Complete Colorado says the Colorado Public Utilities Commission is getting an overdue reality check on the state’s forced march toward renewable energy and electrification. The piece points to a recent warning from Xcel Energy that Colorado could face a significant generation shortfall beginning next summer, raising the risk of rolling blackouts.
The article also highlights PUC commissioners questioning whether the state’s green-energy mandates remain sustainable if affordability and reliability keep getting worse. That is bureaucratic language for: the bumper sticker is starting to smoke.
Colorado politicians got to promise a painless transition. Activists got to chant about 100% renewable energy. Consultants got contracts. Utilities now have to explain what happens when demand rises, dispatchable generation retires, battery storage falls short, and February still arrives on schedule. Physics remains undefeated.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Xcel is reportedly warning about a power shortfall as soon as next summer. That does not mean blackouts are guaranteed. It does mean the people responsible for keeping the lights on are no longer speaking in the soothing dialect of campaign brochures.
- The PUC is finally asking whether the mandates are affordable and reliable. Splendid timing. Ratepayers have been asking that question every month when the utility bill shows up and kicks open the front door.
- Renewables are not the same thing as dependable power on demand. Wind and solar produce energy when conditions cooperate. Dispatchable sources can be called on when customers actually need electricity. The grid does not accept moral superiority as backup generation.
- Forced electrification increases demand on the same grid policymakers are making less flexible. The Clean Heat Plan, according to the article’s podcast hosts, risks pushing customers away from natural gas and onto an electric system that may not have enough capacity. That is not a transition plan. That is loading more passengers onto a bus while removing the engine.
- Fossil fuels remain essential longer than the political class wants to admit. The article argues that natural gas and other dispatchable generation will keep doing heavy lifting because reliability cannot be scheduled around ideology. Winter has not endorsed the platform.
My Bottom Line
Clean energy is not the enemy. Fantasy-based energy policy is.
Colorado’s ruling class promised that mandates, subsidies and enough moral theater would carry us smoothly into an all-electric future. Costs would behave. Reliability would hold. Fossil fuels would politely vanish on the legislature’s preferred timetable. Apparently nobody thought to invite weather, engineering or arithmetic to the stakeholder meeting.
Now the PUC has to deal with actual electrons.
Politicians get applause for saying “100% renewable.” Utilities have to keep hospitals running, homes heated and businesses operating when the wind quits blowing and the sun clocks out. Activists get the slogan. Ratepayers get the monthly invoice. Reliability panic gets handled downstairs where nobody is filming a campaign commercial.
That is the scam. Moral theater up front. Operational reality in the basement. Working families absorb the difference.
Dispatchable power matters because electricity must be available when people need it, not merely when nature feels cooperative. Forced electrification matters because moving heating, transportation and more appliances onto the grid raises demand. Mandates matter because they can force utilities to retire or replace reliable generation before adequate capacity is ready.
Pretending those facts are fossil-fuel propaganda is government malpractice with better branding.
Colorado keeps replacing competent governance with moral performance art. Energy policy is not a yard sign. Reliability is not optional. If the PUC is finally colliding with reality, the mandate junkies should own who drove us there.
The old lineman’s response writes itself: Cute speech, dumbass. Now where is the backup power?
Source: Complete Colorado
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