"Ahead of the EPA"

Colorado's experience may prove that EPA's new carbon rule is survivable.

"The Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement that power plants are going to have to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 has sparked cries that it’s a recipe for economic woe. Small government advocacy group Americans for Prosperity says the proposed standards hit Americans in the pocketbook through their electric bill and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity called them “misguided.” But Colorado is being held up as evidence that the path to reduced carbon dioxide emissions is survivable. The EPA even turned to Colorado to inform the carbon dioxide mitigation measures outlined in these proposed guidelines.

Colorado’s Clean Air, Clean Jobs Act, passed in 2010, called for investor-owned utilities — Xcel Energy and Black Hills Energy — to reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2020. Xcel Energy, the state’s leading electricity provider and the 15th largest electricity producer in the nation in 2012, is already on track to reduce total emissions of carbon dioxide in Colorado by 35 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, a full decade before the EPA’s deadline. Nationally, the company is set to reduce emissions by 31 percent in that same time frame."

Elizabeth Miller reports for the Boulder Weekly June 5, 2014.