Energy Bill Fizzles out in Colorado Senate

Energy Bill Fizzles out in Colorado Senate

By Tom McAvoy, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo. -- Mar. 27

Sen. Ken Kester conceded Friday that his renewable energy bill is dead, although he and House Speaker Lola Spradley vowed to bring back the issue, perhaps before this legislative session ends on May 5.

"This is rural economic development. It's good for rural Colorado," Spradley, a Beulah Republican, said of the potential for landowners to make money on wind farm leases and royalties and for local property taxes to rise, accordingly.

"This is way too important to give up after the first try," she said.

Spradley won House approval for HB1273 by a comfortable 39-26 vote on Feb. 9.

Kester, R-Las Animas, took the bill into the Senate, where the president, John Andrews, and most other Republicans were opposed to mandating alternatives to fossil fuels that utilities traditionally have used in power plants.

After seven weeks of counting heads, Kester could not find the 18th and final vote needed to pass the bill in the 35-member Senate.

Kester said he came close, but in the end he couldn't hold Sen. Lewis Entz, R-Hooper, to a commitment to vote for the bill.

Entz, a San Luis Valley potato farmer, said he feared that irrigation-pump electric bills would go up if utilities were forced to pass on extra costs of wind, solar, biomass, hydroelectric and other renewable sources of energy.

He stuck to his position even after Senate Majority Leader Mark Hillman, R-Burlington, amended the bill to delay implementation if the Public Utilities Commission determined renewable energy would cost more than natural gas and coal.

The bill proposed that investor-owned utilities -- meaning Xcel Energy and Aquila Inc. -- install 500 megawatts of electricity from renewable energy by 2006, increasing to 900 megawatts by 2010 and 1,800 megawatts by 2020.

Municipal utilities and rural electric associations were exempt.

The private utilities' deadlines would have been suspended under Hillman's amendment requiring a cost-comparison analysis first.

For a while, Kester thought he might get the needed 18th vote from Sen. Bob Hagedorn, D-Aurora. Hagedorn offered to vote for the bill only if the Senate passed his amendment to prevent Xcel and Aquila from setting renewable energy rates in excess of their costs for fossil-fuel power.

Kester said that would have lost him the companies' support for the bill.

"I'd lose more with the Hagedorn amendment than without it," Kester said.

Environmental groups supporting clean-fuel alternatives to fossil fuels also may have dropped support unless Kester could remove a provision added to HB1273 by Sen. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs.

Lamborn's amendment would allow private utilities to opt for hydroelectric power as an unrestricted share of the renewable-energy megawatts mandated by the bill.

Environmentalists agreed to a modest amount of hydro power, perhaps 20 to 50 megawatts, but not an unlimited share of the total.

Kester counted 14 Democratic votes and only three Republican votes -- his, Hillman's and Centennial Sen. Jim Dyer's -- for HB1273. Three Democrats and 15 Republicans were against it.

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