replacement, Pat Moony, because no national search was conducted.

He says Lewandowski’s attack ad, while not illegal, at the very least violated the spirit of an electric co-op election transparency bill (HB 1098) the IREA opposed last year, which mandated greater openness in the board election process and in the conducting of regular co-op business. Rural electric co-ops are owned by member/customers who in turn elect the boards.

Kempe blasted the rest of the IREA board for opposing that election transparency bill, and he also took issue with outgoing board member George Hier’s letter opposing his re-election.

“Kempe has voted against the other six directors on important issues including voting against the payment of capital credits, against freezing rates and against opposing disastrous cap and trade legislation,” the retiring Hier wrote. “He represents big government, energy mandates and a special interest group whose sole purpose is to defeat the other six IREA board members, take over the association and institute polices that would significantly raise electric rates.”

Some co-op members have questioned whether association funds are being spent to campaign against Kempe, but he thinks Lewandowski and Hier likely spent their own money.

“They’ve completely violated the spirit of [House Bill] 1098,” Kempe said. “George Hier sending out his letter, Stan sending out advertising, those both go very much against the spirit of 1098. But it’s not illegal, it’s just unethical.”

William Schroeder, IREA’s head of public affairs, said he was not aware of Lewandowski’s ad campaign.

“[Lewandowski] is a member of IREA and whatever he’s doing in this race I’m not aware of but he has the right to get involved in a campaign as a member,” Schroeder said. “What he’s doing personally, I don’t know. The company is not involved.”

Schroeder refused to discuss Kempe’s overarching complaint that there is a broader IREA campaign to squelch any dissent on the board.

“I don’t want to get involved in this back and forth. It’s politics,” said Schroeder, a former Republican state senator. “One candidate doesn’t like what the other candidate’s doing so they start blaming the other candidate or a third party, and these elections are public elections, so I’m just not going to get into that.”

Schroeder did say that HB 1098, sponsored by Boulder Democrat Claire Levy, unfairly tried to single out Lewandowski’s past involvement in IREA elections.

“Claire tried to go after Stan in that law and then decided not to do that,” Schroeder said. “She was going pretty specifically after Stan. He had to state that he had contributed to campaigns. Last time everybody knew Stan was involved. She pulled that off [the transparency bill]. And again, if Stan is running an ad [in this campaign], that’s pretty transparent. It’s clear who’s doing it.”

Lewandowski does not officially retire until May 1, three weeks after the current election will be decided.

Levy’s rural electric association (REA) election transparency bill (HB 1098) and solar gardens bill (HB 1342) both enjoyed wide-ranging support from Colorado’s environmental community.

The REA election bill, a yawner of a topic but with huge implications for the type of power distributed by rural electric co-ops, stems from dissatisfaction by some members, politicians and environmentalists with how certain co-ops conduct board elections.

Accusations of board secrecy and election policies meant to favor conservative incumbents over progressive challengers prompted a bill meant to standardize and publicize election procedures, guarantee members input on key decisions and provide detailed information on meeting proceedings.

The state’s 22 REAs account for 23 percent of the electric energy consumed in Colorado, but because the organizations are member-owned and governed, they are largely exempt from oversight by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

“The decisions that are made at the cooperative board level are incredibly critical,” said Pam Kiely, program director for Environment Colorado. “Choices that utilities make today about how they deliver electricity to their customers, where that electricity comes from and how involved they are in efforts to help cut down electricity consumption are absolutely some of the most critical questions that we face.”

The Delta Montrose Electric Association quit the statewide Colorado Rural Electric Association when the CREA initially declined to support the bill. The state group later backed the legislation after Levy made some changes.

The state’s largest REA, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, bitterly opposed the bill, but the IREA’s most progressive board member, Mike Kempe, spoke out in support of 1098.

Levy’s so-called “solar gardens” bill (HB 1342) initially met resistance from the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association because of fears it would actually reduce the amount of solar installation around the state.

The bill is really aimed at increasing access to solar power by allowing renters, condo owners and homeowners in shaded areas or with poor orientation to the sun to buy into community solar gardens built on a common piece of property and receive the same tax incentives and rebates as individual rooftop solar customers.

“By letting communities share the investment and choose the best site, Community Solar Gardens gives every Coloradan the power to go solar, whether they rent an apartment, share a condo, or own a home,” said Dana Hoffman, energy associate for Environment Colorado.

