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Will Tour and I run into each other, either you know,
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communications wise, or not that often in person, I guess,
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But for years and years and years now and Will
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is always doing something around energy issues and his current
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gig and actually he's had this gig for a while
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is he is the executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.
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And my listeners know I am fascinated by energy issues.
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I think in the.
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Big like, there's always some short term thing that comes
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up that seems very important at the moment, but in
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the big picture, other than perhaps the national debt, there's
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probably nothing more important than energy policy. And so I
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like to pay close attention to this stuff. And most
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people think about it at the federal level, but there's
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an immense amount of stuff that happens at the state level,
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and Will knows all about that. So, Hi Will, thanks
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for being here.
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Hi Rosa, happy to join.
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Before we jump into issues, tell us a little bit
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about the mandate and responsibilities of the Colorado Energy Office.
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Yeah, So, the Colorado Energy Office is a non regulatory
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agency that is actually part of the Governor's office that
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has the mission of advancing both affordable and clean energy
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for the people of Colorado and advancing energy efficiency and
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transportation electrification. So we help develop policy, we're involved in
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the various regulatory bodies like Public Utilities Commission or the
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State Air Commission, and then we run a bunch of programs,
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largely programs that are focused on helping businesses and consumers
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do things like energy improvements to their properties or installing
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electric vehicle charging, or helping low income residents and reduce
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their energy bills.
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And you said a non regulatory agency, So does that
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mean you guys are not writing and enforcing rules the
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way you know, the Department of Revenue mights or something
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like that.
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That's right.
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So we do help to administer a number of programs
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that have sort of regulatory elements, but where the actual
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regulatory body would be something like the State Air Quality
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Control Commission, we may be helping to administer programs where
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we don't have direct regulatory authority.
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Okay, So that's actually a great jumping off point for
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the question I emailed you about the other day, and
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you wrote me a very interesting and long answer, and
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I'm not going to read any of it. Well, just
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you can. You can tell my listeners about it. And
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I saw a headline over at the Colorado Sun. Its
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written by a reporter named Michael Booth, who I think
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has a particular angle on energy issues.
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It's probably.
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I think his I think his approach to energy is
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probably much like yours.
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It's probably a little different from mine.
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But the headline is Congress has likely killed Colorado's ev
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mandate and clean energy programs.
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Environmental groups say, but.
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This is actually a secondary effect if it's true, and
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we'll get to the is it true question of what
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Congress did regarding California. So first, before we get to Colorado,
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just the listeners understand the framework. What did Congress do
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regarding California.
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Yeah, so this is in the context of clean car standards.
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So under the Federal Clean Air Act, the Congress wanted
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to make sure both said cars were getting cleaner over time,
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but also that there weren't fifty different state standards that
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auto manufacturers had to build their vehicles too. So when
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the Cleaner Act was first passed, like back in the
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nineteen seventies, at that time, California was a one state
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that already had a clean air standards for vehicles, and
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so the way that the legislation was written, the federal government,
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through the EPA and the Department of Transportation sets both
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fuel economy standards and clean air requirements for cars and trucks,
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and then California was also allowed to set their own standards,
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although they had to go through a waiver process with
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the EPA to have those standards approved.
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And then states would have their choice.
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They could either go with the standards set by the
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federal government or they could go with the standard set
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by California, but they couldn't set their own standards, and so.
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Colorado a number of years ago.
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Did our own clean car standards that were based upon
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the California standards, which are somewhat stricter. They lead to
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lower pollution than the federal standards, and recently a couple
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of years ago, California updated those standards. It's what's called
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the Clean Advanced Clean Cars to standard that, among other things,
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requires the level of vehicles sold by any given manufacturer
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in a state to that are electric vehicles or other
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zeromissioned vehicles, has to gradually increase over time, and Colorado
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partially adopted that rule. We adopted it through twenty thirty two.
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Congress recently used something known as the Congressional Review Act
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to remove the waiver for the state of California, which
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means they can't enforce those clean car standards and other
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states wouldn't be able to either. It's likely to go
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to litigation. There's arguments that it was not a legal
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use of the Congressional Review Act, but it's created a
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lot of uncertainty into whether California or other states will
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can have their own clean car and clean truck standards.
