Will Toor is Director of the Colorado Energy Office. We'll discuss the implications for Colorado of Congress overturning California's vehicle emissions waiver (as Colorado was following at least some of California's policies.) We'll also talk about the (ridiculously expensive and likely impossible) goal of nearly eliminating "greenhouse gas" production by electric power utilities within the next 5 (or even 15) years.
CEO Staff | Colorado Energy Office
Did Congress kill Colorado's EV mandate?
Congress votes to rescind California vehicle emissions waiver | Utility Dive
Troubles among Colorado utilities - Big Pivots
CSU asks state for options to help meet 2030 energy goals | News | gazette.com
CEO Staff | Colorado Energy Office
Did Congress kill Colorado's EV mandate?
Congress votes to rescind California vehicle emissions waiver | Utility Dive
Troubles among Colorado utilities - Big Pivots
CSU asks state for options to help meet 2030 energy goals | News | gazette.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Will Tour and I run into each other, either you know,
communications wise, or not that often in person, I guess,
But for years and years and years now and Will
is always doing something around energy issues and his current
gig and actually he's had this gig for a while
is he is the executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.
(00:21):
And my listeners know I am fascinated by energy issues.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I think in the.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Big like, there's always some short term thing that comes
up that seems very important at the moment, but in
the big picture, other than perhaps the national debt, there's
probably nothing more important than energy policy. And so I
like to pay close attention to this stuff. And most
people think about it at the federal level, but there's
an immense amount of stuff that happens at the state level,
and Will knows all about that. So, Hi Will, thanks
(00:50):
for being here.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Hi Rosa, happy to join.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Before we jump into issues, tell us a little bit
about the mandate and responsibilities of the Colorado Energy Office.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Yeah, So, the Colorado Energy Office is a non regulatory
agency that is actually part of the Governor's office that
has the mission of advancing both affordable and clean energy
for the people of Colorado and advancing energy efficiency and
(01:28):
transportation electrification. So we help develop policy, we're involved in
the various regulatory bodies like Public Utilities Commission or the
State Air Commission, and then we run a bunch of programs,
largely programs that are focused on helping businesses and consumers
(01:50):
do things like energy improvements to their properties or installing
electric vehicle charging, or helping low income residents and reduce
their energy bills.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And you said a non regulatory agency, So does that
mean you guys are not writing and enforcing rules the
way you know, the Department of Revenue mights or something
like that.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
So we do help to administer a number of programs
that have sort of regulatory elements, but where the actual
regulatory body would be something like the State Air Quality
Control Commission, we may be helping to administer programs where
we don't have direct regulatory authority.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Okay, So that's actually a great jumping off point for
the question I emailed you about the other day, and
you wrote me a very interesting and long answer, and
I'm not going to read any of it. Well, just
you can. You can tell my listeners about it. And
I saw a headline over at the Colorado Sun. Its
written by a reporter named Michael Booth, who I think
has a particular angle on energy issues.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It's probably.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I think his I think his approach to energy is
probably much like yours.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
It's probably a little different from mine.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
But the headline is Congress has likely killed Colorado's ev
mandate and clean energy programs.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Environmental groups say, but.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
This is actually a secondary effect if it's true, and
we'll get to the is it true question of what
Congress did regarding California. So first, before we get to Colorado,
just the listeners understand the framework. What did Congress do
regarding California.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Yeah, so this is in the context of clean car standards.
So under the Federal Clean Air Act, the Congress wanted
to make sure both said cars were getting cleaner over time,
but also that there weren't fifty different state standards that
auto manufacturers had to build their vehicles too. So when
(03:59):
the Cleaner Act was first passed, like back in the
nineteen seventies, at that time, California was a one state
that already had a clean air standards for vehicles, and
so the way that the legislation was written, the federal government,
through the EPA and the Department of Transportation sets both
(04:22):
fuel economy standards and clean air requirements for cars and trucks,
and then California was also allowed to set their own standards,
although they had to go through a waiver process with
the EPA to have those standards approved.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
And then states would have their choice.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
They could either go with the standards set by the
federal government or they could go with the standard set
by California, but they couldn't set their own standards, and so.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Colorado a number of years ago.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Did our own clean car standards that were based upon
the California standards, which are somewhat stricter. They lead to
lower pollution than the federal standards, and recently a couple
of years ago, California updated those standards. It's what's called
the Clean Advanced Clean Cars to standard that, among other things,
(05:25):
requires the level of vehicles sold by any given manufacturer
in a state to that are electric vehicles or other
zeromissioned vehicles, has to gradually increase over time, and Colorado
partially adopted that rule. We adopted it through twenty thirty two.