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(Photo/Joy of the Mundane, Flickr)

Mike Kempe, who works at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, once again finds himself battling his fellow board members at the state’s largest rural electric association (REA) – the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA) in Sedalia.

The co-op, which provides power to more than 140,000 member-owners in the suburbs east, west and south of Denver, has a long history of bitterly fighting most renewable energy and conservation rebate mandates, arguing such initiatives drive up electricity prices.

Earlier this month six of the seven elected board members approved a resolution (pdf) opposing state Rep. Claire Levy’s REA board election transparency bill (pdf), which requires very basic practices such as informing members of elections in time for candidates to get on the ballot; posting minutes of board meetings online; and allowing members to address the board during meetings.

Kempe voted against the resolution, which passed 6-1.

“The board is elected by the people, or at least it should be elected by the people,” Kempe said. “They’re representatives and they should be going out of their way to communicate what’s going on in a factual and unbiased manner, and that is lacking in our co-op.”

When Levy first announced plans to introduce HB 1098, IREA spokesman and former Republican state Sen. Williams Schroeder said the Boulder lawmaker was merely continuing her personal vendetta against the co-op.

“It’s more on the basis that we’re not supportive of her green-energy direction, and that’s what I’ve noticed coming from her in the past,” Schroeder said in a previous interview. “It’s more, just like it was last year, retaliation for us being very vocal about her trying to direct costs on energy.”

But since then the bill has earned the stamp of approval of the statewide organization representing most of the nonprofit REAs in the state – the Colorado Rural Electric Association (CREA).

One co-op, however, thought the bill was such a no-brainer that the CREA should do more than merely support it, and should actively promote its passage. The Delta Montrose Electric Association dropped out of the CREA over the matter, as well as what board members felt was an ongoing pattern of the CREA failing to endorse or at least advocate for renewable energy and conservation measures.

Kempe felt compelled to respond to the IREA resolution, which makes conspicuous note of his opposition. He posted a lengthy letter on the local blog pinecam.com spelling out what he deems misrepresentations in the resolution.

One of the points of contention in the resolution that was sent out to co-op members – a restriction against co-op publications during election periods – was actually removed from the bill and is not in the current version passed by the House and under consideration by the Senate.

“Especially in areas that are just barely on the outskirts of Denver, people just think that they belong to another [investor-owned] Xcel Energy, but a co-op is different because it’s actually owned by the members and we have a right to know what’s going on in the co-op,” Kempe said. “It’s the responsibility of the co-op management and the board of directors to communicate effectively what’s going on.”

Last April, three so-called “green” candidates lost board election bids, accusing incumbent IREA board members and staff of engaging in unfair campaign practices.

In his letter, Kempe spells out those allegations and makes it clear Levy’s bill would rectify the situation in future elections:

1. Members received no information about the election until after the deadline for candidacy had passed.
2. IREA management spent large sums of co-op money in advertising and for special mailings during the campaign that echoed the campaign messages of incumbent Board members.
3. The general manager personally funded the campaigns of the very board members who set his salary – a practice which in my opinion is patently unethical.
4. Ballots were knowingly enclosed in transparent envelopes, allowing members’ votes to be visible to IREA management.
5. Incumbent candidates were told when ballots would be mailed while challengers were denied this information. Non-incumbent candidates literally did not know when the election would be held.

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A Delta-Montrose Electric Association geothermal horizontal loop. (DMEA)

The general manager of the Delta-Montrose Electric Association (DMEA) on Colorado’s Western Slope announced last month the co-op was pulling out of the Colorado Rural Electric Association as of April 30, citing an “unfortunate pattern of [CREA] opposing most electric industry initiatives that come before the Legislature.”

Pressed for specifics, DMEA general manager Dan McClendon said Monday the split has been a long time coming but came to a head with the introduction by state Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, of the REA board election transparency bill on Jan. 14.

“The DMEA over the last 20 years or so ran through some very tough times on that very issue [election transparency] and we have grown and learned through that process to this day,” McClendon said. “We try to be open and provide all the information that all of our members want at any time.”

Fair elections as oversight

House Bill 1098, which passed by a 34-28 vote on third reading in the House Monday and now heads to the Senate, would mandate co-ops adopt and post an election policy online, give advance notice of election dates and ballot mailings and reveal campaign contributions by co-op employees.

