DENVER—A high-profile environmentalist who helped lead the campaign for a law requiring utilities to get more of their electricity from renewable energy has been appointed to the state agency that regulates utilities and telecommunications.
Gov. Bill Ritter appointed Matt Baker Tuesday to a four-year term on the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. As executive director of Environment Colorado, Baker worked on the successful campaign for Amendment 37, approved by voters in 2004.
Baker is stepping down from the environmental group to take the $108,000 a year post.
The measure required the state’s large utilities to get 10 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2015. Last year, the Legislature approved a law backed by Ritter to change the mandate to 20 percent by 2020.
“As one of the architects of Colorado’s renewable energy standard and a champion of Colorado’s environment and consumer rights, Matt Baker makes an ideal addition to the Public Utilities Commission,” Ritter said in a statement.
Ritter, in office for a year, has replaced all three commission members appointed by his predecessor, Republican Bill Owens. Ritter, a Democrat, also appointed Ron Binz, formerly the state’s utility consumer advocate, as chairman, and attorney James Tarpey.
The state Senate must consider Baker’s appointment before he takes his place on the panel. Tarpey can sit on the commission until his appointment is confirmed because he’s completing an unexpired term.
Ritter’s appointments signal a departure from Owens’ direction, independent pollster Floyd Ciruli said.
“I would say it sends a very strong message that, as opposed to the Owens administration, which strongly leaned toward the free market and maximum industry discretion, that this board is going to very strongly lean toward environmental consideration and alternative energy,” Ciruli said.
Ritter campaigned on fostering “a new energy economy,” based on expanding the renewable energy industry as well as the state’s coal, oil and gas resources.
Other Colorado regulatory agencies have taken on a more consumer-friendly bent with Democrats in control of the governorship and both houses of the Legislature. A new law broadened the makeup of the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to include environmental and health experts and local government officials.
Ciruli said it appears that Ritter was also looking for what he considered a balanced utilities board.
Environmentalists, including Baker, battled Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest electric utility, over the 2004 renewable energy ballot measure, which the utilities said would drive up costs and customers’ rates. A couple years later, environmentalists joined Xcel Energy at a news conference to announce that the utility would meet the law’s requirements several years ahead of time.
Xcel Energy spokesman Tom Henley said the company is looking forward to working with Baker and the other commissioners.
“We’ve always found (Baker) to be very fair and professional,” Henley said.
Baker acknowledged that his new job will be different from heading an advocacy group. The Legislature approves the policy and limits, and the commission’s role is more judicial, Baker said.
Even as an advocate, Baker said he wasn’t necessarily at loggerheads with utilities and energy companies. Environment Colorado and other groups negotiated a settlement in 2004 with Xcel Energy in which they dropped their opposition to the company’s expansion of a coal-fired power plant in Pueblo in exchange for stringent pollution controls.
Baker also was part of negotiations among environmentalists, energy companies and utilities last year that produced regulations cutting mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
