Two visions of Colorado’s energy future collide in committee hearing

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

Xcel shut off power Saturday afternoon in parts of Boulder and Jefferson counties—roughly 18,000 customers in all. The wind was up, fire danger was high, and outages weren’t limited to the shutoff areas—some hit in the foothills, others farther into the mountains, where crews were still working Sunday.

House Bill 26-1246 had come up earlier in the week during a committee hearing.

Rep. Ken DeGraaf pointed to those kinds of events as a warning.

“Public safety power shutoffs… have become increasingly normalized,” he told lawmakers.

What followed wasn’t just a debate over one bill. It was a clash between two different ways of thinking about how Colorado should power its future.

At its core, the disagreement comes down to this: should new, large electricity demand stay inside Colorado’s existing system—or be allowed to operate outside it?

A push for a different model

Rep. Ken DeGraaf said the bill is meant to answer a problem he believes is already here—not something years down the road.

DeGraaf pointed to what he described as a surge already underway. “Colorado is entering a new era of electricity demand,” he said, citing artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and large-scale data centers.

“House Bill 26-1246 offers a practical alternative.”

The bill would allow large new electricity users to build and operate their own power generation—so long as those systems remain separate from the public grid—rather than relying on utilities to expand infrastructure to meet demand.

“It ensures that large new electricity users finance power systems required for their operations rather than shifting those costs onto households and small businesses,” DeGraaf said.

He also tied the proposal to land use and infrastructure concerns, warning that transmission expansion can reshape communities.

“Transmission corridors proposed to meet growing demand can cut across farms, ranches, private property, permanently altering landscape and communities,” he said.

Long-distance transmission projects can take years to build, he added, while also losing energy along the way.

“There’s probably around upwards of 5 percent loss,” DeGraaf said. “That means at least 5 percent extra generation is required.”

When asked whether privately built systems would avoid oversight, DeGraaf said they would still be subject to safety and environmental rules.

“No, they’re still responsible to all of the safety rules and regulations,” he said. “The bill does not exempt any of that.”

Concerns over oversight and public interest

Opponents argued the bill would move major energy users outside the regulatory structure designed to protect ratepayers and guide Colorado’s energy transition.

Carolyn Elam, representing Colorado Communities for Climate Action, said the proposal “represents an approach to energy regulation that is contrary to how electricity generation is regulated in Colorado.”

“It places private interests ahead of public interests, undermining existing state laws and goals,” she said.

Elam warned that allowing large users to operate outside the system could shift costs onto others.

“Absent proper regulatory oversight, you risk load erosion that strands businesses and residents with assets and higher bills,” she said.

Claire Valentine of Western Resource Advocates raised similar concerns, focusing on climate policy.

“This bill massively jeopardizes Colorado’s trajectory toward decarbonizing its electricity systems and its economy,” Valentine said.

She argued that under the proposal, large users could avoid requirements tied to emissions reductions.

“We need responsible oversight of load growth, not a public utilities exemption,” she said.

A system under strain

Supporters of the bill framed it as a response to pressures already building within the existing system.

Travis Fisher of the Cato Institute told lawmakers that Colorado faces “four simultaneous challenges on its power grid,” including rising costs, changing resource mixes, reliability concerns and growing demand.

“The concern about load erosion is not a real concern because we’re only talking about brand new customers,” Fisher said, referring to large industrial users the bill is designed to address.

Sarah Montalbano of the Independence Institute said the current planning model may not be equipped to handle what’s coming.

“The traditional planning process was not designed to absorb this demand on this timeline,” she said.

That surge in demand is arriving faster than traditional infrastructure can be planned, permitted and built—creating pressure on a system designed for slower, more predictable growth.

“It allows private capital to finance new infrastructure without the possibility of shifting costs to existing ratepayers,” she said.

For supporters, the proposal represents a way to meet new demand without expanding the burden on the broader public.

Land, infrastructure and local impact

Beyond cost and policy, the hearing also reflected growing tension around land use and infrastructure expansion.

DeGraaf said the bill could “reduce pressure to build new transmission corridors across private land and rural communities,” a point echoed by supporters who argued that localized generation could limit the need for long-distance transmission lines.

For some, that argument ties directly to concerns over eminent domain and the footprint of new energy projects.

A parallel debate beyond Colorado

As Colorado lawmakers debated how to expand the grid, lawmakers in another state are asking a different question: how resilient is the grid itself?

In New Hampshire, legislators recently advanced House Bill 1723, a measure directing the state’s Department of Energy to study the vulnerability of high-voltage transformers to electromagnetic pulse events and solar weather.

The New Hampshire bill doesn’t order new projects or redesign the grid. It asks a simpler question first: are the most critical pieces of the system actually protected?

Those transformers are not easy to replace. In some cases, it can take years to get a new one built and installed.

What that conversation points to is a bigger issue now getting more attention: whether the system being built to meet future demand is also built to handle something going wrong.

That’s where it starts to overlap with what Colorado lawmakers are debating now—whether to keep building out the current model or allow something different to take shape alongside it.

What the hearing settled—and what it didn’t

For now, HB26-1246 isn’t off the table.

DeGraaf asked to have the bill laid over, so the committee hasn’t taken a vote yet—and the path forward is still open.

The hearing made one thing clear: everyone has drawn their lines. What it didn’t settle was what happens next.

It also showed something common at the Capitol—organized groups showing up prepared, while most everyday voices are missing from the room. That’s often who ends up in lawmakers’ inboxes—and in their ears.

When lawmakers take this bill up again, they’ll be stepping right back into the same divide—and what they do with it will say a lot about where Colorado is headed.

In a guest commentary published after the hearing, DeGraaf wrote that “when the solution to grid vulnerability becomes turning the grid off, it should be a warning sign that the system itself needs reconsideration.”