Electric co-ops were first set up in the 1930s as nonprofit corporations controlled by member-customers to help provide electricity in rural areas where for-profit, investor-owned utilities in urban areas refused to expand because of low profit margins.

REAs are therefore largely exempt from oversight by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, which regulates investor-owned utilities such as Xcel Energy, but that means co-op member-owners are in charge of electing directors who then hire staff.

In recent years, green candidates advocating for more renewable energy and efficiency programs have run afoul of longtime board members wanting to invest in traditional (and cheaper) fuel sources such as coal and natural gas.

“We have 21 different load profiles and 21 different opinions on how things should be done, and we operate on a very democratic process,” said CREA government relations director Geoffrey Hier, whose membership will shrink to 20 with the departure of DMEA.

“It’s one member, one vote. We have full, open discussion of issues; everyone can put their input in; and generally speaking there’s more consensus building than what I see down at the capital, where it’s very polarized.”

Hier says the CREA consensus on Levy’s initial bill was that it went too far and needed amending before the organization could support it. Those changes were made, and now the CREA endorses the version the Senate will begin considering in committee.

But McClendon says only slight tweaks were necessary and that the CREA often is viewed as obstructionist on any sort of reform legislation – not just refusing to endorse but also failing to promote legislation or offer its own agenda for moving forward in the 21st century.

“Over a period of time [our board] felt CREA has more or less had a negative approach to various energy issues in the past – renewable and efficiency, they’ve opposed a lot of those things,” McClendon said.

“There have been bills in the past that CREA didn’t get onboard until the wee hours at the end, and it drug some of that process down and we just feel, looking at the future with things that need to come on, that we wanted to be free to work with legislators to do things that we feel are right for our members.”

Several years ago, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association – the state’s largest co-op with more than 140,000 members on the Front Range – dropped out of the CREA for almost the exact opposite reason.

The IREA, with a majority of board members who feel global climate change is being overstated and that Gov. Bill Ritter’s “New Energy Economy” is needlessly driving up electricity prices, was at odds with the CREA for not opposing renewable and efficiency measure aggressively enough.

Dues and diversity

The IREA’s election policies, which green challengers alleged backed the fossil-fuel-favoring incumbents, in part led to the push for the current REA transparency bill. Opponents felt employees hired by the board were working to keep challengers at a disadvantage through a variety of questionable board election practices last April.

When the IREA pulled out, McClendon says, the other co-ops were forced to pay higher dues to compensate for the budget shortfall caused by the departure of the state’s largest REA – increasing for DMEA from around $40,000 a year to $56,000 a year.

“That allocation has gone up significantly for us recently, particularly in light of Intermountain Rural Electric leaving, and that left a huge hole in [CREA] revenue and we voiced last year that the budget should be very closely looked at,” McClendon said. “Our feeling was it wasn’t looked at as closely as it needed to be.”

Hier disputes that notion, pointing to a board subcommittee that examines the budget and offers recommendations to the board, which ultimately determines the final figure. “We give our members a very good value for their dues,” he said. “We are a membership-based organization; the dues fund the organization.”

Again, he said it’s difficult to make such a diverse membership happy all the time.

“We have some co-ops that the bulk of their load is agriculture, irrigation; we have members that are very residential-based and we have members that are very industrial-based, and we have to find the commonality for all those members,” Hier said.

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Last session, a bill aimed at imposing conservation and efficiency standards on co-ops with more than 100,000 members never made it out of the House. That bill, introduced by Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, would have only impacted the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA) –- the state’s largest co-op with nearly 140,000 members and a utility stubbornly resistant to the state’s ongoing push for more renewable energy.

Levy this session has introduced HB 1098 aimed at greater transparency in REA board elections, campaign practices that even the playing field for more conservation-minded challengers, and greater publicity of both elections and meeting agendas for major policy decisions facing co-op boards. Her bill is scheduled for a Feb. 2 hearing before the House Transportation and Energy Committee.

“It’s a really critical piece of this whole conversation,” said Pam Kiely, legislative director for Environment Colorado. “How do you have a real conversation with cooperatives and their members and their leadership on issues that we feel there is common ground on with the majority of Coloradans?”

