This article series by reporter Chase Woodruff first appeared on Colorado Newsline, beginning on October 5, 2020.
In Colorado, hopes were high for the kind of “bold, progressive” change that Polis had promised during his bid for governor. Democrats had captured the state Senate for the first time in four years and expanded their majority in the House, led by a new generation of lawmakers who had campaigned on climate action. House Speaker KC Becker, a Democrat from Boulder, called it her top priority.
“I cannot think of a more important challenge for us to take on than climate change,” Becker said in a speech opening the 2019 legislative session. “We will build a better future by expanding our commitment to renewable energy, giving local communities the tools they need to prepare for the impacts of climate change and creating strong goals to limit carbon pollution.”
House Bill 19-1261, the climate legislation that Becker and other lawmakers began crafting in consultation with environmental groups, aimed to set nation-leading, economy-wide emissions targets that were largely consistent with the science contained in the 2018 IPCC report. Its goals included a 26% cut in emissions by 2025, a 50% cut by 2030 and a 90% cut by 2050.
“The people of Colorado, and the legislators engaging on these issues in 2019, really understood that we have turned a corner with respect to the climate crisis,” said Kiely, of the Environmental Defense Fund. “We’ve got a really short amount of time to make really significant reductions that are in line with what scientists are telling us are needed to avoid the worst impacts.”
But the rollout of HB-1261 hit a snag that caught lawmakers and environmentalists off-guard: Polis didn’t support the concept of the legislation.
“The governor’s office, he’s generally saying, ‘Oh, let’s just see if this happens on its own,’” Becker told the Colorado Independent ahead of the bill’s introduction.
Multiple sources with knowledge of the negotiations over HB-1261 confirmed to Newsline that Polis opposed the bill’s economy-wide emissions targets, even threatening to veto it.
The dispute between two of the state’s top Democrats passed largely unnoticed amid a whirlwind legislative session dominated by other hot-button issues, including a high-stakes battle over Senate Bill 19-181, a package of oil and gas reforms. Multiple sources with knowledge of the negotiations over HB-1261 confirmed to Newsline that Polis opposed the bill’s economy-wide emissions targets.
Both Becker and the governor’s office declined to comment on their disagreement over the bill. In a statement, Cahill said that Polis “was proud to sign HB 19-1261, which was one of a package of 14 of the most ambitious climate and clean energy bills that this state has ever seen.”
In the end, HB-1261 sought a middle ground between strict mandates and voluntary action, setting emissions “goals” and directing the AQCC to implement rules aimed at achieving them. Even by the standards of statutory legalese, the bill’s language is dense and full of qualifiers: “The implementing rules may take into account other relevant laws and rules,” it states, “as well as voluntary actions taken by local communities and the private sector, to enhance efficiency and cost-effectiveness and shall be revised as necessary over time to ensure timely progress toward the 2025, 2030 and 2050 goals.”
Still, climate-action advocates emerged from the legislative session relatively happy with the final version of HB-1261, which passed on party-line votes in both chambers of the legislature. The bill included a strong equity component, directing regulators to identify and protect “disproportionately impacted communities,” and its emissions goals were some of the most ambitious of any state in the country.
Unlike similar bills in some other states, HB-1261 didn’t impose a hard deadline on the AQCC to finalize its regulations. But crucially, a companion bill, Senate Bill 19-096, contained a provision requiring the commission to formally begin a rulemaking process by July 1, 2020, aimed at meeting the state’s new emissions goals.
“We ended up with legislative language that created a clear directive to start the process,” Kiely said. “I think the idea was that if you actually just began, and got something concrete on the table, that is ideally going to lead to a timely resolution.”
In effect, HB-1261 punted on some of the most important questions about emissions mandates and enforcement mechanisms, leaving the AQCC to come up with answers. It was an approach that some advocates thought had merit, allowing the panel’s volunteer commissioners to carefully develop rules away from the spotlight — and the swarms of lobbyists — at the Capitol.
“What I wanted to see in Colorado is a comprehensive, specific and enforceable strategy that makes sure that Colorado is doing its part,” Becker told Newsline in an interview. “And 1261 created the authority for the executive branch to take action.”
Polis signed HB-1261 and SB-96 into law on May 30, 2019, flanked by lawmakers and clean-energy advocates at an event staged in front of an Arvada solar farm.
But even as he promised to the assembled crowd to “make sure Colorado is on the cutting edge of the future of clean tech, in all areas,” he quietly issued a signing statement that quickly dashed some advocates’ hopes for swift regulatory action by the AQCC.
“I want to make clear that I expect implementation of cost effective greenhouse gas emission reduction efforts to be an iterative and multi-faceted process including recommended legislative actions over the upcoming years that will span across numerous State agencies,” the governor wrote.
It was a seemingly innocuous statement, but behind the scenes, many of HB-1261’s core supporters interpreted it as an ominous sign of what was to come. The bill had taken Colorado climate policy out of the legislature’s hands, and given the Polis administration broad authority to implement its requirements as it saw fit.
Now they feared that the governor would choose to implement the new law slowly, in small pieces or not at all. And over the next year and a half, they would largely be proven right.
“There was a feeling that there was a sense of alignment between the legislative branch and the executive branch, around the understanding of urgency and boldness that needed to follow the passage of HB-1261,” Nichols said. “But it seems very clear that that alignment doesn’t exist, at least to the extent many legislators thought.”