Yes on 37!

Cleaner Air
Colorado's power generators are major sources of air pollution. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Colorado fossil power plants annually emit:

- 90,000 tons of sulfur dioxide or oxides (SO_x)
- 77,000 tons of nitrogen oxides (NO_x)
- 500 tons of airborne mercury
- 44 million tons carbon dioxide (CO₂)

Added to this are the environmental impacts of extracting fossil fuels from the ground. The EPA states that 48% of the 3.6 million tons of the material in its 1998 Toxic Release Inventory are from mining companies, a category that includes extraction of metals, oil, natural gas, and coal.

Fossil power plants consume 20 billion gallons of Colorado water a year, an amount equal to the consumption of a city the size of Aurora. Over 20 years Yes on 37! will reduce the state’s water consumption by 53,000 acre-feet, which is equal to the combined capacity of four reservoirs serving Denver: Gross, Marston, Ralston, and Strontia Springs.

If you ever doubted the effect of generation of electricity from fossil fuels, read one of the "original" reports from 1993 on this subject published by the Renewable Energy Policy Project and titled "The Environmental Imperative," (PDF 38 KB).
http://www.repp.org/repp_pubs/articles/issuebr1/issuebr1.pdf



Cheaper Energy

Costs for New Power Plants in 2010
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration's "Annual Energy Outlook 2004"
with projections to 2025.

With fossil fuel prices at historical highs, wind power generation is bidding lower than conventional generation in windy states throughout the Midwest. Last summer Xcel testified to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that the Lamar wind power plant will save Colorado consumers $4.6 million a year. The Rocky Mountain News reported on August 13 that Xcel Energy's data for the cost of wind energy in Colorado is one-fifth to one-half of one cent ($0.002 – $0.005) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) lower than the cost of electricity from coal-fired power plants.

Almost everyone agrees the cost of fossil fuels will rise inexorably over time, while wind energy costs are declining rapidly. See the accompanying chart for the U.S. Department of Energy's projections for the future cost of energy from wind and fossil.

More Jobs from Renewable Energy
One of the reasons that rural communities are so often in favor of renewable energy is the potential for income generation. For example, a typical payment to a landowner hosting a wind power development is $2,000 per year per turbine. In addition this brings property tax revenues to small, rural communities. When Yes on 37! adds 1,400 megawatt (MW) of installations as planned, rural communities located mostly on the eastern plains will see an increase of $14 million in annual tax revenues.

And then there are the jobs. Every 100 MW of wind development creates about 500 job-years of employment. According to the Renewable Energy Policy Project in Washington DC, the renewable energy sector generates more jobs than the fossil power sector.

For more statistics, read a report by the Energy Resources Group Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California Berkeley titled, "Putting Renewables to Work: How Many Jobs Can the Clean Energy Industry Generate?" (PDF 1.1 MB)
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~rael/renewables.jobs.pdf

State Requirements for Renewable Energy are Effective
The Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported in August that state standards for renewable energy have resulted in the most installations among all policy options currently in place in the United States. As of January 2004, more than 2,000 MW of renewable energy capacity have been installed nationwide, and more than 90% of these installations are for wind power. Read the EIA report.

So far, 17 states have enacted a minimum renewable energy requirement. Among these states, Colorado would be in the middle with a 10% commitment to renewable energy. Almost half of the electricity generated in the country is now associated with a state minimum renewable energy requirement, and no one has seen their electricity bills escalate, as the opposition claims.

Questions from the Cons

Opponents say there are “unanswered questions” about Yes on 37! Here are the answers!

1. Utilities and coal companies opposing Amendment 37 claim it will add hundreds of millions of dollars to customers’ bills. Where do they get these numbers?

Answer:
They have not released their calculations to the public despite repeated requests, so that’s a good question. Keep in mind that once installed, costs for wind and solar energy are set for the lifetime of their operation. Their costs are very predictable and tend to stabilize energy bills. On the other hand, the fuel prices swing up and down with the market. Utilities pass the costs of these swings on to consumers through riders on their bills.

Capital and maintenance costs are known for conventional generation from historical bids and other public information. For the opposition’s claims to add up, they have resurrected the 1950’s slogan for the price of fossil fuels as “too cheap to meter.”

Given that Xcel just announced a 26% rate increase for natural gas and Tri-State G&T announced a 14% increase in its wholesale electricity rates, we think that "too cheap" scenario is unlikely. We think a more likely scenario is moderately steady cost increases as projected by the U.S. Department of Energy. Based on these assumptions, Ron Binz, the former consumer advocate for the State of Colorado, has projected the most probable outcome of Yes on 37! is to decrease statewide utility costs by $14 million. Read the Binz report online along with his assumptions for the price of fossil fuels (PDF 1.3 MB).
http://www.renewableenergyyes.com/learnmore/BinzReport.pdf

If we are wrong, however, and the price of fossil fuels takes a dive, renewable energy would be comparatively more expensive at that point. The statute (Amendment 37 is not a constitutional amendment) limits the increase to residential consumers to $0.50 a month and other customers to about 1%.

2. If costs to residential customers are limited to a $0.50 a month increase on their bill, won’t business have to pick up the rest of Amendment 37’s potential cost?

Answer:
No. There are no additional costs to pay because the requirement ends for everyone as soon as the average residential bill increases by $0.50 a month. Colorado law prohibits utilities from favoring one class of customers in its charges. Utilities cannot pass additional costs on to businesses under Amendment 37.

3. Amendment 37 mandates rebates of up to $200,000 per customer for installing of solar energy. Isn’t solar energy more expensive?

Answer:
Utilities will pay customers $2,000 per kilowatt (kW) for installing of solar power (PV) on their homes. Utilities pay for adding a valuable resource to the grid, just like any source of electricity. In this case, the customers pay the balance of the installation costs.

Distributed throughout the power system in this way, solar is worth more to the utility than bulk power because it is generated close to where it is consumed and reduces loading on the distribution system. Thus solar generation improves overall system reliability. Note also that the amount of this rebate is less than the $2,300 per kW that Tri-State G&T is charging its customers to build a new coal-fired power plant. (Tri-State is the second largest power generating company in Colorado and provides electricity to rural electric cooperatives throughout the West.)

4. Colorado already ranks eighth in the country among states using renewable energy. Why is a state mandate necessary?

Answer:
While it is true that certain Colorado utilities have policies and programs that support development of renewable energy (and some of these support Amendment 37), the opposition is no friend of renewable energy. Xcel Energy currently proposes to the Public Utility Commission (PUC) to require homeowners to install redundant and expensive metering equipment to connect their PV modules to the grid. Instead Yes on 37! establishes a simple, inexpensive interconnection standard that is in place in 37 other states. In 2000, Xcel rejected the low bid from GE Wind to build the Lamar wind power plant. Only when consumer advocates, including the authors of Amendment 37, complained to the PUC did the Lamar plant proceed.

Some Colorado utilities are even more hostile to renewable energy than Xcel. For example, the head of Tri-State G&T has declared that it will “never adopt wind energy.” Tri-State owns its supplier coal company, which is nationally known for lobbying Congress for policies favoring coal-fired electricity generation. They claim increases of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are “good for the environment.”

The companies that are financing the opposition to Amendment 37 stand to gain financially from increases in coal consumption and sales. They hold monopoly positions granted to them by state authority and are not swayed by consumers' preferences for the sources of electricity in the market. Fossil ideology governs their behavior on this issue, not logic, consumer protection, or sound economics.

You can help Colorado take a modest step toward a more sustainable energy future on November 2.
Vote Yes on 37!  It just makes sense.

Find more questions and answers online from Yes on 37!

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