Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I saw a column on Complete Colorado dot com which
got a complete glow up. By the way, looks all
brand new. It looks so good right now. If you
don't go to Complete Colorado dot com every day, you're
really selling yourself short. And some of the writers there,
like Amy Oliver Cook, specialize in certain areas and hers
happens to be energy, and she wrote a fantastic column
(00:23):
for Complete Colorado that I mean I would have started out, Amy,
I would have started the column out with nin or
niner we were right, but I know you rose above
those base instincts.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Amy, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
First of all, hey, thanks for having me. Mandy greatly
appreciate it. And I did say about that, but I
take that pleasure in being right.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
There's no fun in being right on this occasion.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
And in fact, when I actually give presentations or conference
or go to a conference and speak, I say, there
is no pleasure in being right about this. And then
and then I say, in fact, as one of the
things I do is I model for cost and reliability
on state energy plans, which means I've done Colorado's. And
it's a nonprofit that I started with two others I've
(01:11):
actually said in conferences, I pray we're wrong.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Unfortunately so far we haven't been.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So what we're talking about right now is we are
talking about energy policy that Governor Jared Polis has been
promoting since he became governor. He is all in on
green energy. He wants us to be a net zero,
which is an impossible standard to meet right now. We
don't have the technology to be net zero. It is
an unrealistic expectation. But he said when he pitched all
(01:43):
this back in twenty seventeen, he was.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Like, it is going to save us so much money,
Like your.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Savings are going to blow your mind with the savings.
And you guys at Independence Ins too, were like, let's
crunch those numbers and see what that's really going to
look like.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
What did you guys find back then?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
So in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, when we first did it,
we found that it was going to cost about and
this was then, so forty five billion dollars was the
number that we were looking at, which was in twenty seventeen,
Like that.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Was real money.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Twenty seventeen, forty five billion dollars was a ton of cash.
Now it's just what you find in the couch of
a congressional office.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
But forty five billion, and that's billion with a B.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
And we looked at a couple of different ways of
how you could get it, and I won't go into
those details, but you know, the analysis is on the
Independence Institute's website and it's also.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Linked in that column. But what we what he said,
Paul is sort of, you know, tut tut, oh.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
They modeled something that isn't even my policy, and I
don't know.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
How much it's going to cost.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
That was the other thing they never off He never
offered specifics on anything. But he's like, I don't know
what the exact costs are going to be, but I
can assure you, I guarantee you it's not going to
be forty five billion dollars to power the entire state
with wind solar and batteries.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
That's it. That's what he said.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
He says wind solar in batteries. State of Colorado only
has vote sources as considered clean and they want one
hundred percent clean energy by twenty forty.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
They want it powering the entire state.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
And they said, no, it's not going to cost forty
five billion dollars. It's going to be way less than
that because when and solar are free. What they forget
to tell you is that converting intermittent weather dependent sources
into dispatchable, deliverable electricity is super expensive because you have
(03:58):
to overbuild it magnitudes of ten to fifteen and then
even then you'll still have blackouts, so you still can't
They can barely meet reliability requirement. So he dismissed it totally,
said it's going to be less than that, but he
didn't have a number, and he would never give us
(04:18):
a number.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
But since then, some things.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Have come out that have shown that we were right
all along, and one is the Colorado Energy Office. So
Governor Poulos's own energy office came out with a study,
which by the way, nobody knows about because they buried
it that the single most expensive ways to decarbonize the
state of Colorado is through wind, solar, and batteries, and
(04:47):
they said it would cost sixty one billion.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
I remember we said forty five. They're at sixty one.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
But that sixty one billion dollar figure is way low
because I don't include transmission lines or distribution system and
they say they barely meet reliability requirements.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
So we have since then modeled it again and again.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
We've done it two more times and the number we've
come up with now and listen, I've been reluctant to
even say these numbers because they're so staggering. Literally they're
so crazy. But in Colorado, to completely decarbonize the state
with wind, solar, and batteries, according to our modeling.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Is could be upwards of six hundred.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Billion dollars six hundred billion dollars and for that it
gets worse.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
For that. We also model for reliability, so we.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Take historical weather patterns dump them into our model to
see if we were to have, say twenty twenty one
weather patterns, you'd be staring at, you know, somewhere between
twenty two twenty four, maybe thirty hours of blackouts because
regional weather events. It means you couldn't import power from
(06:02):
another state.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
You wouldn't get it.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
And they're not going to give you power if they're
in the same weather event. If Wyomings having you know,
worse weather than we are, they're not going to give
us their power.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
They're just not. They're not going to sell it to
us at any cost. So you could spend.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
All that money and still not have a reliable system
that could power the stake. I think based on what
you know, what I would call warning signs out there,
I think the state knows.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I think they know it.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Oh, I think so too.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And I was recently in Germany and talking to one
of our tour guides, a young kid in his mid
twenties or whatever, you know, and he and his girlfriend
it is so expensive to heat their apartment in the
winter that they sublet it for three months and went
to Thaighland and it was cheaper to live in Thailand
for three months than pay their power bill in Germany.
