On Thursday, February 19, 2026, Independence Institute Energy Policy Analyst Sarah Montalbano testified on in the Colorado House Energy & Environment Committee.
The bill would have exempted residential natural gas customers from the emissions calculations in gas utility Clean Heat Plans filed with the Public Utilities Commission. It would have been welcome relief for natural gas customers. The committee voted, in essence, to kill the bill for this session, with Representatives Jamie Jackson (D.), Junie Joseph (D.), Lesley Smith (D.), Jenny Willford (D.), Elizabeth Velasco (D.), Alex Valdez (D.), Lori Goldstein (D.), Amy Paschal (D.), and Manny Rutinel (D.) voting to postpone “indefinitely.” Representatives Carlos Barron (R.), Scott Slaugh (R.), Ty Winter (R.), and Dan Woog (R.) wanted to keep the bill moving through consideration.
You can listen to the audio of the committee hearing here (Sarah’s testimony starts at 4:15:48) or read the transcript below:
Chair Valdez and members of the House Energy and Environment committee,
My name is Sarah Montalbano, and I’m an energy policy analyst with the Independence Institute’s Energy and Environmental Policy Center, a 501(c)(3) free market think tank based in Denver, Colorado.
I’m testifying to praise HB26-1129, which would exempt Colorado’s residential natural gas customers from the emissions calculations in gas utility Clean Heat Plans filed with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). This is a necessary correction to the Clean Heat Plan, which would otherwise force Colorado households off natural gas and impose enormous costs on those who remain.
By law, gas distribution utilities are required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 22 percent below 2015 levels by 2030. Late last year, the PUC decided to raise the target to 41 percent by 2035 and establish a de facto 100 percent reduction mandate by 2050.[i]
The Clean Heat Plan’s targets simply cannot be met without removing residential customers from the gas system and at significant cost. The first round of Clean Heat Plan proceedings proved as much: even just to meet the original 22 percent reduction mandate, Black Hills Colorado Gas’ full compliance portfolio would exceed the statutory retail rate impact cap by 67 times.[ii] Xcel Energy’s projected compliance would cost over $1 billion over five years, exceeding its cost caps.[iii] Xcel estimated that its electrification-heavy approach would impose over $20,000 in personal conversion costs per home, totaling billions statewide even after rebates. The PUC approved plans that broke the statutory cost cap and declared that doing so was “in the public interest.”
If utilities cannot meet even the initial target without blowing past the legislature’s own cost limits, they certainly cannot meet a target nearly double that size without getting residential customers off the gas system. The Clean Heat Plan creates a mandate for forced residential electrification, and HB 1129 remedies this by exempting residential customers.
Switching to electricity would not save Colorado families money. Seven out of 10 households in Colorado use natural gas for home heating.[iv] In November 2025, the average residential electric rate in Colorado was 16.35 cents per kilowatt hour,[v] or about four times the cost of natural gas for the same amount of heating.[vi] A 2024 study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that for Colorado households currently heated by natural gas, switching to a high-efficiency cold-climate heat pump would pencil out for approximately zero percent of state households.[vii] The cost difference exists because natural gas remains significantly less expensive than electricity per unit of energy delivered to Colorado homes.
Colorado families deserve the freedom to choose how they heat their homes based on what makes economic sense for their households. HB 1129 is a commonsense correction that stops the Clean Heat Plan from becoming a de-facto mandate to force residential customers off of a reliable and affordable fuel source. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Sarah Montalbano
Energy Policy Analyst
Independence Institute
[i] Fogleman, Jake. “PUC Establishes New ‘clean Heat’ Targets Designed to Crack down on Natural Gas – Independence Institute.” Independence Institute, December 3, 2025. https://i2i.org/puc-establishes-new-clean-heat-targets-designed-to-crack-down-on-natural-gas/.
[ii] Cooke, Amy Oliver. 2025. “Independence Institute Tells the Public Utilities Commission to Reconsider Forced Electrification Rulemaking.” Independence Institute. August 18, 2025. https://i2i.org/independence-institute-tells-the-public-utilities-commission-to-reconsider-forced-electrification-rulemaking/.
[iii] “2024-2028 Clean Heat Plan.” Xcel Energy. Accessed February 17, 2026. https://www.xcelenergy.com/staticfiles/xe-responsive/Company/Rates%20&%20Regulations/23A-0392EG_Hearing%20Exhibit%20101_Attachment%20JWI-2.pdf.
[iv] “Colorado State Profile.” U.S. Energy Information Administration. Accessed February 17, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/states/CO/analysis.
[v] Electric Power Monthly – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Accessed February 17, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a.
[vi] “Colorado Price of Natural Gas Delivered to Residential Customers.” U.S. Energy Information Administration. Accessed February 17, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3010co3m.htm.
[vii] Wilson, Eric J.H., Prateek Munankarmi, Brennan D. Less, Janet L. Reyna, and Stacey Rothgeb. “Heat Pumps for All? Distributions of the Costs and Benefits of Residential Air-Source Heat Pumps in the United States.” Joule 8, no. 4 (April 2024): 1000–1035. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2024.01.022.