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It's interesting for the state of Colorado, you know, we
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basically view those standards as a means of assuring that
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manufacturers will bring all their vehicles to Colorado, and as
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a relatively small state, in the past, we often saw
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that new electric vehicles would go to the coasts and
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the manufacturers wouldn't bring them here. We view this really
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as helping to ensure consumer choice and make sure they
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bring all those vehicles here. But in practice, to date,
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what we've seen is an actual consumer demand has been
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probably four times higher than those minimum regulatory standards. So
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there's probably not a near term impact on the Colorado market,
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but there may be over time.
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This is a thing that some people who are very
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much against this were calling effectively a internal combustion engine ban,
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not immediately, but they were sort of describing it as
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the way the rules would be implemented would force car
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makers to massively reduce or eliminate other internal combustion engine
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vehicles and just have electric Do you think that's is
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that a goal?
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Is that a goal of yours if you were in charge?
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So the way that so California's rule, Colorado did not
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adopt all of California's rule.
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California's rule does.
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Require by twenty thirty five, one hundred percent of the
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vehicles that are sold in California have to be either
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electric vehicles, plug in hybrid vehicles that have a gasoline
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engine but also are are able to take electricity or
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hydrogen vehicles for new vehicle sales. It doesn't stop, you know,
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used vehicles from being sold. Colorado didn't go that direction.
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You know, we adopted a rule that does require sales
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to grow substantially, you know, eventually up to about eighty
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percent of vehicles, but does not include any ban on
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gasoline only or diesel only vehicles, because we wanted to
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make sure that we're maintaining consumer choice here.
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So and again I realize you're you're not in the legislature,
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and you're not and you're not a regulator, but you
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are more involved in these issues than probably anybody I
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know here in the States. So again I'll ask you
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whether you think eliminating or nearly eliminating internal combustion engine
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vehicles as new car sales. Do you think it's a
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reasonable goal.
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So again, that's not the direction that we we saw
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it made sense for Colorado. We certainly, you know, I
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do believe that over time EV's will take over almost
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the entire marketplace just because they're better. They're better vehicles,
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and as the cost of batteries keeps coming down, they're
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going to have so many advantages over gasoline vehicles. But
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from a public policy perspective, you know, our goal has
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been to, you know, make sure that in these early
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days of the EV market, they're financially attractive to folks,
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make sure that we have the electric vehicle charging infrastructure
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so that people know that they can get wherever they
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need to go with one, and and make sure that
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manufacturers are bringing their vehicles here. And I don't you know,
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we you know, very consciously did not go in the
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direction of a ban on ban on gasoline vehicles. I
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think that was good public policy for the state of Colorado.
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All right, fair enough, So let's actually let's tie this
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in then to the other thing that I want to
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talk to you about. So, if evs are going to
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take over, and they will might, as you said, it's
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not only that there will need to be more infrastructure
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in terms of chargers in a lot of different places.
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And they'll have to be fast chargers because people are
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not going to want to spend twenty minutes to get
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the range that they could get in.
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Four minutes at the s leane pump.
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Right, So, but that technology is developing, so they'll need
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to be fairly fast chargers and widely dispersed, easy to access.
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The vehicles will need better range to people don't have
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the range anxiety, and I do think all that's possible.
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To me, the hardest part of this is the electricity
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generation and the infrastructure to get the power from whatever's
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generating the electricity, Insufficient quantity to all these chargers and
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everything else as we try to electrify everything, and I
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have great concern that that cannot be done in a
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way that doesn't double or triple or quadruple our electric bills.
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Yeah, So it's a great question, and.
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This is an issue where I actually think that the
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impact of EVS is the opposite of your concern. There
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are other types of electrification, and especially sort of the
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advent of large data centers, where I think there are
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a lot of questions about how to meet that load.
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But the great thing about electric vehicles is that for
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the vast majority of vehicles, people plug them in at night,
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and the vast majority of charging is happening overnight when
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there's lots of excess capacity on the grid. So you're
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essentially taking a bunch of generating capacity and transmission line
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and distribution lines that we've already had to pay for
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that right now, there's you know, ten hours a day
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where there's not much revenue coming in to pay for those,
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and you're spreading those fixed costs over more killowhite hours.
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And so all of the analysis that we've seen suggests
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that especially for light duty electric vehicles for passenger cars,
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the more of them we get on the road, they
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actually helped to put downward pressure on electric rates and
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slow down the increase in electric rates that we're seeing
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happen across the country. For a bunch of other reasons.