And Germany is all in on green energy right now,
(06:58):
So then I started looking at So there's Spain also
all in a green energy, but it works in Spain.
So I started doing a deep dive of why it
works in Spain and why it doesn't work in Germany.
And guess what, in the winter amy Germany is gray
and there's no win and so all of these renewable
sources that they built simply don't work, and they're still
(07:18):
importing now they're buying natural gas from Russia, so.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
They're funding one side of the war.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I mean, it's just such an absolute mess, and I
don't hear people talking about things like, well, do we
have a coastline like Spain? You know, Spain has coastline
they can put It's just it's like this rush to
do something that is only going to work for a
certain amount of people for a certain amount of time.
I really don't understand it from Governor Polis because he's
(07:44):
not stupid, right, He's not a dumb man. He is
very very intelligent. To your point, I don't think he
believes this is possible. I think he just needed to
get ahead of Gavin Newsom in the presidential polls, and
he's making us all pay for it.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I also think, first, I think you're absolutely right, and
having been to Germany in December.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
I can assure you that it is cold, it.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Is gray, and and they're you know, they're just the
daylight hours. They're way farther north on the latitude, you
know scale, they have a shorter period of time of
sunlight and they need that power. So you're one hundred
percent correct. At this point, I was talking to some
(08:33):
friends and one of the things, you know, like, why
why would you go all in? Why are you staking
your your political career, but also the economy of Colorado
and people's lives.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Because without power, people die.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
There's a reason why the state is giving away big
batteries to medicaid patients on life sustaining equipment.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
They are giving them battery backups.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Why would they do that if they didn't think there
was an issue?
Speaker 4 (09:06):
But I think to.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Some extent mandy on this, and you know, again, hope
I'm wrong, but I think it's ego. I think there
is that I can't be wrong on this, and so
therefore I want to double down.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
And then I'm not going to be there.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
When all of this stuff comes to fruition, because you're
going to be looking at, you know, a utility bill
for residential where you have to put a comma in it.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
You know, you think.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
About one thousand dollars a month utility bills. Because one
of the in the latest public utilities well actually it
wouldn't have been the latest would have been a week
from yesterday. The late the PUC hearing. Yes we listen
to PUC hearings, so the rest of you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
But in that.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Chairman Eric Blank called some of the figures just mind boggling.
Thirty they need forty three This is Excel Energy alone,
So if you're not on Excel, don't worry, You're getting
your own figures. But Excel Energy alone, state's largest utility provider,
forty three billion dollars is needed for distribution and thirty
(10:23):
eight billion again with a B for transmission.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
So that what does it do. The math on that
one is that eighty one billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
For those two things alone, you haven't built a single
generating plant. The priced tags of these things are astronomical,
and we are literally steering down the barrel of really well,
I think we're going over an economic cliff on this
unless we at least bring nuclear into the picture, which
(10:55):
is going to be expensive but can be reliable.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So, I mean, there are.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Ways to fix the but we have to course correct
and some.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
People are going to have to take I'm going to
have to swallow their pride.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I'm a huge fan of nuclear is an option, and
I think some of the stuff that's happening with small
modular reactors is going to be very, very important going forward.
But we have to get over the public perception of
nuclear as being inherently dangerous and inherently wrong or bad
because the upside for nuclear is so much higher than
(11:28):
the potential downside.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
It just is.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And when you look at France, they're powering eighty percent
of their country with nuclear power and they have been
for like forty years. It's happening all over the country.
