Two years ago, Western Colorado Alliance members worked to build bipartisan support for Colorado legislation that opened a window to cheaper, cleaner energy for our communities. This successful legislation brought major electricity supplier Tri-State under the aegis of our state’s Public Utilities Commission.

Tri-State is the supplier to most of Colorado’s rural electric cooperatives, powering communities like Meeker, Craig, Steamboat, Ouray, Ridgway, Telluride, and Gunnison. Unfortunately, Tri-State’s longtime resistance to change has yielded some of the highest electricity costs in Colorado, bleeding tens of millions annually from ratepayers’ pocketbooks to subsidize costly old coal facilities and denying co-ops the ability to build substantial local renewables.
Now, thanks to this legislation, Tri-State is completing an Electric Resource Plan with the Public Utilities Commission, spelling out major portions of its plans for the years ahead in full public view.

Western Colorado Alliance is a formal legal intervener to this Electric Resource Plan process. When Tri-State first filed lackluster modeling of its energy system, costs, and alternatives late last year, we won a requirement for Tri-State to refile and address unanswered concerns.

When Tri-State submitted torpid assessments of the social cost of carbon of its energy portfolio — the cost of its choices to human health and ecosystems — we won requirements that it re-model these costs more accurately. If Tri-State’s management has repeatedly worked to drag the organization’s heels throughout this process, our ability to demand better has helped ensure that the public gets more honest and useful answers about how we can fix Tri-State’s problems.

This process has given the public a rare chance to look under the hood at this formerly secretive energy supplier. The current filing envisions Tri-State on-boarding a massive two gigawatts of renewables in coming years.
Several key questions persist. One of Tri-State’s burning questions is when to retire its last large Colorado coal-fired asset at the Craig 3 Station.

In its filings, Tri-State plans to continue operating its Craig 3 station until 2029, despite results from its modelling indicating that 2025-2026 is a more economic retirement date.

Tri-State states its intention to replace Craig 3’s sizable generation with a combined cycle gas facility that, while cheaper than coal, would produce continued climate pollution. Tri-State signals no intention of cutting its exposure to its involvement at Arizona’s Springerville 3 coal plant, one of its last large coal engagements.

Astonishingly, the filing also deflects the question of demand side reduction entirely, dismissing energy efficiency opportunities by concluding that member co-ops lack the necessary resources to incentivize consumers to invest in efficiency.

While the filing speaks of Just Transition assistance to offset harm from coal retirements in the Craig community, there is no indication of such plans for the West End Montrose area or Escalante area after coal closures there, to our knowledge.

Because the Colorado Public Utilities Commission is a very busy organization these days, commissioners have now sent the Electric Resource Plan to an administrative judge, who will make major decisions in the coming weeks.

Now is the time for public comment from from Tri-State ratepayers. I’ve been hitting the road with a series of community meetings to discuss the Electric Resource Plan, the big things happening in the clean energy world, and what’s coming up next year. Meetings included showings of the Patagonia film, We Are the Power, and, in some locations, a guest appearance from its Telluride filmmaker, David Garrett Byars.