07-30-26 Interview - Sarah Montalbano - Green Energy Goals Are Unachievable

GREEN ENERGY GOALS ARE UNACHIEVABLE That is the message from a recent article by Sarah Montalbano from the Independence Institute. I’m specifically talking about the Clean Heat Energy Plan, which requires that Colorado gas utilities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 41 percent compared to 2015 levels by 2035. The law also aims for 22 percent reductions by 2030 and, critically, four percent emissions reductions by the end of 2025. So how is it going?

Xcel won’t say so directly, but the company has already whiffed its 2025 target. That’s despite spending $65.4 million in 2025 for 24,821 metric tons of program-attributed emissions reductions.

It isn’t a surprise to Xcel that it’s missing the mark, given the company’s own consultants said in a 2024 filing that “achieving the 2025 goal is extremely unlikely.” The PUC approved the plan anyway, waiving the 2.5 percent cost cap on the grounds that doing so was in the public interest.

But the PUC seems to have allowed them to pick our pockets to reach the “extremely unlikely” green goals set by the idiots in the Legislature and Governor’s office. So if they don’t meet the goals, do the ratepayers who have been soaked get their money back? The biggest takeaway is that the whole scheme relies on forcing YOU AND ME to give up our efficient natural gas furnaces for a new more expensive electric system. No thank you. I’ll talk to Sarah today at 1 about the whole thing. Read her story here.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joining me now from the Independence Institute is Sarah Montalbano. So, Sarah,
you are with the Independence Institute and what is your
area of expertise for II.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah, I've been with them since about the beginning of
this year and I'm working on energy and environment issues
for Independence.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
So this column that you just did about Excel meeting
their green energy plans, I will tell you I have
very very healthy, low blood pressure. This one made me
kind of mad because by the time I got to
the end, I realized, to your point, we'll get into
the details here shortly, EXCEL is not even close to

(00:39):
meeting the emission standards that have been passed along by
the legislature. And yet, if I'm not mistaken, the taxpayers
have been charged for it.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
That's right, That's right. So taxpayers are going to have
to pay either way for these clean KEYT plans. That
clean hate plan was passed by the legislature and it
requires a certain amount of emissions by certain years. And
this article I think is really interesting because there was
a twenty twenty five goal and we've already badly missed this.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
So these are specifically emissions goals, and I need you
to kind of explain one thing to me, because what
we're talking about here is the Clean Energy Plan, clean
Heat Energy Plan, and from what I'm seeing, and please
correct me if I'm wrong, it appears that Excel is
trying to meet goals that will only be met if
they completely change every consumer's habits in Colorado and we

(01:33):
all give up our very efficient natural gas furnaces for
electrified systems. Am I reading that right?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
That's how we read it too, that there really isn't
a way to get to these emissions cuts from natural
gas without switching to electrification. And that's all pretty clear
through the filings. But when you actually like dig into
what their own the company's own consultants have said about this,
they said it's very unlikely last year when this was passed,

(02:03):
that they'd be able to meet the twenty twenty five goal.
They missed that, And a lot of this discussion is about, well,
how do we get consumers onto heat pumps instead of
gas furnaces, How do we subsidize and rebat those kind
of things so that we increase adoption and to meet
some of these emissions targets. There's a lot of healthy
skepticism in their reports that they would even be able

(02:27):
to do that if there was any amount of money
they could actually do to get enough consumers off of
natural gas.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
To meet this Wait a minute, so that's from the
company's own report. So that's from the horse's mouth. Why
didn't the PUC. Why does the PUC continue to approve
rate increases to allegedly accomplish these goals when it's very
clear they're not just not lowering emissions. They actually went
up year to year, so we're actually moving in the

(02:54):
exact opposite direction. At what point does the PUC say,
wait a minute, we gave you all this money for
as this result, and you failed miserably.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
I have to assume the PUC or someone in their
staff are reading all of these right like this was
submitted straight to the PUC. It's a great question where
does it actually end Because at the same time that
Excel is reporting on this clean, clean heat plan, they're
also asking the PUC for natural gas infrastructure rebates because shocker,

(03:25):
I know, they actually still have to pay for the
natural gas infrastructure for the consumers that are using that,
and if they don't actually do upgrades on that, it's
going to start falling apart and getting even more expensive
to run, So we kind of have consumers on a
catch twenty two here. Either the Clean Heat Plan is
going to move consumers onto electricity so fast that you

(03:47):
don't need to invest in your gas infrastructure, or you
still will need your gas infrastructure and you need to
be investing on that, And the PUC is on both
sides kind of starting to realize that this is going
to get expensive, especially this year when affordability is really
the word that every politician, every elected official, every appointed
official wants to claim as their own.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Well, I mean, Sarah, all we have to do is
look at Europe to see what happens when you move
away from reliable energy to renewables, and a big part
of our energy issues right now. I love the way
that everyone's trying to blame data centers for, you know,
energy emergencies that we just had over this last week
of really really hot weather, when the reality is out