Maybe it's not right for right on top of the
San Andreas Fault. Maybe there are places we shouldn't be
building it. But just like wind and solar, there are
places where they will not work, you know. I mean,
you could put solar on your roof in Ohio, but
(11:51):
you're only going to get three months of summer out
of it.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
You're not going to get anything in the winter. So
we have to be smarter about this stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I want to ask you about something else before we
run out of time, and that is the Trump administration
has hit the ground running, I mean, not taking a breath,
not missing a beat, and they're aggressively promoting oil production
on federal lands. They're aggressively promoting energy production. I think strategically,
this is the smartest thing they can do.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
But how does that come in conflict?
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Conflict with Colorado's massive regulatory scheme that we have here
for oil and gas.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
So that's a great question, Mandy.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
And one of the things that I've actually posted this
question to a regulatory attorney who's a friend of ours,
and we've worked with them, because there are a couple
of ways that I'm wondering what the impact could be
because most of Colorado's production is on private is on
private land. But are there Colorado's draconian oil and gas
(12:56):
you know regulations which by the way, they don't do
for when, but are those are those regulations? Do they
come in conflict with the executive order that declared a
national energy emergency? And so if that's the case, I mean,
I think there'll be a lawsuit on that. The other
one that I was kind of wondering about with Colorado
(13:17):
is does the state of emergency?
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Does that mean that we can delay.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
The shutdown of Commanche down in Pueblow Because if you're
declared a state of emergency, meaning we have to we
can't afford to shut down baseload reliable power, maybe Commanchi
sort of gets a stay of execution or there has
(13:46):
to be something. It could be that if you shut
down Commanchi, you have to replace it with another baseload source,
and that baseload source could be nuclear, but you have
to do baseload for baseload, so there's probably gonna be
lawsuits there.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
But Colorado will clearly be in conflict. I think. Of course,
I'm not an attorney, but I've posed this question to
some and they've been huh, let me see that could
be a.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Thing on on their oil and gas regulations and then
on the shutdown of coal fire power plants.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
So let me ask you this. We were talking before.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
The interview started on the air, and how much is
oil and gas production down in Colorado?
Speaker 4 (14:29):
Yeah, another great question, so in.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
If I think I have this right, hopefully This was
from Liberty Energy, and you know Chris Wright, who is
soon to be the new GET Energy secretary.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Head of DOE. Ryan Zorn was on my podcast, which
by the.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Way, doesn't conflict with Mandies, where you can get us
anytime we're on YouTube. It's called power gam So make
sure you're always tuned into Mandy and then you can
go listen to me. Anyway, if I had it, it's
down like thirty percent relative to the rest of the
United States, but in real terms it's down.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Production in Colorado was down eight percent, and.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
That could be like if you were if they were
allowed to produce at the level, at a level that
would have gotten them back up to a relative to
the rest of the United States, something like eighteen billion
dollars in revenue, which is nothing to sneeze out when
you're in a state that's facing a billion dollar budget shortfall.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
So what you're telling me is that they cut off
the nose despite their own face, and then they didn't
do anything about their own spending to make up for
the fact that they were driving businesses out of the
state that would have haded the coffers to make it
so they don't have to have a shrinking budget. So
they did it to themselves. Amy, that's what I'm hearing. Yeah,
(15:57):
I think you nailed it, Amy Oliver Cook. You can
watch her show Powergabs see what they did there, Power
grap Power Gab on the Independence Institute's channel.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
You can just find that on YouTube. Amy. I appreciate
you making time today.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
This was a great column, and I wanted to make
sure that Independence got a victory lap because it's always
super frustrating when you guys put out a paper, or
Common Sense Institute puts out a paper and the politicians
all go nah, and you're like, okay, show us your numbers,
and they're like mumble, mumble, walk away. I mean it's
you know, it's it's absurd. So I appreciate you guys,
(16:33):
and thank you for taking this on so the rest
of us don't have to and watch PUC meetings in
the process.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Thanks manby, Appreciate him all right.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
That is Amy Oliver Cook from the Independence Institute.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Check her out at Complete Colorado dot com.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Oh this is adorable, you guys, one of our texters
says on the text line, isn't Chris right gonna have
a conflict of interest?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:02):
The assistant chief of staff for the USDA I saw
today is coming directly from the seed oil lobbying group. So,
I mean, you guys have to understand these high level positions.