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So one analysis from a couple of years ago found
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that every EV we add to the road in Colorado
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will reduce electricity costs to other customers over its lifetime
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by about six hundred and fifty dollars. That said, I
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think we can create an even better benefit by having
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sort of rate structures and managed charging that really encourage
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people to do the vast majority of that charging later
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into the evening. And so there's a bunch of programs
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that are more in the pilot phase right now, but
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that are focused on trying to get folks to just
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program their vehicles so the charger comes on at nine
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o'clock instead of at five pm when they get home
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from work. Sure, and it's even bigger benefits. So I
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do think that there are some challenges around how are
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we going to manage the infrastructure we build out on
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the electricity side, especially to make sure that we can
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power data centers without driving up other people's electric rates.
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But I don't think that's a problem for these.
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All right, that's a very interesting answer, insightful answer. I
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like that when we first started talking you you mentioned
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that one of the mandates of your of your office
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and by the way, folks, if you're just joining, we're
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talking with Will Tour that's t O O. R. And
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he is the director of the Colorado Energy Office. So
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you said that part of your mandate is to make
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sure that we have electricity that's both.
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Clean and efficient.
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Now, for for a lot of people, and I'm not
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pointing a finger at you here, Will, but for a
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lot of people, clean really only means quote unquote renewable
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solar and wind and and that sort of thing. And yuh,
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it seems to me again and that that it's going
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to be somewhere between difficult and impossible to get to
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Jared Polus's goals of having all renewable energy in the
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state of Colorado and and not have our bills go up.
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To me, this is a much more obvious problem than
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than the e V one, which which you explained pretty well.
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How how could we even theoretically get to what we're
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calling all renewable energy at some point when you have
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to have base load power anyway, how do you and
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and the cost of all these projects wind and solar
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just has exploded.
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Over the past few years. How should we think about that?
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Yeah, So it's a great question and a somewhat somewhat
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nuanced answer. So the way that I would describe it is,
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if you look around the country, what we have seen
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is that in essentially every state around around the nation,
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we have been seeing electricity costing creases over the last decade.
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When you look at those costing creases and you compare
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it to how much renewable electricity there there is on
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the grid and how is it growing in those states,
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there's almost no relation. And in fact, Colorado, which has
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had one of the highest three of renewable growth, has
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had among the lowest increase in electricity costs over the
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last ten years. But when we look out into the
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and really part of that is because we've had some
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pretty expensive old coal plants that as those have been retired,
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they've been replaced by lower cost wind and solar and
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natural gas, and the effect has been to both have
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a cleaner electricity mix and have much less of an
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increase in electricity rates than we've been seeing in other areas.
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As we look out into the future. The regulatory structure
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in Colorado does have clean energy requirements for electric utilities.
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They're required to reduce their pollution eighty percent below a
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two thousand and five baseline by twenty.
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But it does not specify the technologies that they need
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to use.
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So even though that you know, the state's been very
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you know, supportive of renewable energy, our rules don't tell
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the utilities you must use wand or you must use solar.
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They say, here, here's your target for reducing pollution, and
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bring forward the mixture of resources that it's going to
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maintain reliability and that makes economic sense. And if they're
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a municipal utility or a co op, they decide on
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that mix. If they're a regulated utility, they bring that
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proposal to the state Public Utilities Commission and they make
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the ultimate decision on it.
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Let me just jump in for a second because we
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only have about ninety seconds left.
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So I saw, and I'm sure you saw.
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The head of Colorado Springs Utilities some months ago made
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some comments along the lines of they cannot abide by
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the statewide goal for eighty percent reduction in greenhouse gases
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by twenty thirty without massively increasing cost to their right payers.
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And even if they did that, it might still be impossible.
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And given also how long it takes to build a
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nuclear plant, and nuclear is the right answer, but it
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takes forever to build one. Just give me one minute
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here on what's going to happen where Governor Polus's pipe
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dream of eighty percent reduction And Jared's my friend, he
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knows I say this stuff to Governor Polus's pipe dream
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of eighty percent reduction meets the reality of physics and
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economics that that absolutely positively will not be achieved.
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Then what happens.
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Yeah, well, so that's not what's actually happening on the ground.
