By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project
Worried about land use for energy infrastructure? Save some time to watch CETA.
There has been a lot of attention paid to Xcel Energy and the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) over where and how electric infrastructure will run in this state.
See, for example, Polis encouraging his cronies at the PUC to take up the appeal over Xcel’s Power Pathway through Elbert and El Paso in an October 2025 newsletter linked first below for an example.
There is another unelected board in this state that does similar work with far less news coverage, however.
The second link below is to a 2021 bill (SB21-072) that does a whole lot of things.
Screenshot 1 (from the bill’s fiscal note) shows you what this bill does with regard to electric transmission. Reading it you will see similar themes I’ve touched on in the past; careful scrutiny here shows now only a set up for the present, but a fundamental and foundational change to the way things work in Colorado so that the changes echo into the future too.
The bill forces utilities to join organized wholesale markets so as to facilitate getting power into Colorado. My guess is, and it is a guess, that this is to help bolster our grid, covering up reliability issues for our glorious transition to renewables (oh, and you can help pay more to recoup the cost for this among all the other costs you are on the hook for in our transition). You’ll also note that the bill instructs judges how to evaluate the public benefit for taking a right of way for a transmission line.
As a quick side note, heads up for some coded language in there to make sure the Democrats’ union paymasters get a payday.
The main point of this post is also from the bill’s fiscal note and it is attached as screenshot 2.
SB21-072 created yet another appointed board to make decisions in Colorado, the Colorado Electric Transmission Authority (CETA), and tasked it with all you see in the picture.
I went to the actual language of the bill to see who appoints and who sits on this board. Screenshots 3a – 3c are taken from the bill and detail who was appointed. You as a residential customer are guaranteed one seat on the board. One. Oh, and when I said unions get theirs here, you’ll note that they get guaranteed a seat too.
The third link below takes you to the CETA website. If you go and look who actually got appointed, you’ll see lots of environmentalists, people with lots of political connections to the state government, and people with political connections to the environmental nonprofits (Rocky Mountain Institute, I’m looking in your direction) that have had a big hand in policy in this state.
If you were looking for a regular Joe or someone who was a random landowner, sorry.
A later, 2023, bill (SB23-016 which is linked fourth below) was a marvel of “single subject” legislating. If you look at the bill summary you’ll see quite a laundry list.
Buried way down in there towards the bottom is what you see in screenshot 4 attached.
This 2023 bill greatly expanded what CETA could (and had to) do, along with giving them some money to help in that effort. One of CETA’s outputs from this expansion is linked fifth below. It’s a study prepared by a contractor to show where and how the state should expand or revamp its current electrical transmission capacity.
I’ll leave it to you to look through the report, but I thought the CETA shortlist of priority projects was illuminating for what it shows about our state’s needs and anticipated problems.
Screenshots 5a and 5b are taken from the document titled “Priority Project Concepts”. You’ll note that a lot of priority is given over to getting power from the rural areas up into the power-hungry Front Range. Note also what I highlighted.
When I mentioned at the top that the original legislation creating CETA also required utilities to join regional wholesale power markets, this is why. Exporting power is mentioned, but, perhaps just as importantly, import is too.
I have to wonder what that export/import ratio will be once we’ve eliminated most of our reliable baseline generation for renewables. I wonder how much that import will cost ratepayers.
There’s one last thing to take note of. I could only find one meeting in January 2026 for CETA (and it’s already passed as of this posting), but if you want to follow their work and/or attend a board meeting, go to their website and look for the Board Meetings tab on the upper right of the main page. It appears as though you’ll have to do the lifting here of watching their site periodically. I couldn’t find a way to sign up for updates.
If you do have concerns, please take CETA at their word when they say they want to collaborate with all stakeholders.
Their contact info is below.
CETA: 165 S. Union Boulevard, Suite 785, Lakewood, CO 80228
Phone: 720.617.0080
https://coloradoaccountabilityproject.substack.com/p/the-progressive-tax-scheme-and-colorado?utm_source=publication-search
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb21-072
https://www.cotransmissionauthority.com
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb23-016
https://www.cotransmissionauthority.com/transmission-study
Greenhouse gas analysis report on legislation?
While researching the bill for the previous post, I noticed something new. It’s circled in the image heading this post.
If you’ve ever read a bill website (or seen them shown here), you’ll notice that there are often some links below the bill summary text. One is to the bill’s full text. The second is for a summary called the “Fiscal Note”. You might, depending on the bill, also notice a demographic note (a subject of a past post–see the first link below for my earlier explainer on them).
Something new caught my eye in reading the bill for the previous post and that was a button for a greenhouse gas analysis.
The second link below is to the 2019 bill (HB19-1188) which created the greenhouse gas analysis program and tasked legislative staff with preparing them. Screenshot 1 attached is from the fiscal note and provides a summary of what the bill does.
As with the demographic notes created by a different bill, this one spells out what is required for the report, how they are to be requested, and how many can be requested at any time.
Knowing what I know about demographic notes, from what I read in the greenhouse gas report for the bill in the previous post, and from what I read in this particular fiscal note quoted here, I have to say that I’m not too impressed.
It’s the usual report created by legislative staff which gets filed away somewhere, read by few until some politician or journalist needs to selectively quote from something they can label as nonpartisan, and all of it carrying the savor of that old philosophical chestnut, “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
If you wanted to look at the Legislative Council Staff’s page on the reports, I link to it third below and then to the report archive’s fourth below.
If you go and look you’ll note that 8 of the 9 reports were requested by Democrats. Not a surprise there.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb19-1188
https://content.leg.colorado.gov/agencies/legislative-council-staff/greenhouse-gas-emissions-reports
https://content.leg.colorado.gov/agencies/legislative-council-staff/previous-session-ghg-reports
READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.
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