I hate this, by the way, about Washington.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
D C.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Especially in like the FDA, the USDA.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
All of these organizations that are supposed to monitor and
you know, act as government watchdogs on these organizations. They're
all leaving government, going working for a drug company or
leaving government going to working for big food leaving and
then and then oh they do that for a little while,
but then big farm and needs them back to the FDAs.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Oh, I'll go back to the FDA. I mean, it's
the merry go round.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
The incestuousness of the entire situation is just.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Gross, so gross.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So I guess in this situation, isn't Chris Wright going
to have a conflict of interest? Yes, but currently I
like his conflict.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Of interest, so we'll just roll with it. I just
you know.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Mandy power Gap has also pointed out what no other
media outlet except for the Independence Institute is reporting this,
and they aren't really a media outlet. Investors in oil
companies are not interested in drilling more. They don't want
to incur the debt it required to invest in more
drilling infrastructure. Here's the problem is I see it with
oil and gas development.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
And I've had not a ton of.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Conversations, but a decent number of conversations who work in
that industry, the established businesses.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
And.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Please don't hear this as a criticism.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
If you work for one of the big companies.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
But they have worked with the government to create regulatory
structures that are so oppressive that it is impossible to compete.
They've raised the barrier of entry so high that small
oil companies that would provide natural competition can't function. And
one of the things that the Trump administration under Chris
(19:00):
Right is hopefully going to do is to streamline those
processes and make it easier for other companies to get
involved in oil and gas. So and therefore, whenever you
and get competition in the story, although the oil and
gas market is distorted by opex artificial floor, it's.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Just all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
You're not wrong, Texter, is what I'm getting at long
way to say you're not wrong.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
But hopefully the.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Unwinding of some of the regulatory structure will help with
that very issue. When we get back, well, let's talk
for a minute on Democrats and immigration, because the city
of Denver, the state of Colorado, there there's a there's
some messaging issues coming out of the left and their
message messaging issues they created for themselves.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
So we'll do that next. Keep it right here on
KOA
I saw a column on Complete Colorado dot com which
got a complete glow up. By the way, looks all
brand new. It looks so good right now. If you
don't go to Complete Colorado dot com every day, you're
really selling yourself short. And some of the writers there,
like Amy Oliver Cook, specialize in certain areas and hers
happens to be energy, and she wrote a fantastic column
(00:23):
for Complete Colorado that I mean I would have started out, Amy,
I would have started the column out with nin or
niner we were right, but I know you rose above
those base instincts.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Amy, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
First of all, hey, thanks for having me. Mandy greatly
appreciate it. And I did say about that, but I
take that pleasure in being right.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
There's no fun in being right on this occasion.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
And in fact, when I actually give presentations or conference
or go to a conference and speak, I say, there
is no pleasure in being right about this. And then
and then I say, in fact, as one of the
things I do is I model for cost and reliability
on state energy plans, which means I've done Colorado's. And
it's a nonprofit that I started with two others I've
(01:11):
actually said in conferences, I pray we're wrong.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Unfortunately so far we haven't been.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So what we're talking about right now is we are
talking about energy policy that Governor Jared Polis has been
promoting since he became governor. He is all in on
green energy. He wants us to be a net zero,
which is an impossible standard to meet right now. We
don't have the technology to be net zero. It is
an unrealistic expectation. But he said when he pitched all
(01:43):
this back in twenty seventeen, he was.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Like, it is going to save us so much money,
Like your.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Savings are going to blow your mind with the savings.
And you guys at Independence Ins too, were like, let's
crunch those numbers and see what that's really going to
look like.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
What did you guys find back then?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
So in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, when we first did it,
we found that it was going to cost about and
this was then, so forty five billion dollars was the
number that we were looking at, which was in twenty seventeen,
Like that.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Was real money.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Twenty seventeen, forty five billion dollars was a ton of cash.