(05:49):
Congress recently used something known as the Congressional Review Act
to remove the waiver for the state of California, which
means they can't enforce those clean car standards and other
states wouldn't be able to either. It's likely to go
(06:10):
to litigation. There's arguments that it was not a legal
use of the Congressional Review Act, but it's created a
lot of uncertainty into whether California or other states will
can have their own clean car and clean truck standards.
It's interesting for the state of Colorado, you know, we
basically view those standards as a means of assuring that
(06:33):
manufacturers will bring all their vehicles to Colorado, and as
a relatively small state, in the past, we often saw
that new electric vehicles would go to the coasts and
the manufacturers wouldn't bring them here. We view this really
as helping to ensure consumer choice and make sure they
(06:54):
bring all those vehicles here. But in practice, to date,
what we've seen is an actual consumer demand has been
probably four times higher than those minimum regulatory standards. So
there's probably not a near term impact on the Colorado market,
but there may be over time.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
This is a thing that some people who are very
much against this were calling effectively a internal combustion engine ban,
not immediately, but they were sort of describing it as
the way the rules would be implemented would force car
makers to massively reduce or eliminate other internal combustion engine
vehicles and just have electric Do you think that's is
(07:37):
that a goal?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Is that a goal of yours if you were in charge?
Speaker 4 (07:42):
So the way that so California's rule, Colorado did not
adopt all of California's rule.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
California's rule does.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Require by twenty thirty five, one hundred percent of the
vehicles that are sold in California have to be either
electric vehicles, plug in hybrid vehicles that have a gasoline
engine but also are are able to take electricity or
hydrogen vehicles for new vehicle sales. It doesn't stop, you know,
(08:10):
used vehicles from being sold. Colorado didn't go that direction.
You know, we adopted a rule that does require sales
to grow substantially, you know, eventually up to about eighty
percent of vehicles, but does not include any ban on
gasoline only or diesel only vehicles, because we wanted to
(08:31):
make sure that we're maintaining consumer choice here.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
So and again I realize you're you're not in the legislature,
and you're not and you're not a regulator, but you
are more involved in these issues than probably anybody I
know here in the States. So again I'll ask you
whether you think eliminating or nearly eliminating internal combustion engine
vehicles as new car sales. Do you think it's a
(08:59):
reasonable goal.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
So again, that's not the direction that we we saw
it made sense for Colorado. We certainly, you know, I
do believe that over time EV's will take over almost
the entire marketplace just because they're better. They're better vehicles,
and as the cost of batteries keeps coming down, they're
going to have so many advantages over gasoline vehicles. But
(09:26):
from a public policy perspective, you know, our goal has
been to, you know, make sure that in these early
days of the EV market, they're financially attractive to folks,
make sure that we have the electric vehicle charging infrastructure
so that people know that they can get wherever they
need to go with one, and and make sure that
(09:48):
manufacturers are bringing their vehicles here. And I don't you know,
we you know, very consciously did not go in the
direction of a ban on ban on gasoline vehicles. I
think that was good public policy for the state of Colorado.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
All right, fair enough, So let's actually let's tie this
in then to the other thing that I want to
talk to you about. So, if evs are going to
take over, and they will might, as you said, it's
not only that there will need to be more infrastructure
in terms of chargers in a lot of different places.
And they'll have to be fast chargers because people are
(10:26):
not going to want to spend twenty minutes to get
the range that they could get in.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Four minutes at the s leane pump.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Right, So, but that technology is developing, so they'll need
to be fairly fast chargers and widely dispersed, easy to access.
The vehicles will need better range to people don't have
the range anxiety, and I do think all that's possible.
To me, the hardest part of this is the electricity
generation and the infrastructure to get the power from whatever's
(10:55):
generating the electricity, Insufficient quantity to all these chargers and
everything else as we try to electrify everything, and I
have great concern that that cannot be done in a
way that doesn't double or triple or quadruple our electric bills.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, So it's a great question, and.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
This is an issue where I actually think that the
impact of EVS is the opposite of your concern. There
are other types of electrification, and especially sort of the
advent of large data centers, where I think there are
a lot of questions about how to meet that load.
