In early February, Independence Institute’s Energy & Environmental Policy Center flagged the early energy bills introduced in the Colorado legislature. As we enter March, some bills have had hearings and their fates decided. Here’s where things stand.
Early casualties in committee hearings include SB26-033, which would have added some pre-permitting requirements and grid reliability statements for wind and solar projects. The next day, SB26-028, which would have removed wind from the state’s list of clean energy resources to meet the state’s Renewable Energy Standard (RES), was killed. Both bills stood no chance of becoming law but broadcast the growing discontent in rural Colorado over land use, viewshed destruction, and the environmental impacts of utility-scale facilities.
HB26-1129, which would have exempted residential customers from the Clean Heat Plan’s emissions mandates, has also been postponed indefinitely. We testified in support of the bill, showing that the Clean Heat Plan cannot be achieved without blowing past statutory cost caps by 67 times and imposing over $20,000 per household in conversion costs.
It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that the committee sounded out of touch with the affordability crisis that everyday Coloradans are facing. Ahead of her “No,” vote, Representative Goldstein (D., Westminster) bragged that she has solar panels and hasn’t had a positive electric bill in a decade. National data show the median income of rooftop solar adopters is more than 50 percent higher than that of the typical U.S. household.
Other bills have not been yet scheduled for a hearing. One to watch is SB26-022, which would let co-ops and municipal utilities extend their 80% emissions reduction deadline from 2030 to no later than 2040. They must demonstrate the 2030 target would affect grid reliability or raise rates by more than 1.5% annually. Colorado Springs Utilities has publicly stated it cannot meet the 2030 mandates affordably or reliably, and it won’t be the last to sound the alarm.
Among other bills without hearings yet: SB26-002 would require investor-owned utilities to offer a “First Allotment of Residential Electricity” (FARE) program, providing a minimum electricity allotment to low-income customers at marginal cost. These programs always have to be paid for by someone, and that someone is usually every other customer on the system, no matter how the legislature attempts to prohibit cost-shifting to other ratepayers.
On the data center bills: HB26-1030 and SB26-102 offer two disappointing approaches to regulating Colorado’s data center industry. Neither has been scheduled for a committee hearing yet, which suggests a behind-the-scenes compromise is underway between bad and worse.
Also worth watching is HB26-1246, scheduled for a March 12 hearing. The bill would allow consumer-regulated electricity: companies can build and operate their own generation systems to serve new industrial, commercial, or data center loads completely outside of PUC regulation, as long as they don’t tap the existing grid. That’s a direct market alternative to the regulatory tangle of HB26-1030 and SB26-102. Rather than negotiating with the state over how much renewable energy a data center must buy, a company could simply build its own power supply and sidestep the debate entirely.
The only bill that has passed so far is SB26-052, the Coal Transition Community Investment Act, which is now awaiting the governor’s signature. It creates a mandatory hiring preference for displaced coal workers and expands how public entities can invest “just transition” funds, essentially creating private sector mandates to address public sector error. As Rep. Stephanie Luck (R., Cañon City) put it during floor debate, “you can’t kill an entire industry and it not have long-standing repercussions… It should not be made right by making a new wrong.” The bill passed with bipartisan support, but it’s only needed because policymakers chased the coal industry out of Colorado.
The House Energy and Environment Committee met last week to debate several bills. HB26-1226, sent to Appropriations on a 9-3 party-line vote, would require the Air Quality Control Commission to adopt new limits on nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions from major generating units by December 2029, with compliance required soon after 2030. Utilities operating units under federal orders must file quarterly cost and generation reports with the PUC and may apply for financing orders to recover compliance costs — with those costs listed separately on customer bills as “Costs to comply with an order of the federal government.”
HB26-1226 is clearly a state-level attempt to impose emissions rules that coal plants operating under federal 202(c) emergency orders — like Craig Unit 1, which the Department of Energy ordered to keep running on December 30 — cannot comply with. That creates a deliberate legal conflict between state environmental law and federal grid reliability authority. The utilities caught in the middle will have to choose which sovereign to defy, and ratepayers will pay for the litigation either way.
Good news came last week regarding HB26-1121, at least, which would have required any facility that emits or may emit an air pollutant to post all emissions records publicly, with fines up to $47,357 per day for noncompliance. Publicly posting emissions records would have created a new compliance burden on facilities, the cost of which would ultimately fall to customers, while inviting organized pressure campaigns and private litigation.
The biggest story from February was the kickoff of reauthorizing the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Under Colorado’s sunset review process, regulatory agencies must be periodically reauthorized or they expire. When that reauthorization bill is on the table, anything in the PUC’s enabling statutes can be changed, expanded, or constrained.
A few things stand out from Department of Regulatory Agencies’ (DORA) sunset review report, which issues recommendations for the reauthorizing legislation. The report recommends extending the energy reauthorization to 11 years from now — or 2037, which is far too long for a body with such sweeping jurisdiction. It also proposes a carve-out from Colorado’s Open Meetings Law that would allow private commissioner deliberations on rate cases and pipeline approvals, with limited transparency safeguards. The report wants to subordinate RES compliance calculations to utility-filed Clean Energy Plans, which are on more aggressive mandates and timelines. Stay tuned for Independence Institute testimony when the reauthorization bill is introduced.
The session runs through May 13. Whether SB26-022 can get a hearing before co-ops and municipal utilities lose the ability to plan for longer-term options past 2030 is one of the most important remaining questions. The 2040 clean energy acceleration bill that Gov. Polis floated in 2025 and pulled back has not yet reappeared in this session. If and when it does, it will suck the oxygen out of the rest of what is happening. And the PUC reauthorization bill will shape how every mandate passed through 2037 will actually be implemented.
With a third or more bills introduced likely to relate to energy this year, the legislature will write more checks than the grid can cash.
