Colorado Emissions Fees Hit Business With Bigger Bill

Ed Sealover at The Sum and Substance reports that the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission unanimously approved more than $13.5 million in fee increases for emissions-producing companies, including oil-and-gas operators, utilities, landfills, refineries, manufacturers, and even beer and cement producers. The money is meant to cover the growing cost of state air-pollution programs run through the Air Pollution Control Division.

The fee hikes are not small. Some permit-processing fees will rise 127%, annual per-ton fees on criteria pollutants and hazardous air pollutants will jump 95%, Air Pollution Emission Notice filing fees will climb 86%, and greenhouse-gas emissions fees will go up 11% per ton. This comes on top of major increases approved just last year. Government built the machine, overfed it, watched it slow down, and now says the private sector needs to buy it a bigger lunch.

The Bullet Point Brief

• The AQCC approved more than $13.5 million in new fees to fund the Stationary Source Control Fund, which pays for air-pollution regulation and enforcement. Translation: the state created more regulatory work, then handed the bill to the people trying to keep the lights on.
• The Air Pollution Control Division says costs have exploded because the Legislature has piled on mandates. Two 2019 laws helped trigger 50 rulemakings since 2021, covering oil and gas, manufacturing, commercial buildings, landfills, and even commercial lawn and garden equipment. Nothing says “economic vitality” like regulating leaf blowers with missionary zeal.
• APCD staffing has more than doubled since 2020 to more than 400 workers, yet permit processing got dramatically worse. Median permit processing times went from 314 days in fiscal year 2021 to 1,036 days in fiscal year 2025, before improving to a still-absurd 837 days this fiscal year. The statutory timeline is supposed to be no more than 135 days. That is not a backlog. That is a hostage situation with letterhead.
• Business groups largely did not oppose the fee increases, but they asked for accountability and faster permitting. The Colorado Chamber tried to trim the increase by $2 million, which still would have left the largest single-year fee increase in the program’s history. The commission declined, because apparently restraint is what happens after the next invoice.
• Some commissioners admitted discomfort with the size of the hikes, but ultimately said they were boxed in by legislative mandates. Boulder County’s Cindy Copeland called 95% increases “modest” because the division still wants more money. Only in government can nearly doubling a fee be described as modest without everyone in the room laughing into their recycled paper cups.

My Bottom Line

And this is how you drive business out of Colorado. This is how you drive jobs out of Colorado. This is how you drive up costs for everybody who buys electricity, fuel, materials, food, housing, or anything else touched by an industrial supply chain, which is to say everyone not living in a Boulder County policy memo.

The state keeps layering on mandates, expanding the bureaucracy, doubling staff, slowing permits, and then acting stunned when the math gets ugly. Businesses are told to pay more for the privilege of waiting longer. A 135-day statutory timeline has become 837 days, and we are supposed to clap because someone hired a consultant and a chief operational improvements officer. That is not reform. That is putting chrome rims on a landfill fire.

This is the problem with Colorado’s ruling political class. There is always another virtue signal to send to the environmental left, always another acronym to regulate, always another fee to hike, and always another business to blame when the government’s own machine seizes up. They call it environmental justice. Fine. Where is the justice for workers whose jobs get priced out? Where is the justice for families paying more because regulators turned permitting into a three-year obstacle course?

Clean air matters. So does competence. So does economic reality. If the state wants to enforce regulations, it should do so efficiently, transparently, and within the timelines the law already requires. Instead, Colorado is building a system where the punishment for doing business here is higher fees, slower approvals, and lectures from people who have never had to make payroll. That is not stewardship. That is government bloat wearing a green cape.

Source: The Sum and Substance