But the great thing about electric vehicles is that for
(11:42):
the vast majority of vehicles, people plug them in at night,
and the vast majority of charging is happening overnight when
there's lots of excess capacity on the grid. So you're
essentially taking a bunch of generating capacity and transmission line
and distribution lines that we've already had to pay for
(12:04):
that right now, there's you know, ten hours a day
where there's not much revenue coming in to pay for those,
and you're spreading those fixed costs over more killowhite hours.
And so all of the analysis that we've seen suggests
that especially for light duty electric vehicles for passenger cars,
(12:27):
the more of them we get on the road, they
actually helped to put downward pressure on electric rates and
slow down the increase in electric rates that we're seeing
happen across the country. For a bunch of other reasons.
So one analysis from a couple of years ago found
that every EV we add to the road in Colorado
(12:48):
will reduce electricity costs to other customers over its lifetime
by about six hundred and fifty dollars. That said, I
think we can create an even better benefit by having
sort of rate structures and managed charging that really encourage
people to do the vast majority of that charging later
(13:12):
into the evening. And so there's a bunch of programs
that are more in the pilot phase right now, but
that are focused on trying to get folks to just
program their vehicles so the charger comes on at nine
o'clock instead of at five pm when they get home
from work. Sure, and it's even bigger benefits. So I
(13:34):
do think that there are some challenges around how are
we going to manage the infrastructure we build out on
the electricity side, especially to make sure that we can
power data centers without driving up other people's electric rates.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
But I don't think that's a problem for these.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
All right, that's a very interesting answer, insightful answer. I
like that when we first started talking you you mentioned
that one of the mandates of your of your office
and by the way, folks, if you're just joining, we're
talking with Will Tour that's t O O. R. And
he is the director of the Colorado Energy Office. So
you said that part of your mandate is to make
sure that we have electricity that's both.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Clean and efficient.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Now, for for a lot of people, and I'm not
pointing a finger at you here, Will, but for a
lot of people, clean really only means quote unquote renewable
solar and wind and and that sort of thing. And yuh,
it seems to me again and that that it's going
to be somewhere between difficult and impossible to get to
(14:41):
Jared Polus's goals of having all renewable energy in the
state of Colorado and and not have our bills go up.
To me, this is a much more obvious problem than
than the e V one, which which you explained pretty well.
How how could we even theoretically get to what we're
(15:02):
calling all renewable energy at some point when you have
to have base load power anyway, how do you and
and the cost of all these projects wind and solar
just has exploded.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Over the past few years. How should we think about that?
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Yeah, So it's a great question and a somewhat somewhat
nuanced answer. So the way that I would describe it is,
if you look around the country, what we have seen
is that in essentially every state around around the nation,
we have been seeing electricity costing creases over the last decade.
(15:45):
When you look at those costing creases and you compare
it to how much renewable electricity there there is on
the grid and how is it growing in those states,
there's almost no relation. And in fact, Colorado, which has
had one of the highest three of renewable growth, has
had among the lowest increase in electricity costs over the
(16:08):
last ten years. But when we look out into the
and really part of that is because we've had some
pretty expensive old coal plants that as those have been retired,
they've been replaced by lower cost wind and solar and
natural gas, and the effect has been to both have
(16:34):
a cleaner electricity mix and have much less of an
increase in electricity rates than we've been seeing in other areas.
As we look out into the future. The regulatory structure
in Colorado does have clean energy requirements for electric utilities.
They're required to reduce their pollution eighty percent below a
(16:58):
two thousand and five baseline by twenty.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
But it does not specify the technologies that they need
to use.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
So even though that you know, the state's been very
you know, supportive of renewable energy, our rules don't tell
the utilities you must use wand or you must use solar.
They say, here, here's your target for reducing pollution, and
bring forward the mixture of resources that it's going to
(17:27):
maintain reliability and that makes economic sense. And if they're
a municipal utility or a co op, they decide on
that mix. If they're a regulated utility, they bring that
proposal to the state Public Utilities Commission and they make
the ultimate decision on it.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Let me just jump in for a second because we
only have about ninety seconds left.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
So I saw, and I'm sure you saw.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
The head of Colorado Springs Utilities some months ago made
some comments along the lines of they cannot abide by
the statewide goal for eighty percent reduction in greenhouse gases
by twenty thirty without massively increasing cost to their right payers.