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When we look across the state, there are utilities all
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taken together other are on track actually to exceed that
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eighty percent goal, and we think that we'll average across
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all the utilities hit about eighty four percent. It's harder
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for utility like Colorado's Springs. It doesn't have the same
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access to transmission as some of the bigger utilities who
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are have an easier time accessing wind energy. That's a
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nuance that is quite difference between the larger utilities like
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Tri State and Excel than.
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It is or color Springs.
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So when we look at it across the entire state,
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what we see is that we're well on.
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Track to achieve.
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Okay, okay, last quick questions you need.
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I do agree with you that over the longer term,
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we are going to need, you know, zero pollution sources
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of electricity that are available twenty four to seven. And
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so you know, there was legislation this year that made
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it clear that nuclear is very much in the mix.
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You can be considered in Colorado, Advanced geosermal. We think
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there's huge opportunity in Colorado. Their tri state is already
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moving forward on plans for a gas plant with carbon
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catcher in northwest Colorado. So there's a lot of technologies
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that I think can come into play.
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There, and I sure hope nuclear is a moon. So
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I just literally have a couple seconds here. Will can
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a utility in Colorado buy energy from another state where
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the other where the producer in that other state says
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this came from wind or solar and then Colorado can
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count that toward this goal or is it all?
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Is it only based on energy produced in this state?
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So our standards are based upon the electricity serving retail sales,
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not whether it where it is produced. So it's it's
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all the electricity that they're using, including electricity imported from
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out of state.
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So they could if Texas is producing a lot of
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wind power. And I don't know if we're connected to Texas,
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but if we were connected to Texas and they produce
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a lot of wind power, then theoretically we could buy
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a bunch of electricity from them and claim we're meeting
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our goal.
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If we had the transmission to deliver that. Will Tour real.
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It can't just be a peeper transaction.
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Got it.
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But yeah, Will Tour, you really know your stuff and
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that was a great conversation.
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And I you know you have me.
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You have me believing I have some things at least
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a little bit wrong, and I appreciate that. Will Tour
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as director of the Colorado Energy Office, thanks so much
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for your time.
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We'll definitely have you back. Thank you. Will
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Will Tour and I run into each other, either you know,
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communications wise, or not that often in person, I guess,
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But for years and years and years now and Will
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is always doing something around energy issues and his current
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gig and actually he's had this gig for a while
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is he is the executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.
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And my listeners know I am fascinated by energy issues.
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I think in the.
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Big like, there's always some short term thing that comes
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up that seems very important at the moment, but in
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the big picture, other than perhaps the national debt, there's
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probably nothing more important than energy policy. And so I
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like to pay close attention to this stuff. And most
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people think about it at the federal level, but there's
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an immense amount of stuff that happens at the state level,
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and Will knows all about that. So, Hi Will, thanks
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for being here.
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Hi Rosa, happy to join.
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Before we jump into issues, tell us a little bit
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about the mandate and responsibilities of the Colorado Energy Office.
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Yeah, So, the Colorado Energy Office is a non regulatory
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agency that is actually part of the Governor's office that
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has the mission of advancing both affordable and clean energy
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for the people of Colorado and advancing energy efficiency and
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transportation electrification. So we help develop policy, we're involved in
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the various regulatory bodies like Public Utilities Commission or the
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State Air Commission, and then we run a bunch of programs,
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largely programs that are focused on helping businesses and consumers
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do things like energy improvements to their properties or installing
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electric vehicle charging, or helping low income residents and reduce
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their energy bills.
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And you said a non regulatory agency, So does that
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mean you guys are not writing and enforcing rules the
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way you know, the Department of Revenue mights or something
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like that.
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That's right.
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So we do help to administer a number of programs
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that have sort of regulatory elements, but where the actual
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regulatory body would be something like the State Air Quality
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Control Commission, we may be helping to administer programs where
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we don't have direct regulatory authority.
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Okay, So that's actually a great jumping off point for
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the question I emailed you about the other day, and
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you wrote me a very interesting and long answer, and
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I'm not going to read any of it. Well, just
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you can. You can tell my listeners about it. And
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I saw a headline over at the Colorado Sun. Its
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written by a reporter named Michael Booth, who I think
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has a particular angle on energy issues.
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It's probably.
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I think his I think his approach to energy is
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probably much like yours.