Now it's just what you find in the couch of
a congressional office.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
But forty five billion, and that's billion with a B.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
And we looked at a couple of different ways of
how you could get it, and I won't go into
those details, but you know, the analysis is on the
Independence Institute's website and it's also.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Linked in that column. But what we what he said,
Paul is sort of, you know, tut tut, oh.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
They modeled something that isn't even my policy, and I
don't know.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
How much it's going to cost.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
That was the other thing they never off He never
offered specifics on anything. But he's like, I don't know
what the exact costs are going to be, but I
can assure you, I guarantee you it's not going to
be forty five billion dollars to power the entire state
with wind solar and batteries.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
That's it. That's what he said.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
He says wind solar in batteries. State of Colorado only
has vote sources as considered clean and they want one
hundred percent clean energy by twenty forty.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
They want it powering the entire state.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
And they said, no, it's not going to cost forty
five billion dollars. It's going to be way less than
that because when and solar are free. What they forget
to tell you is that converting intermittent weather dependent sources
into dispatchable, deliverable electricity is super expensive because you have
(03:58):
to overbuild it magnitudes of ten to fifteen and then
even then you'll still have blackouts, so you still can't
They can barely meet reliability requirement. So he dismissed it totally,
said it's going to be less than that, but he
didn't have a number, and he would never give us
(04:18):
a number.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
But since then, some things.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Have come out that have shown that we were right
all along, and one is the Colorado Energy Office. So
Governor Poulos's own energy office came out with a study,
which by the way, nobody knows about because they buried
it that the single most expensive ways to decarbonize the
state of Colorado is through wind, solar, and batteries, and
(04:47):
they said it would cost sixty one billion.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
I remember we said forty five. They're at sixty one.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
But that sixty one billion dollar figure is way low
because I don't include transmission lines or distribution system and
they say they barely meet reliability requirements.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
So we have since then modeled it again and again.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
We've done it two more times and the number we've
come up with now and listen, I've been reluctant to
even say these numbers because they're so staggering. Literally they're
so crazy. But in Colorado, to completely decarbonize the state
with wind, solar, and batteries, according to our modeling.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Is could be upwards of six hundred.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Billion dollars six hundred billion dollars and for that it
gets worse.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
For that. We also model for reliability, so we.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Take historical weather patterns dump them into our model to
see if we were to have, say twenty twenty one
weather patterns, you'd be staring at, you know, somewhere between
twenty two twenty four, maybe thirty hours of blackouts because
regional weather events. It means you couldn't import power from
(06:02):
another state.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
You wouldn't get it.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
And they're not going to give you power if they're
in the same weather event. If Wyomings having you know,
worse weather than we are, they're not going to give
us their power.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
They're just not. They're not going to sell it to
us at any cost. So you could spend.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
All that money and still not have a reliable system
that could power the stake. I think based on what
you know, what I would call warning signs out there,
I think the state knows.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
I think they know it.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Oh, I think so too.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And I was recently in Germany and talking to one
of our tour guides, a young kid in his mid
twenties or whatever, you know, and he and his girlfriend
it is so expensive to heat their apartment in the
winter that they sublet it for three months and went
to Thaighland and it was cheaper to live in Thailand
for three months than pay their power bill in Germany.
And Germany is all in on green energy right now,
(06:58):
So then I started looking at So there's Spain also
all in a green energy, but it works in Spain.
So I started doing a deep dive of why it
works in Spain and why it doesn't work in Germany.
And guess what, in the winter amy Germany is gray
and there's no win and so all of these renewable
sources that they built simply don't work, and they're still
(07:18):
importing now they're buying natural gas from Russia, so.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
They're funding one side of the war.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I mean, it's just such an absolute mess, and I
don't hear people talking about things like, well, do we
have a coastline like Spain? You know, Spain has coastline
they can put It's just it's like this rush to
do something that is only going to work for a
certain amount of people for a certain amount of time.
I really don't understand it from Governor Polis because he's
(07:44):
not stupid, right, He's not a dumb man. He is
very very intelligent. To your point, I don't think he
believes this is possible. I think he just needed to
get ahead of Gavin Newsom in the presidential polls, and
he's making us all pay for it.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
I also think, first, I think you're absolutely right, and
having been to Germany in December.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
I can assure you that it is cold, it.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Is gray, and and they're you know, they're just the
daylight hours. They're way farther north on the latitude, you
know scale, they have a shorter period of time of
sunlight and they need that power. So you're one hundred
percent correct. At this point, I was talking to some
(08:33):
friends and one of the things, you know, like, why
why would you go all in? Why are you staking
your your political career, but also the economy of Colorado
and people's lives.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Because without power, people die.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
There's a reason why the state is giving away big
batteries to medicaid patients on life sustaining equipment.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
They are giving them battery backups.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Why would they do that if they didn't think there
was an issue?