(18:17):
And even if they did that, it might still be impossible.
And given also how long it takes to build a
nuclear plant, and nuclear is the right answer, but it
takes forever to build one. Just give me one minute
here on what's going to happen where Governor Polus's pipe
dream of eighty percent reduction And Jared's my friend, he
(18:38):
knows I say this stuff to Governor Polus's pipe dream
of eighty percent reduction meets the reality of physics and
economics that that absolutely positively will not be achieved.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Then what happens.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Yeah, well, so that's not what's actually happening on the ground.
When we look across the state, there are utilities all
taken together other are on track actually to exceed that
eighty percent goal, and we think that we'll average across
all the utilities hit about eighty four percent. It's harder
(19:11):
for utility like Colorado's Springs. It doesn't have the same
access to transmission as some of the bigger utilities who
are have an easier time accessing wind energy. That's a
nuance that is quite difference between the larger utilities like
Tri State and Excel than.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
It is or color Springs.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
So when we look at it across the entire state,
what we see is that we're well on.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Track to achieve.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Okay, okay, last quick questions you need.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
I do agree with you that over the longer term,
we are going to need, you know, zero pollution sources
of electricity that are available twenty four to seven. And
so you know, there was legislation this year that made
it clear that nuclear is very much in the mix.
You can be considered in Colorado, Advanced geosermal. We think
(20:07):
there's huge opportunity in Colorado. Their tri state is already
moving forward on plans for a gas plant with carbon
catcher in northwest Colorado. So there's a lot of technologies
that I think can come into play.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
There, and I sure hope nuclear is a moon. So
I just literally have a couple seconds here. Will can
a utility in Colorado buy energy from another state where
the other where the producer in that other state says
this came from wind or solar and then Colorado can
count that toward this goal or is it all?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Is it only based on energy produced in this state?
Speaker 4 (20:49):
So our standards are based upon the electricity serving retail sales,
not whether it where it is produced. So it's it's
all the electricity that they're using, including electricity imported from
out of state.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
So they could if Texas is producing a lot of
wind power. And I don't know if we're connected to Texas,
but if we were connected to Texas and they produce
a lot of wind power, then theoretically we could buy
a bunch of electricity from them and claim we're meeting
our goal.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
If we had the transmission to deliver that. Will Tour real.
It can't just be a peeper transaction.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Got it.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
But yeah, Will Tour, you really know your stuff and
that was a great conversation.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
And I you know you have me.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
You have me believing I have some things at least
a little bit wrong, and I appreciate that. Will Tour
as director of the Colorado Energy Office, thanks so much
for your time.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
We'll definitely have you back. Thank you. Will
Will Tour and I run into each other, either you know,
communications wise, or not that often in person, I guess,
But for years and years and years now and Will
is always doing something around energy issues and his current
gig and actually he's had this gig for a while
is he is the executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.
(00:21):
And my listeners know I am fascinated by energy issues.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I think in the.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Big like, there's always some short term thing that comes
up that seems very important at the moment, but in
the big picture, other than perhaps the national debt, there's
probably nothing more important than energy policy. And so I
like to pay close attention to this stuff. And most
people think about it at the federal level, but there's
an immense amount of stuff that happens at the state level,
and Will knows all about that. So, Hi Will, thanks
(00:50):
for being here.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Hi Rosa, happy to join.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Before we jump into issues, tell us a little bit
about the mandate and responsibilities of the Colorado Energy Office.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Yeah, So, the Colorado Energy Office is a non regulatory
agency that is actually part of the Governor's office that
has the mission of advancing both affordable and clean energy
for the people of Colorado and advancing energy efficiency and
(01:28):
transportation electrification. So we help develop policy, we're involved in
the various regulatory bodies like Public Utilities Commission or the
State Air Commission, and then we run a bunch of programs,
largely programs that are focused on helping businesses and consumers
(01:50):
do things like energy improvements to their properties or installing
electric vehicle charging, or helping low income residents and reduce
their energy bills.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And you said a non regulatory agency, So does that
mean you guys are not writing and enforcing rules the
way you know, the Department of Revenue mights or something
like that.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
So we do help to administer a number of programs
that have sort of regulatory elements, but where the actual
regulatory body would be something like the State Air Quality
Control Commission, we may be helping to administer programs where
we don't have direct regulatory authority.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Okay, So that's actually a great jumping off point for
the question I emailed you about the other day, and
you wrote me a very interesting and long answer, and
I'm not going to read any of it. Well, just
you can. You can tell my listeners about it. And
I saw a headline over at the Colorado Sun. Its
written by a reporter named Michael Booth, who I think
has a particular angle on energy issues.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It's probably.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
I think his I think his approach to energy is
probably much like yours.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
It's probably a little different from mine.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
But the headline is Congress has likely killed Colorado's ev
mandate and clean energy programs.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Environmental groups say, but.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
This is actually a secondary effect if it's true, and
we'll get to the is it true question of what
Congress did regarding California. So first, before we get to Colorado,
just the listeners understand the framework. What did Congress do
regarding California.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Yeah, so this is in the context of clean car standards.
