Colorado skies someday will be cleaner thanks to last week’s passage of a bill that prompts Xcel Energy to shutter some old coal-fired power plants and switch to electrical generation powered by natural gas.
A healthy mix of Democrats and Republicans worked with Gov. Bill Ritter to require Xcel to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides — which add to haze and ozone — by as much as 80 percent by 2017. We applaud their work, even though it’s not a comprehensive solution to haze and ozone.
A switch to natural gas also helps reduce the amount of carbon dioxide launched into the atmosphere. Gas-fired plants release about half the CO2 as coal and zero mercury.
Strict new Environmental Protection Agency rules from the Obama administration will make it far more difficult for the metro area to remain in compliance with ozone standards.
Fear of those new rules is what drove the bipartisanship in passing the so-called Clean Energy-Clean Jobs Act. As Republican state Sen. Josh Penry said, it’s better for Colorado to get ahead of those new requirements on its own terms.
We have concerns over how much the switch to natural gas will cost consumers. Historically, coal has been less expensive and less volatile in price than natural gas.
But natural-gas representatives argue that recent discoveries of enormous new gas fields, and new technology used to extract it, is driving down the price, and many observers expect the price fluctuations of the past — when it was thought reserves were much smaller — to steady.
Because of past uncertainty about reserves, producers were loath to enter long-term contracts of the kind historically used by coal producers. Now that reserves are abundant, it’s likely that Xcel will be able to negotiate long-term contracts with gas producers and stabilize prices.
We hope those predictions are true, and that the Public Utilities Commission is committed to doing its job of protecting consumers by ensuring reasonable rates.
The coal mining industry has said the new law will translate into lost jobs, and there have been some criticisms that suggest the new law would be devastating to miners and the railroad workers who haul the coal.
“It makes no sense to ignore coal as an energy source,” said Stuart Sanderson, president of the Colorado Mining Association. “The United States has 28 percent of the world’s coal, more than any other nation and more energy than all the oil in the Middle East.”
But Colorado’s coal isn’t just shipped to Xcel. Coal is a fungible commodity traded in a large marketplace. Plus, the focus on natural gas could create new jobs on Colorado’s Western Slope.
We support the effort to shutter the older coal plants and the continued use of natural gas as a “bridge” fuel while Colorado seeks to expand renewable energy supplies such as wind and solar.
Given the new EPA regulations, it seems to be a solid approach.