Speaker 4 (09:06):
But I think to.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Some extent mandy on this, and you know, again, hope
I'm wrong, but I think it's ego. I think there
is that I can't be wrong on this, and so
therefore I want to double down.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
And then I'm not going to be there.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
When all of this stuff comes to fruition, because you're
going to be looking at, you know, a utility bill
for residential where you have to put a comma in it.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
You know, you think.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
About one thousand dollars a month utility bills. Because one
of the in the latest public utilities well actually it
wouldn't have been the latest would have been a week
from yesterday. The late the PUC hearing. Yes we listen
to PUC hearings, so the rest of you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
But in that.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Chairman Eric Blank called some of the figures just mind boggling.
Thirty they need forty three This is Excel Energy alone,
So if you're not on Excel, don't worry, You're getting
your own figures. But Excel Energy alone, state's largest utility provider,
forty three billion dollars is needed for distribution and thirty
(10:23):
eight billion again with a B for transmission.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
So that what does it do. The math on that
one is that eighty one billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
For those two things alone, you haven't built a single
generating plant. The priced tags of these things are astronomical,
and we are literally steering down the barrel of really well,
I think we're going over an economic cliff on this
unless we at least bring nuclear into the picture, which
(10:55):
is going to be expensive but can be reliable.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So, I mean, there are.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Ways to fix the but we have to course correct
and some.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
People are going to have to take I'm going to
have to swallow their pride.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I'm a huge fan of nuclear is an option, and
I think some of the stuff that's happening with small
modular reactors is going to be very, very important going forward.
But we have to get over the public perception of
nuclear as being inherently dangerous and inherently wrong or bad
because the upside for nuclear is so much higher than
(11:28):
the potential downside.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
It just is.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And when you look at France, they're powering eighty percent
of their country with nuclear power and they have been
for like forty years. It's happening all over the country.
Maybe it's not right for right on top of the
San Andreas Fault. Maybe there are places we shouldn't be
building it. But just like wind and solar, there are
places where they will not work, you know. I mean,
you could put solar on your roof in Ohio, but
(11:51):
you're only going to get three months of summer out
of it.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
You're not going to get anything in the winter. So
we have to be smarter about this stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I want to ask you about something else before we
run out of time, and that is the Trump administration
has hit the ground running, I mean, not taking a breath,
not missing a beat, and they're aggressively promoting oil production
on federal lands. They're aggressively promoting energy production. I think strategically,
this is the smartest thing they can do.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
But how does that come in conflict?
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Conflict with Colorado's massive regulatory scheme that we have here
for oil and gas.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
So that's a great question, Mandy.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
And one of the things that I've actually posted this
question to a regulatory attorney who's a friend of ours,
and we've worked with them, because there are a couple
of ways that I'm wondering what the impact could be
because most of Colorado's production is on private is on
private land. But are there Colorado's draconian oil and gas
(12:56):
you know regulations which by the way, they don't do
for when, but are those are those regulations? Do they
come in conflict with the executive order that declared a
national energy emergency? And so if that's the case, I mean,
I think there'll be a lawsuit on that. The other
one that I was kind of wondering about with Colorado
(13:17):
is does the state of emergency?
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Does that mean that we can delay.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
The shutdown of Commanche down in Pueblow Because if you're
declared a state of emergency, meaning we have to we
can't afford to shut down baseload reliable power, maybe Commanchi
sort of gets a stay of execution or there has
(13:46):
to be something. It could be that if you shut
down Commanchi, you have to replace it with another baseload source,
and that baseload source could be nuclear, but you have
to do baseload for baseload, so there's probably gonna be
lawsuits there.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
But Colorado will clearly be in conflict. I think. Of course,
I'm not an attorney, but I've posed this question to
some and they've been huh, let me see that could
be a.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Thing on on their oil and gas regulations and then
on the shutdown of coal fire power plants.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
So let me ask you this. We were talking before.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
The interview started on the air, and how much is
oil and gas production down in Colorado?