So under the Federal Clean Air Act, the Congress wanted
to make sure both said cars were getting cleaner over time,
but also that there weren't fifty different state standards that
auto manufacturers had to build their vehicles too. So when
(03:59):
the Cleaner Act was first passed, like back in the
nineteen seventies, at that time, California was a one state
that already had a clean air standards for vehicles, and
so the way that the legislation was written, the federal government,
through the EPA and the Department of Transportation sets both
(04:22):
fuel economy standards and clean air requirements for cars and trucks,
and then California was also allowed to set their own standards,
although they had to go through a waiver process with
the EPA to have those standards approved.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
And then states would have their choice.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
They could either go with the standards set by the
federal government or they could go with the standard set
by California, but they couldn't set their own standards, and so.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Colorado a number of years ago.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Did our own clean car standards that were based upon
the California standards, which are somewhat stricter. They lead to
lower pollution than the federal standards, and recently a couple
of years ago, California updated those standards. It's what's called
the Clean Advanced Clean Cars to standard that, among other things,
(05:25):
requires the level of vehicles sold by any given manufacturer
in a state to that are electric vehicles or other
zeromissioned vehicles, has to gradually increase over time, and Colorado
partially adopted that rule. We adopted it through twenty thirty two.
(05:49):
Congress recently used something known as the Congressional Review Act
to remove the waiver for the state of California, which
means they can't enforce those clean car standards and other
states wouldn't be able to either. It's likely to go
(06:10):
to litigation. There's arguments that it was not a legal
use of the Congressional Review Act, but it's created a
lot of uncertainty into whether California or other states will
can have their own clean car and clean truck standards.
It's interesting for the state of Colorado, you know, we
basically view those standards as a means of assuring that
(06:33):
manufacturers will bring all their vehicles to Colorado, and as
a relatively small state, in the past, we often saw
that new electric vehicles would go to the coasts and
the manufacturers wouldn't bring them here. We view this really
as helping to ensure consumer choice and make sure they
(06:54):
bring all those vehicles here. But in practice, to date,
what we've seen is an actual consumer demand has been
probably four times higher than those minimum regulatory standards. So
there's probably not a near term impact on the Colorado market,
but there may be over time.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
This is a thing that some people who are very
much against this were calling effectively a internal combustion engine ban,
not immediately, but they were sort of describing it as
the way the rules would be implemented would force car
makers to massively reduce or eliminate other internal combustion engine
vehicles and just have electric Do you think that's is
(07:37):
that a goal?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Is that a goal of yours if you were in charge?
Speaker 4 (07:42):
So the way that so California's rule, Colorado did not
adopt all of California's rule.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
California's rule does.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Require by twenty thirty five, one hundred percent of the
vehicles that are sold in California have to be either
electric vehicles, plug in hybrid vehicles that have a gasoline
engine but also are are able to take electricity or
hydrogen vehicles for new vehicle sales. It doesn't stop, you know,
(08:10):
used vehicles from being sold. Colorado didn't go that direction.