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It's probably a little different from mine.
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But the headline is Congress has likely killed Colorado's ev
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mandate and clean energy programs.
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Environmental groups say, but.
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This is actually a secondary effect if it's true, and
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we'll get to the is it true question of what
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Congress did regarding California. So first, before we get to Colorado,
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just the listeners understand the framework. What did Congress do
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regarding California.
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Yeah, so this is in the context of clean car standards.
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So under the Federal Clean Air Act, the Congress wanted
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to make sure both said cars were getting cleaner over time,
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but also that there weren't fifty different state standards that
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auto manufacturers had to build their vehicles too. So when
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the Cleaner Act was first passed, like back in the
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nineteen seventies, at that time, California was a one state
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that already had a clean air standards for vehicles, and
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so the way that the legislation was written, the federal government,
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through the EPA and the Department of Transportation sets both
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fuel economy standards and clean air requirements for cars and trucks,
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and then California was also allowed to set their own standards,
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although they had to go through a waiver process with
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the EPA to have those standards approved.
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And then states would have their choice.
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They could either go with the standards set by the
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federal government or they could go with the standard set
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by California, but they couldn't set their own standards, and so.
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Colorado a number of years ago.
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Did our own clean car standards that were based upon
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the California standards, which are somewhat stricter. They lead to
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lower pollution than the federal standards, and recently a couple
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of years ago, California updated those standards. It's what's called
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the Clean Advanced Clean Cars to standard that, among other things,
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requires the level of vehicles sold by any given manufacturer
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in a state to that are electric vehicles or other
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zeromissioned vehicles, has to gradually increase over time, and Colorado
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partially adopted that rule. We adopted it through twenty thirty two.
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Congress recently used something known as the Congressional Review Act
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to remove the waiver for the state of California, which
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means they can't enforce those clean car standards and other
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states wouldn't be able to either. It's likely to go
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to litigation. There's arguments that it was not a legal
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use of the Congressional Review Act, but it's created a
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lot of uncertainty into whether California or other states will
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can have their own clean car and clean truck standards.
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It's interesting for the state of Colorado, you know, we
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basically view those standards as a means of assuring that
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manufacturers will bring all their vehicles to Colorado, and as
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a relatively small state, in the past, we often saw
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that new electric vehicles would go to the coasts and
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the manufacturers wouldn't bring them here. We view this really
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as helping to ensure consumer choice and make sure they
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bring all those vehicles here. But in practice, to date,
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what we've seen is an actual consumer demand has been
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probably four times higher than those minimum regulatory standards. So
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there's probably not a near term impact on the Colorado market,
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but there may be over time.
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This is a thing that some people who are very
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much against this were calling effectively a internal combustion engine ban,
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not immediately, but they were sort of describing it as
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the way the rules would be implemented would force car
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makers to massively reduce or eliminate other internal combustion engine
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vehicles and just have electric Do you think that's is
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that a goal?
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Is that a goal of yours if you were in charge?
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So the way that so California's rule, Colorado did not
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adopt all of California's rule.
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California's rule does.
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Require by twenty thirty five, one hundred percent of the
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vehicles that are sold in California have to be either
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electric vehicles, plug in hybrid vehicles that have a gasoline
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engine but also are are able to take electricity or
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hydrogen vehicles for new vehicle sales. It doesn't stop, you know,
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used vehicles from being sold. Colorado didn't go that direction.
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You know, we adopted a rule that does require sales
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to grow substantially, you know, eventually up to about eighty
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percent of vehicles, but does not include any ban on
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gasoline only or diesel only vehicles, because we wanted to
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make sure that we're maintaining consumer choice here.
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So and again I realize you're you're not in the legislature,
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and you're not and you're not a regulator, but you
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are more involved in these issues than probably anybody I
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know here in the States. So again I'll ask you
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whether you think eliminating or nearly eliminating internal combustion engine
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vehicles as new car sales. Do you think it's a
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reasonable goal.