Speaker 4 (14:29):
Yeah, another great question, so in.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
If I think I have this right, hopefully This was
from Liberty Energy, and you know Chris Wright, who is
soon to be the new GET Energy secretary.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Head of DOE. Ryan Zorn was on my podcast, which
by the.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Way, doesn't conflict with Mandies, where you can get us
anytime we're on YouTube. It's called power gam So make
sure you're always tuned into Mandy and then you can
go listen to me. Anyway, if I had it, it's
down like thirty percent relative to the rest of the
United States, but in real terms it's down.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Production in Colorado was down eight percent, and.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
That could be like if you were if they were
allowed to produce at the level, at a level that
would have gotten them back up to a relative to
the rest of the United States, something like eighteen billion
dollars in revenue, which is nothing to sneeze out when
you're in a state that's facing a billion dollar budget shortfall.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
So what you're telling me is that they cut off
the nose despite their own face, and then they didn't
do anything about their own spending to make up for
the fact that they were driving businesses out of the
state that would have haded the coffers to make it
so they don't have to have a shrinking budget. So
they did it to themselves. Amy, that's what I'm hearing. Yeah,
(15:57):
I think you nailed it, Amy Oliver Cook. You can
watch her show Powergabs see what they did there, Power
grap Power Gab on the Independence Institute's channel.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
You can just find that on YouTube. Amy. I appreciate
you making time today.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
This was a great column, and I wanted to make
sure that Independence got a victory lap because it's always
super frustrating when you guys put out a paper, or
Common Sense Institute puts out a paper and the politicians
all go nah, and you're like, okay, show us your numbers,
and they're like mumble, mumble, walk away. I mean it's
you know, it's it's absurd. So I appreciate you guys,
(16:33):
and thank you for taking this on so the rest
of us don't have to and watch PUC meetings in
the process.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Thanks manby, Appreciate him all right.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
That is Amy Oliver Cook from the Independence Institute.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Check her out at Complete Colorado dot com.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Oh this is adorable, you guys, one of our texters
says on the text line, isn't Chris right gonna have
a conflict of interest?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:02):
The assistant chief of staff for the USDA I saw
today is coming directly from the seed oil lobbying group. So,
I mean, you guys have to understand these high level positions.
I hate this, by the way, about Washington.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
D C.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Especially in like the FDA, the USDA.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
All of these organizations that are supposed to monitor and
you know, act as government watchdogs on these organizations. They're
all leaving government, going working for a drug company or
leaving government going to working for big food leaving and
then and then oh they do that for a little while,
but then big farm and needs them back to the FDAs.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Oh, I'll go back to the FDA. I mean, it's
the merry go round.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
The incestuousness of the entire situation is just.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Gross, so gross.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So I guess in this situation, isn't Chris Wright going
to have a conflict of interest? Yes, but currently I
like his conflict.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Of interest, so we'll just roll with it. I just
you know.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Mandy power Gap has also pointed out what no other
media outlet except for the Independence Institute is reporting this,
and they aren't really a media outlet. Investors in oil
companies are not interested in drilling more. They don't want
to incur the debt it required to invest in more
drilling infrastructure. Here's the problem is I see it with
oil and gas development.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
And I've had not a ton of.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Conversations, but a decent number of conversations who work in
that industry, the established businesses.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
And.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Please don't hear this as a criticism.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
If you work for one of the big companies.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
But they have worked with the government to create regulatory
structures that are so oppressive that it is impossible to compete.
They've raised the barrier of entry so high that small
oil companies that would provide natural competition can't function. And
one of the things that the Trump administration under Chris
(19:00):
Right is hopefully going to do is to streamline those
processes and make it easier for other companies to get
involved in oil and gas. So and therefore, whenever you
and get competition in the story, although the oil and
gas market is distorted by opex artificial floor, it's.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Just all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
You're not wrong, Texter, is what I'm getting at long
way to say you're not wrong.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
But hopefully the.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Unwinding of some of the regulatory structure will help with
that very issue. When we get back, well, let's talk
for a minute on Democrats and immigration, because the city
of Denver, the state of Colorado, there there's a there's
some messaging issues coming out of the left and their
message messaging issues they created for themselves.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
So we'll do that next. Keep it right here on
KOA
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