You know, we adopted a rule that does require sales
to grow substantially, you know, eventually up to about eighty
percent of vehicles, but does not include any ban on
gasoline only or diesel only vehicles, because we wanted to
(08:31):
make sure that we're maintaining consumer choice here.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
So and again I realize you're you're not in the legislature,
and you're not and you're not a regulator, but you
are more involved in these issues than probably anybody I
know here in the States. So again I'll ask you
whether you think eliminating or nearly eliminating internal combustion engine
vehicles as new car sales. Do you think it's a
(08:59):
reasonable goal.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
So again, that's not the direction that we we saw
it made sense for Colorado. We certainly, you know, I
do believe that over time EV's will take over almost
the entire marketplace just because they're better. They're better vehicles,
and as the cost of batteries keeps coming down, they're
going to have so many advantages over gasoline vehicles. But
(09:26):
from a public policy perspective, you know, our goal has
been to, you know, make sure that in these early
days of the EV market, they're financially attractive to folks,
make sure that we have the electric vehicle charging infrastructure
so that people know that they can get wherever they
need to go with one, and and make sure that
(09:48):
manufacturers are bringing their vehicles here. And I don't you know,
we you know, very consciously did not go in the
direction of a ban on ban on gasoline vehicles. I
think that was good public policy for the state of Colorado.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
All right, fair enough, So let's actually let's tie this
in then to the other thing that I want to
talk to you about. So, if evs are going to
take over, and they will might, as you said, it's
not only that there will need to be more infrastructure
in terms of chargers in a lot of different places.
And they'll have to be fast chargers because people are
(10:26):
not going to want to spend twenty minutes to get
the range that they could get in.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Four minutes at the s leane pump.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Right, So, but that technology is developing, so they'll need
to be fairly fast chargers and widely dispersed, easy to access.
The vehicles will need better range to people don't have
the range anxiety, and I do think all that's possible.
To me, the hardest part of this is the electricity
generation and the infrastructure to get the power from whatever's
(10:55):
generating the electricity, Insufficient quantity to all these chargers and
everything else as we try to electrify everything, and I
have great concern that that cannot be done in a
way that doesn't double or triple or quadruple our electric bills.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, So it's a great question, and.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
This is an issue where I actually think that the
impact of EVS is the opposite of your concern. There
are other types of electrification, and especially sort of the
advent of large data centers, where I think there are
a lot of questions about how to meet that load.
But the great thing about electric vehicles is that for
(11:42):
the vast majority of vehicles, people plug them in at night,
and the vast majority of charging is happening overnight when
there's lots of excess capacity on the grid. So you're
essentially taking a bunch of generating capacity and transmission line
and distribution lines that we've already had to pay for
(12:04):
that right now, there's you know, ten hours a day
where there's not much revenue coming in to pay for those,
and you're spreading those fixed costs over more killowhite hours.
And so all of the analysis that we've seen suggests
that especially for light duty electric vehicles for passenger cars,
(12:27):
the more of them we get on the road, they
actually helped to put downward pressure on electric rates and
slow down the increase in electric rates that we're seeing
happen across the country. For a bunch of other reasons.
So one analysis from a couple of years ago found
that every EV we add to the road in Colorado
(12:48):
will reduce electricity costs to other customers over its lifetime
by about six hundred and fifty dollars. That said, I
think we can create an even better benefit by having
sort of rate structures and managed charging that really encourage
people to do the vast majority of that charging later
(13:12):
into the evening. And so there's a bunch of programs
that are more in the pilot phase right now, but
that are focused on trying to get folks to just
program their vehicles so the charger comes on at nine
o'clock instead of at five pm when they get home
from work. Sure, and it's even bigger benefits. So I
(13:34):
do think that there are some challenges around how are
we going to manage the infrastructure we build out on
the electricity side, especially to make sure that we can
power data centers without driving up other people's electric rates.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
But I don't think that's a problem for these.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
All right, that's a very interesting answer, insightful answer. I
like that when we first started talking you you mentioned
that one of the mandates of your of your office
and by the way, folks, if you're just joining, we're
talking with Will Tour that's t O O. R. And
he is the director of the Colorado Energy Office. So
you said that part of your mandate is to make
sure that we have electricity that's both.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Clean and efficient.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Now, for for a lot of people, and I'm not
pointing a finger at you here, Will, but for a
lot of people, clean really only means quote unquote renewable
solar and wind and and that sort of thing. And yuh,
it seems to me again and that that it's going
to be somewhere between difficult and impossible to get to
(14:41):
Jared Polus's goals of having all renewable energy in the
state of Colorado and and not have our bills go up.
To me, this is a much more obvious problem than
than the e V one, which which you explained pretty well.
How how could we even theoretically get to what we're
(15:02):
calling all renewable energy at some point when you have
to have base load power anyway, how do you and
and the cost of all these projects wind and solar
just has exploded.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Over the past few years. How should we think about that?
