Pueblo, Colorado, earlier this year became the first city to
commit to an all-renewables future since President Donald Trump took office.
The new administration continues to cast significant doubt over the
future of federal policies designed to promote clean energy and distributed
generation, virtually ensuring the best energy policy will sprout from state
and local leadership.
Under the
plan approved by the Pueblo City Council, the city of roughly 110,000
residents will transform its energy economy between now and 2035. The community
has begun to integrate renewables, including through community solar gardens.
In addition, Pueblo will host a new $12 million, 7.5-MW hydroelectric
generation facility spearheaded by the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy
District.
Pueblo has a sizable low-income population and an economy
historically reliant aging industries like mining and steel. The all-renewable
pact affirms a substantial shift in its development and growth strategy, even
though the resolution does not carry consequences if the city falls short.
Counting Pueblo, nearly two dozen U.S. cities — including
Boulder and Aspen in Colorado — have firmed up plans to transition to 100
percent clean, renewable energy.
Avoiding Uncertainty
The plan greenlighted by the City Council, while not
prescriptive per se, outlines specific goals including more efficient public
infrastructure, businesses, homes, and appliances. City officials have also
pointed to plans to involve residents in renewable energy planning, and to
deliver benefits to low-income households.
Indeed, part of the city’s rationale for pursuing the switch
to renewables is to insulate residents from volatile energy prices. Pueblo’s
resolution positions rising electricity rates as “an important challenge to the
city’s economic and social well-being.”
The City Council singled out natural
gas, misleadingly trumpeted by utilities nationwide as a cleaner
replacement for coal. Even setting regulatory and environmental concerns aside,
natural gas presents one of the riskiest options for customers, who end up on
the hook for expensive infrastructure and unpredictable fuel costs.
Weather changes, production and import conditions, storage
availability, and delivery constraints can all influence gas prices. Typically,
utility customers shoulder any variability while utility shareholders remain
insulated from fluctuations.
Clean energy advocates have publicly tussled with the local
utility, investor-owned Black Hills Energy, over skyrocketing rates driven up
in part by bringing new natural gas generation online. The rate base for Black
Hills customers — the benchmark that determines the utility’s returns — swelled
from $136 million in 2008 to $511 million in 2016. The increase pumped up
residential customers’ monthly bills by an average of 58 percent, according
to Denver Post calculations.
More than 7,000 Pueblo residents have had their electricity
shut off because they can’t keep up with rising costs, according
the Sierra Club. Hundreds of Black Hills customers protested another rate
hike before state regulators last year, an increase blasted
in the local media as “a publicly traded utility financially pillaging
a town.”
How Much Can a City Do?
While Pueblo’s vision for renewables bolsters Black Hills
critics, the city faces some barriers in implementation. Most notably, Pueblo
itself does not have the leeway to decide how Black Hills sources power.
Prodded by a state-level standard that requires Colorado utilities to
generate at least 30 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2020,
Black Hills has solar and wind in
its portfolio.
City documents show Black Hills plans to meet a 65
percent renewables threshold by 2035. If it hits that benchmark, the utility in
its 2016 resource plan predicted it would save $47 million by 2040. The
utility’s commitment, coupled with the hydroelectric plant, will provide a
meaningful boost toward the city’s mandate. But the city’s adopted goal demands
more.
Pueblo officials say they have some room to jostle for more
renewables, with or without Black Hills’ blessing. The city could generate its
own power, for example, or purchase wholesale power and “aggregate utility
service.” City staff, under direction from the City Council, are exploring
options for forming a municipal utility, a process that is typically time-intensive,
costly, and messy.
City Council President Steve Nawrocki, a proponent of the
all-renewables plan, said it only goes so far to promote a more sustainable
energy future for Pueblo. He has argued municipalization would provide a
smoother pathway to better results.
“The fact is, the city won’t have any authority over its
sources of power unless it creates its own utility,” he
told the Pueblo Chieftain.
A Call to Action
For now, the all-renewables plan approved by the City
Council tethers Pueblo to planning strategies that promote a more equitable,
democratic energy marketplace.
“Rooftop solar, low-income community solar, and demand
control technologies offer the opportunity to redistribute resources, address
poverty, stimulate new economic activity in the city, and lift up those most
impacted by high energy costs,” its resolution states.
In becoming the third Colorado city to cement its
all-renewable vision, there’s a higher-level strategy at play.
“The resolution itself really doesn’t mandate anything,”
Pueblo City Council Member Larry Atencio told
the Denver Post. “What it does more than anything is say the city of Pueblo
is considering and promoting renewable energy and we ask that the rest of the
state follows.”
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