(04:29):
we've we've offloaded too much of our reliable energy to
renewable sources that are not working in certain times, and
those happen to be the same times that we need
the most energy. It's fascinating to watch the discussion around
all of this happen. But my question, if you've been
studying energy policy for a long time, I have this question.
Has there ever been energy policy put forward that required

(04:51):
a concrete plan at the time of adoption with realistic
options to get you from point A to point B
when it comes to energy emissions or is it all
just this nebulous we will cut emissions by thirty percent.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
If you've seen something that like that, send it to me,
because I certainly haven't seen it. The legislature just locked
down these targets of you know, four percent cuts from
natural gas by twenty twenty five, twenty two percent by
twenty thirty, and from twenty fifteen levels by the way,
So we're actually farther away from that goal than getting

(05:29):
closer to it. So I really I feel like there's
a huge disconnect because the PUC is supposed to be
working for consumer interests. It's supposed to be kind of
mediating the legislature's intent here. But the PUC has handed
Excel Energy a really incoherent mandate here from the legislature,
and I really don't see that there's a way to

(05:50):
do it. And I'm not Excel Energy's biggest fan and
in most cases. But I really do feel a little
bit sorry for them that they have to try to
make the impossible possible.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Well, but there's a perverse incentive here in that Xcel
makes more money on infrastructure projects for green energy and
things of that nature. So it's not in their best
interest to ask how are we supposed to get there?
They're just going to keep building crap like they're trying
to do here, and they're going to keep making I mean,
it's just what we've We've created this this incentive loop

(06:21):
in our energy at the same time we have monopolized
it in such a way that no, the only person
that doesn't have a voice is the rate payer. You know,
that's what the PUC is supposed to do, and they're
just abdicating their responsibilities. So what has Xcel said since
you've read these reports and I haven't. Do they have
any kind of projections on when or how they may

(06:45):
make these because they're not going to change in US
enough consumer behavior, it's not going to happen. I'm not
giving up my gas furnace unless they're going to buy
me a new one, pay to retrofit my house, and
then you know, we can talk but even then, uh,
at our multitude sometimes you know, electric doesn't work as well.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Right, So the way that the legislation is laid out
is there's a cost cap, so Excel modeled what would
happen if they actually only spent what the you know,
the legislature actually intended them to spend, and they would
only hit three percent reductions for that twenty thirty target,
so they would be so far under it's ridiculous if

(07:25):
they stuck to that cost cap. On the other side
of that, if they actually met the twenty thirty goals
for emissions reductions, they'd be spending between one and one
point four billion dollars per year, which is well more
than half even at the low end of what they
would be spending from their natural gas system. So they

(07:46):
would be just funneling those profits, those revenues right back
into electrification. And they're really skeptical that, you know, it
would be I think what they said is that it
would be an unprecedented, nearly overnight transformation of the heating
appliance market in Colorado, and they're skeptical that that would happen.
That even high incentives, even paying you lots and lots

(08:08):
of money to retrofract your house. They're skeptical that they
would even be able to get to get adoption to
the levels where they could meet those targets at all.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
So why are we even here, Sarah?

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Why?

Speaker 1 (08:22):
I mean, don't get me wrong, these are all rhetorical,
irritating questions that I'm just going to throw into the
ether here. But at what point do our legislators go, hey,
maybe we should ask follow up questions like what is
realistic in terms of reductions? What can we control? Because
it seems to me that they've given Excel an edict
that is completely out of the control of Excel, and

(08:44):
now Excel is like, well, we can't do this.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Well, this is just all.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
I realized that much of this legislation is just so
members of the Colorado legislature can tell everybody how green
they are. I swear to God, I think that's what
it is. But at what point, when the reality is
so far away from the aspirations, at some point we
have to start making adjustments.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
I would hope that that would be soon, and my
fear is that this won't happen until the costs really
start to be felt on rate barriers. If I had
any advice for the legislature on this issue, I would
say that it's it's essentially that there are some free
market forces still. Consumers still have choices, and they still
have preferences for their home heating, and you should allow

(09:29):
them to have that happen, because if a heat don't
makes sense for my household, there's nothing stopping me from
going out and buying one and installing it. You don't
need to pump subsidies and rebates into this market, and
you certainly don't need to funnel it through Excel Energy.
And Excel is not victimless or not lameless in this either.

(09:50):
They're not a bystander to this because they've been very
much on the forefront of green energy mandates and charging
ahead with these plans. But it's simply a distortion of
what the free market is, at least in this energy space.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Agreed Sarah Montalbano with the Independence is Tooke a great job.
It's a very informative and infuriating column. But I appreciate
your work very much.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Thank you so much, Mandy.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
All Right, have a good day. That's Sarah Montalbano.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Read her work.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
I put a link on the blog Today at mandyblog
dot com.