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So again, that's not the direction that we we saw
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it made sense for Colorado. We certainly, you know, I
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do believe that over time EV's will take over almost
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the entire marketplace just because they're better. They're better vehicles,
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and as the cost of batteries keeps coming down, they're
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going to have so many advantages over gasoline vehicles. But
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from a public policy perspective, you know, our goal has
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been to, you know, make sure that in these early
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days of the EV market, they're financially attractive to folks,
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make sure that we have the electric vehicle charging infrastructure
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so that people know that they can get wherever they
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need to go with one, and and make sure that
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manufacturers are bringing their vehicles here. And I don't you know,
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we you know, very consciously did not go in the
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direction of a ban on ban on gasoline vehicles. I
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think that was good public policy for the state of Colorado.
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All right, fair enough, So let's actually let's tie this
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in then to the other thing that I want to
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talk to you about. So, if evs are going to
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take over, and they will might, as you said, it's
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not only that there will need to be more infrastructure
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in terms of chargers in a lot of different places.
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And they'll have to be fast chargers because people are
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not going to want to spend twenty minutes to get
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the range that they could get in.
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Four minutes at the s leane pump.
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Right, So, but that technology is developing, so they'll need
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to be fairly fast chargers and widely dispersed, easy to access.
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The vehicles will need better range to people don't have
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the range anxiety, and I do think all that's possible.
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To me, the hardest part of this is the electricity
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generation and the infrastructure to get the power from whatever's
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generating the electricity, Insufficient quantity to all these chargers and
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everything else as we try to electrify everything, and I
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have great concern that that cannot be done in a
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way that doesn't double or triple or quadruple our electric bills.
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Yeah, So it's a great question, and.
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This is an issue where I actually think that the
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impact of EVS is the opposite of your concern. There
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are other types of electrification, and especially sort of the
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advent of large data centers, where I think there are
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a lot of questions about how to meet that load.
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But the great thing about electric vehicles is that for
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the vast majority of vehicles, people plug them in at night,
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and the vast majority of charging is happening overnight when
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there's lots of excess capacity on the grid. So you're
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essentially taking a bunch of generating capacity and transmission line
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and distribution lines that we've already had to pay for
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that right now, there's you know, ten hours a day
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where there's not much revenue coming in to pay for those,
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and you're spreading those fixed costs over more killowhite hours.
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And so all of the analysis that we've seen suggests
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that especially for light duty electric vehicles for passenger cars,
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the more of them we get on the road, they
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actually helped to put downward pressure on electric rates and
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slow down the increase in electric rates that we're seeing
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happen across the country. For a bunch of other reasons.
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So one analysis from a couple of years ago found
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that every EV we add to the road in Colorado
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will reduce electricity costs to other customers over its lifetime
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by about six hundred and fifty dollars. That said, I
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think we can create an even better benefit by having
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sort of rate structures and managed charging that really encourage
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people to do the vast majority of that charging later
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into the evening. And so there's a bunch of programs
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that are more in the pilot phase right now, but
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that are focused on trying to get folks to just
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program their vehicles so the charger comes on at nine
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o'clock instead of at five pm when they get home
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from work. Sure, and it's even bigger benefits. So I
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do think that there are some challenges around how are
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we going to manage the infrastructure we build out on
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the electricity side, especially to make sure that we can
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power data centers without driving up other people's electric rates.
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But I don't think that's a problem for these.
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All right, that's a very interesting answer, insightful answer. I
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like that when we first started talking you you mentioned
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that one of the mandates of your of your office
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and by the way, folks, if you're just joining, we're
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talking with Will Tour that's t O O. R. And
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he is the director of the Colorado Energy Office. So
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you said that part of your mandate is to make
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sure that we have electricity that's both.
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Clean and efficient.
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Now, for for a lot of people, and I'm not
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pointing a finger at you here, Will, but for a
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lot of people, clean really only means quote unquote renewable
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solar and wind and and that sort of thing. And yuh,
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it seems to me again and that that it's going
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to be somewhere between difficult and impossible to get to
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Jared Polus's goals of having all renewable energy in the
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state of Colorado and and not have our bills go up.
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To me, this is a much more obvious problem than
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than the e V one, which which you explained pretty well.
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How how could we even theoretically get to what we're
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calling all renewable energy at some point when you have
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to have base load power anyway, how do you and
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and the cost of all these projects wind and solar
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just has exploded.
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Over the past few years. How should we think about that?
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Yeah, So it's a great question and a somewhat somewhat
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nuanced answer. So the way that I would describe it is,
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if you look around the country, what we have seen
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is that in essentially every state around around the nation,
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we have been seeing electricity costing creases over the last decade.
