I honestly hadn’t intended to write another column on state regulators’ slavish devotion to the interests of Xcel Energy only two weeks after my last one. But then I hadn’t expected the Public Utilities Commission staff to throw up its hands in disgust last week over the company’s latest antics and declare the process of reviewing plans to convert coal plants to natural gas hopelessly compromised, either.
I hadn’t expected the bureaucracy to be so sharply at odds with the three appointed commissioners in Xcel’s hip pocket.
Those commissioners — Ron Binz, Matt Baker and James Tarpey — helped write the fuel- switching legislation, with its absurdly abbreviated timeline for analysis and its favorable treatment of the utility, and have been struggling ever since to shepherd Xcel to the Dec. 15 finish line.
Naturally, our obliging trio ignored the staff’s warning that Xcel’s failure until last weekend “to turn over information that was clearly requested . . . and which goes to the heart of any attempt to fairly evaluate the impact and risks” of the company’s plans amounted to a “debacle.” Nor were commissioners terribly troubled to learn that “time, resources and individual schedules will not allow staff to conduct any further analysis in the timeframes available.”
To heck with analysis, the commissioners essentially concluded by rejecting a motion to throw out Xcel’s fuel-switching scheme.
Nor was this the first time Xcel had pulled a fast one in the proceedings. As the staff’s statement explained, after Xcel filed its original plan on Aug. 13, it “repeatedly and unequivocally asserted that it could not retire Cherokee Unit 4” by the end of 2017 “while preserving system reliability.” And yet “after taking this position for months . . . the company did a complete about face. At the 11th hour it announced that it had developed a plan . . . that would allow for the retirement of Cherokee . . . .”
And wouldn’t you know it? Xcel’s “Eureka!” moment occurred not long after state health officials ruled that the company’s first plan did not meet the mandates of the law that Xcel itself helped to write. Such a remarkable about face so deep in the proceedings would have raised the suspicions (and indignation) of most mortals — but not our serenely indulgent commissioners. They permitted Xcel to file a new plan on Oct. 25 — actually, a smorgasbord of options — even though Xcel’s preferred option represented, in the staff’s tart opinion, a “monumental shift in the company’s position regarding the feasibility and risks” of fuel switching at Cherokee.
If the PUC staff’s declarations this week had been made by Peabody Energy Corp., you might discount them as self-interested hyperbole. What they represent instead are the principled worries of a bureaucracy that takes its duties seriously and seems to fear it is being played for a fool.
What’s at stake is not a verdict on whether switching from coal to natural gas is an attractive idea, but a real-world proposal to spend more than $1 billion on energy infrastructure — nearly what Xcel spent on its minutely vetted Comanche coal-fired plant in Pueblo a few years back.
Can anyone seriously argue that Xcel’s coal-to-gas plans have been treated with the same degree of rigor as Comanche?
“We don’t believe there is time to review this information,” a lawyer for PUC staff told commissioners last week regarding the company’s belated disclosures. That was one day before commissioners responded, in effect, with, “That’s tough.”
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
