New Poll Shows Coloradans Support Net Metering and Reject Xcel's Proposal to Roll Back Colorado's Successful Rooftop Solar Policies

A new poll finds that nearly four in five Colorado voters (78%) support solar net metering, a successful renewable energy policy that monopoly utility Xcel is attacking.  Net metering gives rooftop solar customers full retail credit for the excess energy they put back on the grid for the utility to sell to their neighbors. The poll's respondents adamantly reject Xcel's proposal to change this policy. 

The bipartisan research team of Public Opinion Strategies and Keating Research surveyed 400 voters throughout Colorado from November 17-19, 2013.  Poll results show that statewide support for net metering exceeds 70 percent in every region around the state and is greater than 60 percent across all of the key voter groups in Colorado.

The Renewable Energy Rollback That Wasn't

For renewable energy supporters, this was supposed to be a year of statehouse setbacks.

"States Cooling to Renewable Energy" read the headline of a March Wall Street Journal story reporting that more than a dozen legislatures were weighing proposals to roll back or abolish mandates that utilities purchase a certain amount of renewable energy. Mandates are in place in 29 states and Washington, D.C.