Community members in four Northern Colorado cities – Fort Collins, Longmont, Loveland and Estes Park - are criticizing their electric company’s plan to purchase new fossil-fuel-fired plants as it transitions away from coal power.
Platte River Power Authority (PRPA) is on track to close its 451-megawatt (MW) coal-fired Rawhide power plant in Wellington before the end of the decade. Last summer, the company finalized its energy plan for the post-coal era, called the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which calls for replacing the coal plant with lots of renewable energy – aiming to purchase 760 MW between now and 2030 – along with a different fossil fuel: natural gas, in the form of 200 MW aeroderivative combustion turbines. Natural gas is a fossil fuel that primarily consists of methane, a powerful climate-warming pollutant.
But the state has a target for a 100% renewable grid by 2040. PRPA has its own stated goal of “the pursuit of a 100% noncarbon energy mix by 2030.”
Local climate activists and community members don’t trust the company to take their climate commitments seriously. They argue PRPA is making a mistake that will be costly to the environment, as well as their pocketbooks.
“We will have continuing pollution from this, as well as climate warming,” said Longmont resident Karen Dike. “It's almost as though that 100% goal is gone now.”
The way Fort Collins resident and green developer Sue McFaddin sees it, with the green energy revolution on the horizon, it no longer makes sense to invest in new fossil fuel technology.
“Gas plants are a very short-term solution,” said McFaddin. “We think they’re going to be stranded assets very quickly.”
Longmont resident Mike Baum agreed.
“When you go invest in an asset like this, you know, they typically have a 30- to 40-year life, and we don't want to be burning natural gas in 30 to 40 years,” he said. “We really think that there may be some other better options.”
The activists are demanding a third party review of the IRP to find those better options. At city council meetings and in private conversations, they’ve been asking their municipal governments to commission one from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
“We just want them to review and either confirm that the additional fossil fuel capacity is necessary or point to a different path,” said Fort Collins Sustainability Group convener Kevin Cross. “At our city council meetings, there's no one saying ‘rah, rah, let's build a gas plant.’ An NREL review, view would be a great way to restore community trust, which has at this point been lost.”
In addition to their environmental concerns, community activists pointed to the massive costs of the proposed gas-fueled turbines, estimated at more than $350 million, according to PRPA’s 2025 strategic budget. That’s just a small fraction of the $2.77 billion estimated cost of the entire IRP. But with all the costs being passed on to ratepayers – the project is expected to increase electricity rates an estimated 6.3% per year for at least five years – the community wants to know that their money will be well spent.
“When you’re spending that kind of money, you would like to know that the people making that decision have some sort of oversight,” Dike said.
Due Diligence Done
But Fort Collins Mayor Jeni Arndt, who sits on the Platte River Power Authority board of directors and voted along with her colleagues to approve the IRP, said an expensive third party review is not necessary.
“Fort Collins uses consultants a lot,” she said. “They were satisfied that the IRP was developed in a very responsible way, driving to our clean energy goal.”
Arndt said she understands her constituents are disappointed that PRPA is planning to purchase new fossil fuel infrastructure and shares their commitment to a carbon-free grid. But the availability of renewable energy does not align with demand. She said the gas-fired turbines are a necessary supplement to guarantee reliable power in the coal-free future.
“The good news is we all have these shared values,” she said. “It's exciting. I don't know why people aren't celebrating this. We are moving on these things, and we are recognized as a national and international leader on this.”
But Arndt’s own energy advisors have endorsed the idea of a third-party review. Last September, the Fort Collins Energy Board issued a letter to Arndt and the city council recommending that they “request third-party review(s) of the IRP by the Colorado Public Utility Commission or the National Renewable Energy Laboratory if there are no such reviews provided by PRPA,” that would “validate assumptions and provide assurances to ratepayers that a new gas fired turbine is necessary.”
Fort Collins City Councilmembers were apparently unmoved by this letter and have so far declined to commission the recommended review.
Existing gas-fueled power
One major sticking point for the community activists who oppose the new gas plants is that PRPA already has 388 MW of natural gas-powered capacity. In an open letter to Fort Collins city officials, Cross argued that's already more than enough to ensure reliable energy generation after the coal plant shuts down.
“What do these findings mean? They suggest very strongly that building a new 200 Megawatt gas-fired power plant is NOT necessary,” Cross wrote.
However, PRPA does not intend for the new plants to run on natural gas forever. According to the IRP, a major benefit of the new turbines is that in the future they can be converted to run on green hydrogen, a carbon-free fuel that is not yet widely available. Assuming the turbines will be burning green hydrogen within the next decade, the approved plan would cut the company’s carbon emissions by more than 95% by 2035. But green hydrogen is still considered a speculative solution and the IRP does not address the cost of converting the equipment to burn it.
“We feel quite sure that if that plant were converted to hydrogen at some point, the rates would go up even more,” Cross said.
Platte River Power Authority declined to comment. The company is already making investments detailed in the plan.
Editor's note: Platte River Power Authority is among KUNC's recent financial supporters.
