MONTROSE, Sept. 17, 4:06 p.m. – Representatives from local environmental groups, rural electric associations and San Miguel County’s regional sustainability group, The New Community Coalition, asked the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to do more to increase the percentage of renewable energy sources involved in power generation, but PUC Chair Ron Binz said last week that the PUC has “no direct jurisdiction over rural electric cooperatives” like San Miguel Power Association or Tri-State Generation.

Rather, PUC representatives told the group, the true path to greater energy sustainability in the region winds through the Colorado legislature, and not through the PUC, at an energy meeting – dubbed a “listening tour” – at the Delta-Montrose Electric Association meeting room in Montrose Wednesday.

Three PUC members – Ron Binz, chairman of the Colorado PUC; Polly Page; and Carl Miller – met with consumers last week to answer questions about how much power consumers can realistically expect from renewable energy sources, and from wind farms, photovoltaic, coal mine waste methane and biomass from sawmills and agriculture byproducts, especially.

The PUC is a quasi-judicial independent agency that regulates utilities and their rates, transmission lines and pipes, as well as some telecommunication carriers and passenger transportation, along with planning and projecting energy demands.

The meeting in Montrose was the group’s seventh of eight stops on a statewide tour which, Binz told the crowd, “broke our record for attendance.”

One portion of the presentation outlined “energy zones,” places where future energy systems are projected to be built. Projected energy zones have names like “TOT 3” (which will expand transmission systems from northern Colorado to Wyoming with “clean-coal” technologies); the “EP Transmission Project” (which will serve Tri-State); the “NNMI” and the SunZia project in southern Arizona and New Mexico.

“Added up, it’s the High Plains Express,” said Binz, of the projected energy zones that were color-highlighted in a crescent shaped diagram dipping into portions of the Four Corners Region on a map.

Wednesday’s meeting came on the heels of the decision by San Miguel Power Association earlier this year to sign a 10-year contract extension with its power supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc. Tri-State, a wholesale supplier of electricity to 44 member distribution systems throughout Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming, is moving forward with three new coal-fired plants in western Kansas and southeastern Colorado, a move necessitated by the fact that the supplier is now operating at capacity limits, and forced to acquire expensive energy on the open market.

One of those projected three coal-fired plants, however, is on hold, Binz said, going on to emphasize, in a power-point slide presentation, that 55 percent of all energy-producing facilities in the state are investor-owned, with the remainder in REAs and municipalities.

Colorado is a coal state, he said, receiving 70 percent of its power from coal, as opposed to 25 percent from natural gas, 3 percent from renewable sources and 2 percent from hydro. He said that by 2025, there will be an anticipated 60 percent increase in energy demand – “up to 87,000 giga-watt hours” annually.

The first questions concerned ways in which the PUC might oversee Tri-State’s plans to build more coal-fired plants. “It’s the legislature’s decision,” said Binz. “We are meeting for a lot of reasons, but we’re not targeting REAs. We have no direct jurisdiction over rural electric cooperatives….” Colorado’s new sustainability laws, he added, “are relatively aggressive,” but not to the extent of requiring the shutting down of coal plants. “That’s not going to happen in this state,” stressed Binz.

Written statements from Telluride Mayor John Pryor, the Town of Ophir and Norwood resident Ben Williams were presented by TNCC representative Kris Holstrom to the commission, urging the PUC to realize TNCC’s goal of promoting sustainable energy by enabling or encouraging more programs in mountain communities. “We’re looking for ways of getting local renewable energy projects here in our region,” Holstrom read from one letter.

Binz responded that wind power alone, if maximized throughout the state (particularly on the Eastern Slope), would “swamp” what Colorado could use.

“Shall we become an energy-exporting state?” he asked. “With that much wind power,” he predicted, “we will need to export.”

DMEA General Manager Dan McClendon drew applause upon reminding the assembly that his organization did not sign on to the extension with Tri-State – a stance, he said, that drew a rate penalty from Tri-State which he pronounced “primitive, discriminatory, illegal and unfair.”

DMEA, dubbed by some “the best rural electric association in the U.S.,” was well represented at last week’s meeting, with McClendon pronouncing the rural electric association “more than accessible, but also inviting.”

In response to PUC boardmember Miller’s comment that the REAs are “sort of controlled by their membership,” Holstrom retorted: “Not really.”

“We are a cooperative in name only,” said Telluride activist Chris Myers of the San Miguel Power Association, going on to note the discriminating rate charged to corporations that declined the extension contract. “We want solar panels and wind generation locally, not from Wyoming.”

Binz addressed Myers, explaining that “Tri-State generates, we distribute it,” and that the Colorado Rural Electric Association opposed the 20 percent renewable initiative. “They were rounding up votes to kill the bill,” said Binz.

Upon being reminded that a PUC exists to protect utilities, Binz responded: “I won’t respond to all of the innuendo.

“It’s the law of the land,” he said. “Some of the tentative steps to removing monopoly states haven’t been successful, such as in Ohio and Illinois. There’s an argument for that. The thing is, it’s still the cheapest to have a monopoly provider.”

The Colorado State Legislature has indicated interest in developing sustainable energy sources, as evinced by Gov. Bill Ritter’s passage and signing of HB 1281, earlier this year, doubling the requirement that investor-owned utilities produce renewable energy by increasing the Amendment 37 requirement from 10 to 20 percent by 2020. The law also requires, for the first time, such municipal utilities as Colorado Springs Utilities and the state’s rural electric cooperatives to produce a portion of the electricity they sell from renewable sources.

And in May, Ritter signed a bill requiring investor-owned natural gas utilities in the state to develop and implement programs that will encourage their customers to conserve energy. Those programs could include, for example, education of consumers about ways to save energy, energy use audits and rebates for appliance upgrades.

Although 42 out of 64 Colorado counties voted against Amendment 37 in 2004, Miller said, the pendulum has swung, and “now they’re listening to their members.”

Telluride resident Edwin Schlapfer pronounced the political leaders of the mountain communities and their constituents ready to move further away from coal-based energy. “We signed on,” Schlapfer said, to the call to reduce coal-powered energy. “We didn’t like all of our eggs in the carbon basket. We would like to see the PUC do more. Some of these associations expect to be pulled along.”

He went on to say that Tri-State was making “a risky financial decision,” particularly in light of “the efforts of the towns of Mountain Village and Telluride and San Miguel County” to get SMPA to not sign the coal contract.

That citizen initiative was members’ way of saying, “We’ve got to do something,” he said.