As Colorado suffers via a stifling scorching summer time and the related wildfires, it’s previous time that the Colorado Public Utilities Fee stopped making all of Xcel Vitality’s clients complicit in including massive quantities of carbon dioxide to the ambiance from the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant and paying for big expenditures to maintain this beleaguered coal plant working.
Whereas the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant (the one Xcel calls “Comanche 3”) is situated in Pueblo, all however a really small quantity of the electrical energy is shipped to the Denver metro space and elsewhere to serve Xcel’s clients. Pueblo residents get the air pollution, however not the electrical energy.
Underneath Colorado utilities legislation, the PUC is particularly charged with correcting abuses of utility clients and stopping extortions (C.R.S. 40-3-102). Making Xcel’s clients pay for the PU3 coal plant is an egregious abuse and a charge extortion that the PUC must right.
When working at full capability (which it usually doesn’t because of development defects and operational errors), the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant is often Colorado’s single largest supply of greenhouse gases — emitting 4 million to five million tons of carbon dioxide a 12 months — the equal emissions of over 800,000 inner combustion automobiles, in keeping with the Environmental Safety Company greenhouse gasoline calculator.
As well as, the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant (like all coal vegetation) emits many different very critical air pollution together with sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulates, acid gases and lots of heavy metals together with mercury, arsenic and lead. It additionally consumes hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day and produces massive portions of poisonous coal ash.
When proposed in 2004, a whole lot of Xcel’s clients testified that constructing a coal plant that was deliberate to function till 2070 was the unsuitable resolution for the twenty first century. Now, after years of dialogue on the PUC, the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant is lastly scheduled to be closed by Jan. 1, 2031, on the newest. Because of this, this roughly billion-dollar funding will probably be shuttered having operated lower than a 3rd of its anticipated life span because it additionally was offline for a lot of prolonged intervals because it got here on-line in 2010.
Regardless of the imprudent resolution to construct a coal plant within the twenty first century and the imprudent method that Xcel has operated the coal plant, Xcel has continued to earn income on the coal plant — totaling effectively over a half-billion {dollars} in income from burning coal within the 21st century — income which are, in fact, paid for by Xcel’s Colorado clients.
Incomes income from burning coal within the 21st century is each unconscionable and an “abuse” of Xcel’s clients that the PUC ought to have corrected way back.
Earlier than happening, let me be clear — the present Colorado PUC commissioners (Chairman Eric Clean and Commissioners Megan Gilman and Tom Plant) are all wonderful. They convey super expertise and powerful critical-thinking expertise to their jobs. Colorado could be very fortunate to have them.
The actual blame for the error generally known as the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant belongs with the PUC commissioners who served within the 2004-2010 time-frame when the coal plant was proposed and the bills added to clients’ payments.
As with many issues which are inherited, it may be understood why the present PUC commissioners have been sluggish to right the egregious abuse generally known as the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant. It was a really huge mistake, and the present commissioners aren’t accountable for the unique mistake.
Nonetheless, because the PUC continues to drive Xcel clients to pay for a big, polluting and in the end unreliable coal plant, they — and all of Xcel’s clients — change into complicit with accelerating the unfolding and intensifying local weather disaster in addition to in all of the well being issues attributable to the pollution related to coal burning.
Now, so as to add insult to “abuse,” Xcel is making massive capital expenditures associated to the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant — concrete and metal buildings that will probably be destined for the landfill in lower than a decade or which is able to stand as rusting hulks on the plains southeast of Pueblo. To date the PUC has didn’t take sturdy motion on these massive expenditures.
The PUC has began to work on what it calls Efficiency Incentive Mechanisms for the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant bills and emissions. These PIMs are prone to be difficult and never obtain a lot. It’s previous time to stroll away from this error and make investments our restricted money and time in a lot cleaner and less expensive options.
It is very important assist the coal plant employees and the Pueblo neighborhood via the transition after they’ve paid the well being value for many years from Xcel’s polluting coal vegetation, however that isn’t an excuse to maintain “abusing” Xcel’s Colorado clients.
The PUC, which is able to talk about these PIMs later this month, is undoubtedly busy, however it’s previous time to cease placing good cash after unhealthy and to right the continuing abuses of Xcel’s clients, our state and the planet from the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant.
Leslie Glustrom, who lives in Boulder, is the senior advisor to Boulder-based Clear Vitality Motion and is skilled as a biochemist. She has spent the previous 20 years engaged on local weather points and has adopted each PUC continuing involving the Pueblo Unit 3 coal plant.
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