Elections as oversight

Cooperatives, which account for about 23 percent of the electrical power consumed in the state, according to the Governor’s Energy Office, are self-governed and not subject to oversight by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Investor-owned utilities such as Xcel Energy, the state’s largest, account for just under 60 percent of the electricity used by Coloradans and are subject to PUC oversight.

In 2004, Colorado voters passed a 10-percent renewable energy standard (RES) for investor-owned utilities and co-ops that the IREA opted out of by a vote of its membership. In 2007, the state legislature imposed an additional 10-percent RES (requiring 20 percent of Xcel’s power to come from renewable sources by 2020) and reinstating the 10-percent RES for electric co-ops.

“You’ve got to remember that this state, well before we became purple leaning blue, or maybe we’re leaning back red now, but before all of this in 2004, statewide [Coloradans] voted overwhelmingly for clean energy,” Kiely said. “We just want to make sure that these voices are heard at every level.”

Allegations of unfair campaign practices favoring incumbent candidates have plagued REA board elections in recent years as grass-roots efforts to transform the makeup of co-op boards with green members have taken off. That may be the best bet for upping the renewable portfolios of many of the state’s co-ops, which still rely heavily on coal and natural gas.

State Rep. Max Tyler, D-Lakewood, has introduced a bill that would up the renewable energy standard for investor-owned utilities to 30 percent by 2020, one of the highest targets in the nation. But it doesn’t include the state rural electric co-op standard, or single out the IREA, which alone accounts for 5.5 percent of the state’s electric use, according to the Governor’s Energy Office.

Kiely said it would have been nice to include REAs in that bill, but that no one wanted to force them to the table. Ultimately, she hopes board members recognize the benefits of a higher RES of their own volition.

“It would have shown a commitment from the REAs to really move in a direction that the state has deemed critical, not just environmentally but economically, and it could have happened, and it’s unfortunate, but I think obviously we’re going to be able to set the tone working with the investor-owned utilities,” she said.

The IREA, meanwhile, remains resistant to any legislative meddling, whether it’s a higher RES or new rules for board elections.

“Let’s be straight, this corporation and association is all about reliable electricity at affordable costs, that’s what it’s been about forever,” IREA manager of public affairs William Schroeder said in an earlier interview. “And it’s a nonprofit, so anything the legislature tries to do with efficiencies or things like that that drive up the customer’s costs we’re going to be vocal on.”

It’s good to have contested elections

Holy Cross Energy, which serves members from Aspen to Vail in the heart of Colorado’s ski country, reviewed the proposed election transparency bill last week and, according to at least one board member, has no problem with the bulk of the bill.

“Holy Cross is already doing most of the items mentioned in the bill,” board member Lynn Dwyer said, mentioning publication on the Web of board minutes and agendas, advertising of elections, and third-party handling of elections. “The only item the board has a problem with is the provision of all available documents that are discussed at meetings. There are times such documents are proprietary in nature or confidential.”

One of Holy Cross Energy’s biggest customers, Aspen Skiing Company, has made combating climate change a central focus of its marketing and public affairs agenda. In a letter to the co-op last summer, Aspen Skiing’s executive director of sustainability, Auden Schendler, urged Holy Cross to push for 20 percent member participation in board elections by 2020, which would mean tripling current voting patterns.

“We believe full member participation and education is an important piece of solving our energy problems,” Schendler wrote. “It’s good to have contested elections. It’s good to have a debate about our energy future. It would be good to have a much higher percentage of [Holy Cross] member/owners vote in board elections.”

Environment Colorado’s Kiely sees Levy’s bill as key to ensuring every member has a voice in how decisions are made at their local rural co-op, particularly when it comes to investing in solar and wind over coal and other sources that may rise in price under proposed federal cap-and-trade legislation or EPA rulemaking. She also didn’t rule out another conservation bill aimed at co-ops.

“Our interest is finding a solution, and if that means taking a step back this session and trying to have a real conversation with the parties at the table, then that’s what we’re going to do,” Kiely said. “I’m not saying we’re going to have a bill this year. I’m just saying that we’re committed to moving the conversation forward. And there is some genuine interest with some folks in the cooperative world.”

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Springfield, Colo. wind farm ( Wavy1; Flickr)

“The concept of trying to reach a 30 percent renewable level for Xcel Energy in Colorado is one that is not impossible, with or without legislation,” Xcel spokesman Tom Henley told the Colorado Independent. “We have been in discussions with the governor’s office and they have shared their ideas with us, including new legislation to raise the target from its current 20 percent level.”

