This article series by reporter Chase Woodruff first appeared on Colorado Newsline. The current installment is from his article, “Climate Inaction: Lawsuits, roadmaps and Colorado’s uncertain clean-energy future”, posted on October 7, 2020.
In August, state officials presented Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission with a spreadsheet that, for the first time, outlined detailed estimates for how the administration believes it can meet the goals set by HB-1261, which include a 26% cut by 2025 and a 50% cut by 2030. Under its projections, roughly half of the required cuts will come from continued progress in the electricity sector, while the rest will come from a variety of other sectors through a combination of collaborative efforts with the private sector and additional rulemakings by the AQCC in 2021 and beyond.
The spreadsheet represents the most specific and transparent information state officials have provided to date about their plans to meet HB-1261’s targets, but many of its estimates and assumptions haven’t satisfied the administration’s critics.
“There’s just not much detail there,” said Stacy Tellinghuisen, senior climate policy analyst with Western Resource Advocates. “I think it’s really hard to evaluate whether those policies really add up to achieving the goals. … You can count these emissions reductions, but we have no certainty that they are actually going to occur at this point. And (putting) some rules or statutes in place that require those reductions would make them real.”
As one of the AQCC’s most vocal proponents of aggressive climate action, Jones said she will continue to push the state toward its goals — and as an “eternal optimist,” she’s encouraged that everyone involved agrees that the targets must be met.
“We are making progress — the question is are we making enough,” said AQCC commissioner Elise Jones. “As somebody who’s in the middle of it, I’m heartened by the fact that I don’t see anybody pulling back from the climate targets. There’s the perception that there’s a lot of ways to get there, and everybody has their favorite pathway, and it’s not necessarily the same pathway.”
With strong, proactive regulations appearing increasingly unlikely, some lawmakers and advocacy groups have begun to press the AQCC and administration officials to establish regulatory “backstops” that would kick in in the coming years if the state isn’t on track to meet its goals.
In a sense, such measures would be mandates by another name. But advocates continue to insist that the administration’s faith in market forces and technological innovation to drive emissions cuts is misplaced — especially in sectors where the market for cleaner technologies isn’t yet developed.
“We often look at the electricity sector as the shining star right now, where they’re on the right path,” Tellinghuisen said. “That’s because 15 years ago we passed a renewable energy standard in this state, and we’ve expanded it since then. And those regulations have driven the industry, and driven down prices, so that solar, wind and increasingly battery storage are cheaper than fossil fuels.”
“We haven’t seen that kind of technological revolution yet in many of these other sectors, and that revolution was driven in large part by regulation,” she added. “That’s what regulation can do in these other sectors as well.”
For the north Denver residents living on the fencelines of much of Colorado’s energy and transportation infrastructure, the true costs of more than a century of dependence on fossil fuels may never be fully added up. The area’s legacy of racial inequity and industrial pollution — not only from relatively well-known sources like the Suncor oil refinery but also the highways, truck depots, fuel terminals, asphalt and cement plants and other facilities on which the world’s energy system relies — casts a long shadow.
Earlier this year, tests revealed the presence of toxic substances known as “forever chemicals” — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — in Sand Creek near the Suncor refinery. A company spokesperson confirmed to CPR News that the source was likely a type of firefighting foam that had been previously used by the company. Few were surprised by the news — it was yet another in a long line of potential health and safety concerns for the surrounding community to worry about. Activists have sparred with area water utilities over what to do about it.
“The utilities were trying to fight us, saying that we should be going after the polluters,” said Ean Thomas Tafoya, an organizer with environmental advocacy group GreenLatinos. “And our whole argument is, ‘You should be joining us in going after the polluters, not (threatening) our health and safety because you don’t want to pay for it.’”
One of Tafoya’s early forays into environmental activism was an effort to get the city of Denver to install recycling bins in its parks — an initiative that, in retrospect, he said was more focused on personal behavioral changes than holding powerful polluters accountable. As time went on, he found himself fighting bigger battles against foes like Suncor and the Colorado Department of Transportation’s billion-dollar expansion of Interstate 70 through vulnerable neighborhoods on the city’s north side.
“I was really focused on personal choice — we’ve got to recycle more, we’ve got to compost more, we’ve got to ride our bikes more,” Tafoya said. “Then I started to recognize how much more of this has to do with government regulation and corporations, and allowing them to regulate themselves, and the massive amounts of pollution that are being put out on everybody.”
Following continued pressure from advocates and Democratic lawmakers — who in August sent a letter to Polis and the AQCC demanding a “robust engagement plan” to fulfill HB-1261’s mandate to protect disproportionately impacted communities — CDPHE officials have stepped up their efforts to center issues of racial equity in the implementation process. Among the administration’s top priorities, it says, is the development of a “clean trucking strategy” that will deliver substantial benefits to people in heavily industrial areas like north Denver.
As with many other areas of state climate policy, however, it remains unclear just how much this strategy will rely on enforceable regulation, rather than collaboration and voluntary commitments from the private sector. And distrust in many disproportionately impacted communities runs deep. John Putnam, the CDPHE’s director of environmental programs and one of the Polis administration’s top climate officials, was previously a managing partner at Kaplan Kirsch & Rockwell, where he helped represent CDOT in a lawsuit against I-70 expansion brought by Tafoya and other community activists. Tafoya said he has asked to be involved in the administration’s “equitable climate action” process, but hasn’t heard back.
“I expected more from Polis,” Tafoya said. “I don’t think he’s been a progressive champion in any sort of way.”
Polis closed his 2020 State of the State address with a hopeful vision of Colorado’s “renewable energy future,” urging state legislators to use their limited time in office to confront daunting challenges like climate change.
“What do we want our legacy to be?” Polis asked lawmakers. “When our great-grandchildren open their history books, what do we want them to read about us? Will it say that we were too scared to tackle the big issues? That we were too timid to act on evidence right under our noses?”
“We have the power to do the right thing,” he added. “All we need is the courage to use it.”
As Polis nears the halfway point of his term as governor, that’s exactly what advocates for climate action and environmental justice are waiting to see.
“He needs to have the courage to help the people who need it the most,” Tafoya said. “What I want for him to do is to lean in and bring us to the table. He can still get it right. But time is growing shorter and shorter and shorter.”