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Yeah, So it's a great question and a somewhat somewhat
nuanced answer. So the way that I would describe it is,
if you look around the country, what we have seen
is that in essentially every state around around the nation,
we have been seeing electricity costing creases over the last decade.
(15:45):
When you look at those costing creases and you compare
it to how much renewable electricity there there is on
the grid and how is it growing in those states,
there's almost no relation. And in fact, Colorado, which has
had one of the highest three of renewable growth, has
had among the lowest increase in electricity costs over the
(16:08):
last ten years. But when we look out into the
and really part of that is because we've had some
pretty expensive old coal plants that as those have been retired,
they've been replaced by lower cost wind and solar and
natural gas, and the effect has been to both have
(16:34):
a cleaner electricity mix and have much less of an
increase in electricity rates than we've been seeing in other areas.
As we look out into the future. The regulatory structure
in Colorado does have clean energy requirements for electric utilities.
They're required to reduce their pollution eighty percent below a
(16:58):
two thousand and five baseline by twenty.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
But it does not specify the technologies that they need
to use.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
So even though that you know, the state's been very
you know, supportive of renewable energy, our rules don't tell
the utilities you must use wand or you must use solar.
They say, here, here's your target for reducing pollution, and
bring forward the mixture of resources that it's going to
(17:27):
maintain reliability and that makes economic sense. And if they're
a municipal utility or a co op, they decide on
that mix. If they're a regulated utility, they bring that
proposal to the state Public Utilities Commission and they make
the ultimate decision on it.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Let me just jump in for a second because we
only have about ninety seconds left.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
So I saw, and I'm sure you saw.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
The head of Colorado Springs Utilities some months ago made
some comments along the lines of they cannot abide by
the statewide goal for eighty percent reduction in greenhouse gases
by twenty thirty without massively increasing cost to their right payers.
(18:17):
And even if they did that, it might still be impossible.
And given also how long it takes to build a
nuclear plant, and nuclear is the right answer, but it
takes forever to build one. Just give me one minute
here on what's going to happen where Governor Polus's pipe
dream of eighty percent reduction And Jared's my friend, he
(18:38):
knows I say this stuff to Governor Polus's pipe dream
of eighty percent reduction meets the reality of physics and
economics that that absolutely positively will not be achieved.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Then what happens.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Yeah, well, so that's not what's actually happening on the ground.
When we look across the state, there are utilities all
taken together other are on track actually to exceed that
eighty percent goal, and we think that we'll average across
all the utilities hit about eighty four percent. It's harder
(19:11):
for utility like Colorado's Springs. It doesn't have the same
access to transmission as some of the bigger utilities who
are have an easier time accessing wind energy. That's a
nuance that is quite difference between the larger utilities like
Tri State and Excel than.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
It is or color Springs.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
So when we look at it across the entire state,
what we see is that we're well on.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Track to achieve.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Okay, okay, last quick questions you need.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
I do agree with you that over the longer term,
we are going to need, you know, zero pollution sources
of electricity that are available twenty four to seven. And
so you know, there was legislation this year that made
it clear that nuclear is very much in the mix.
You can be considered in Colorado, Advanced geosermal. We think
(20:07):
there's huge opportunity in Colorado. Their tri state is already
moving forward on plans for a gas plant with carbon
catcher in northwest Colorado. So there's a lot of technologies
that I think can come into play.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
There, and I sure hope nuclear is a moon. So
I just literally have a couple seconds here. Will can
a utility in Colorado buy energy from another state where
the other where the producer in that other state says
this came from wind or solar and then Colorado can
count that toward this goal or is it all?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Is it only based on energy produced in this state?
Speaker 4 (20:49):
So our standards are based upon the electricity serving retail sales,
not whether it where it is produced. So it's it's
all the electricity that they're using, including electricity imported from
out of state.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
So they could if Texas is producing a lot of
wind power. And I don't know if we're connected to Texas,
but if we were connected to Texas and they produce
a lot of wind power, then theoretically we could buy
a bunch of electricity from them and claim we're meeting
our goal.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
If we had the transmission to deliver that. Will Tour real.
It can't just be a peeper transaction.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Got it.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
But yeah, Will Tour, you really know your stuff and
that was a great conversation.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
And I you know you have me.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
You have me believing I have some things at least
a little bit wrong, and I appreciate that. Will Tour
as director of the Colorado Energy Office, thanks so much
for your time.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
We'll definitely have you back. Thank you. Will
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