Governor Jared Polis and the Colorado Chamber announced a new working group to “cut red tape” and speed up permitting for green economy investments, including low-emission manufacturing, transmission, electrification, and emissions-reduction projects. The group will bring together state agencies, businesses, and NGOs to streamline permitting for projects that fit the state’s clean-energy and emissions agenda.
That is peak Colorado ruling-class comedy. The same political ecosystem that helped build the maze of mandates, permits, agency reviews, climate rules, stakeholder veto points, and nonprofit priesthood approvals is now proudly announcing a special working group to help approved projects escape the swamp. Not all projects, mind you. Just the ones wearing enough ESG glitter to get past the velvet rope.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Polis says the working group will cut red tape and speed permitting for projects that reduce emissions in manufacturing, energy production, transmission, and other industrial sectors. Translation: bureaucracy is bad when it slows down things the governor likes.
- The working group includes state agencies, business leaders, and NGOs, including the Clean Air Task Force, The Nature Conservancy, and RMI. Nothing screams “streamlined” like convening government offices, corporate committees, and nonprofit climate clerics around one table.
- Polis says the effort will protect clean air, create good-paying jobs, support energy reliability, and build on Colorado’s clean-energy progress. Beautiful. Now try saying the same thing about housing, roads, water infrastructure, agriculture, oil and gas, or rural development without causing a fainting spell in Boulder.
- The group will meet monthly to find ways to accelerate electrification and improve permitting for emissions-reduction projects. In Colorado, favored industries get a concierge. Everyone else gets paperwork hell and a lecture about justice.
- This is not an argument against faster permits. Faster permits are good. That is the point. If red tape is dumb, costly, and job-killing for green manufacturing, then it is dumb, costly, and job-killing for everybody else too.
My Bottom Line
Polis did not discover the free market. He discovered that even his preferred economy cannot survive the bureaucratic cactus patch his side spent years watering.
That is the scam structure here. First, build the regulatory swamp. Then weaponize it against disfavored industries. Then hold a press conference announcing a special lily pad for the industries that passed the ideological purity test. Congratulations, Colorado. We have invented boutique deregulation for the politically blessed.
Normal businesses, builders, farmers, energy operators, local governments, and working communities have been choking on this regulatory hairball for years. They did not get a glossy working group. They got delays, consultants, lawsuits, agency ping-pong, and the privilege of being told their project was morally suspicious unless it arrived wrapped in climate language.
Cutting red tape is good. Speeding permits is good. Regulatory certainty is good. Which is exactly why this selective reform exposes the lie. Colorado does not need a boutique permission-slip concierge for approved green projects. It needs the ruling class to stop treating economic activity like a crime scene unless it comes with nonprofit applause and a reusable tote bag.
Source: Governor Jared Polis
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