Setting the bar higher

Rep. Max Tyler, D-Lakewood, introduced HB 10-001 Wednesday, saying it’s time to set the bar even higher, given the price volatility of finite energy resources like coal and natural gas and the possibility of federal climate change legislation.

“Xcel has really been on-board with renewable energy resources,” Tyler told the Independent Wednesday. “They’ve got the largest wind power installation in the county and they were ahead of their standard of meeting their goal of 20 percent by 2020, and this is saying, ‘OK, good job, let’s do a little bit more; let’s put a stretch target and really make it work for the people of Colorado.’”

Tyler’s bill would only affect investor-owned utilities regulated by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, which includes Xcel (provider of 55 percent of the state’s electricity) and Black Hills Electric in the Arkansas River Valley (about 4 percent). Municipal utilities and member-owned rural electric associations (REAs) would be exempt, although still subject to a 10-percent-by-2020 mandate imposed by the legislature in 2007.

“The rural electrics have a different take on the world and [the bill] will not include them at this point in time,” Tyler said of the REAs, which account for about 23 percent of electricity consumed in the state. Municipal utilities such as the city of Colorado Springs (8.5 percent) account for the remaining 18 percent.

Critics of efforts to mandate higher percentages of renewable energy say such legislation will increase costs for consumers at a time when they can least afford it.

“That’s absolutely wrong,” Tyler said. “Currently there’s a 2 percent [price] cap [on the 20 percent mandate imposed in 2007], and that’s not going to change. This will stabilize the costs to people because 30 percent of our electrical generation is going to be based on resources and supplies that are not going to fluctuate with the market.”

Keeping that 2 percent cap in place is key for Xcel, Henley said.

“Through our already filed compliance plan, our company anticipates we would be very close to a 30 percent level, within the current 2 percent rate cap,” Henley said. “As long as the cap on increased costs remains in place as protection for our customers, we are willing to consider increasing the standard.”

Henley said Xcel currently gets just over 10 percent of its base load from wind, 1.4 percent from hydroelectric and a small percentage from other sources. That compares to 57 percent from coal and 31.5 percent from natural gas. Those sources, especially coal, are increasingly under fire from regulators for high levels of greenhouse gas emissions blamed by scientists for worsening global warming.

Job killer or job creators

Ritter has been an outspoken champion of renewable energy during his three years in office, pushing his “New Energy Economy” at every turn. Scott McInnis, the Republican frontrunner for the governor’s office, has blasted the focus on renewables.

“Scott’s very concerned about the lack of balance that we’ve seen in energy policy — that you’ve had basically one focus on various alternative sources, which is perfectly fine, except we’ve had what in Scott’s view has been a targeting, if you will — perhaps even a demonization — of oil and gas,” McInnis spokesman Sean Duffy said Monday. McInnis, an oil and gas attorney from the state’s Western Slope, wants to do more to revive Colorado’s natural gas industry.

Colorado voters in 2004 passed Amendment 37, which imposed a 10 percent renewable standard on all utilities. Members of REAs such as the state’s largest, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, opted out of that mandate only to have the legislature impose a 10 percent RES in 2007. Colorado’s 30-percent RES by 2020 would put it among the leading states in terms of requiring renewable energy portfolios, behind only California at 33 percent by 2020.

Some REAs have bitterly opposed RES mandates, claiming such legislation discriminates against their membership based on their right to dissent on the issue of global climate change. Because the co-ops are not investor-owned, they are not regulated by the PUC, giving the state less power over what energy sources the REAs use to build their base loads.

A bill seeking to impose conservation measures on co-ops with 130,000 members or more (IREA, the state’s largest, is the only one that qualified) didn’t make it out of the House last session. But a bill aimed at making co-op board elections more transparent and fair to challengers has been proposed for this session. REA boards are increasingly seeing challenges for so-called green candidates.

As for Tyler’s bill, while market forces are already naturally increasing wind, solar, biomass and geothermal energy production in Colorado, he said legislation sometimes provides a needed nudge to do even more.

“That’s the kind of nudge that maybe for an electrical utility makes it better and easier for them to deal with the board of directors; maybe it provides a better resource for the people in Xcel Energy who are driving the renewable resources; and it might give them a little more leverage with their corporate headquarters, too,” Tyler said.

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