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When you look at those costing creases and you compare
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it to how much renewable electricity there there is on
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the grid and how is it growing in those states,
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there's almost no relation. And in fact, Colorado, which has
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had one of the highest three of renewable growth, has
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had among the lowest increase in electricity costs over the
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last ten years. But when we look out into the
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and really part of that is because we've had some
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pretty expensive old coal plants that as those have been retired,
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they've been replaced by lower cost wind and solar and
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natural gas, and the effect has been to both have
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a cleaner electricity mix and have much less of an
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increase in electricity rates than we've been seeing in other areas.
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As we look out into the future. The regulatory structure
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in Colorado does have clean energy requirements for electric utilities.
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They're required to reduce their pollution eighty percent below a
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two thousand and five baseline by twenty.
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But it does not specify the technologies that they need
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to use.
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So even though that you know, the state's been very
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you know, supportive of renewable energy, our rules don't tell
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the utilities you must use wand or you must use solar.
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They say, here, here's your target for reducing pollution, and
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bring forward the mixture of resources that it's going to
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maintain reliability and that makes economic sense. And if they're
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a municipal utility or a co op, they decide on
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that mix. If they're a regulated utility, they bring that
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proposal to the state Public Utilities Commission and they make
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the ultimate decision on it.
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Let me just jump in for a second because we
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only have about ninety seconds left.
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So I saw, and I'm sure you saw.
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The head of Colorado Springs Utilities some months ago made
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some comments along the lines of they cannot abide by
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the statewide goal for eighty percent reduction in greenhouse gases
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by twenty thirty without massively increasing cost to their right payers.
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And even if they did that, it might still be impossible.
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And given also how long it takes to build a
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nuclear plant, and nuclear is the right answer, but it
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takes forever to build one. Just give me one minute
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here on what's going to happen where Governor Polus's pipe
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dream of eighty percent reduction And Jared's my friend, he
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knows I say this stuff to Governor Polus's pipe dream
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of eighty percent reduction meets the reality of physics and
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economics that that absolutely positively will not be achieved.
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Then what happens.
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Yeah, well, so that's not what's actually happening on the ground.
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When we look across the state, there are utilities all
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taken together other are on track actually to exceed that
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eighty percent goal, and we think that we'll average across
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all the utilities hit about eighty four percent. It's harder
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for utility like Colorado's Springs. It doesn't have the same
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access to transmission as some of the bigger utilities who
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are have an easier time accessing wind energy. That's a
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nuance that is quite difference between the larger utilities like
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Tri State and Excel than.
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It is or color Springs.
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So when we look at it across the entire state,
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what we see is that we're well on.
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Track to achieve.
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Okay, okay, last quick questions you need.
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I do agree with you that over the longer term,
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we are going to need, you know, zero pollution sources
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of electricity that are available twenty four to seven. And
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so you know, there was legislation this year that made
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it clear that nuclear is very much in the mix.
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You can be considered in Colorado, Advanced geosermal. We think
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there's huge opportunity in Colorado. Their tri state is already
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moving forward on plans for a gas plant with carbon
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catcher in northwest Colorado. So there's a lot of technologies
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that I think can come into play.
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There, and I sure hope nuclear is a moon. So
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I just literally have a couple seconds here. Will can
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a utility in Colorado buy energy from another state where
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the other where the producer in that other state says
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this came from wind or solar and then Colorado can
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count that toward this goal or is it all?
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Is it only based on energy produced in this state?
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So our standards are based upon the electricity serving retail sales,
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not whether it where it is produced. So it's it's
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all the electricity that they're using, including electricity imported from
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out of state.
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So they could if Texas is producing a lot of
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wind power. And I don't know if we're connected to Texas,
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but if we were connected to Texas and they produce
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a lot of wind power, then theoretically we could buy
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a bunch of electricity from them and claim we're meeting
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our goal.
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If we had the transmission to deliver that. Will Tour real.
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It can't just be a peeper transaction.
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Got it.
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But yeah, Will Tour, you really know your stuff and
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that was a great conversation.
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And I you know you have me.
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You have me believing I have some things at least
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a little bit wrong, and I appreciate that. Will Tour
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as director of the Colorado Energy Office, thanks so much
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for your time.
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We'll definitely have you back. Thank you. Will
