Public Comment Sign-on Petition - Xcel Energy Just Transition Solicitation

By filling in the following information and submitting the below form, you agree to have your name and contact information added to the public comments below, which will be submitted in May to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) regarding Xcel Energy's Just Transition Solicitation resource plan (Docket No. 24A-0442E). A copy of this form will be emailed to you once completed.

Public Comment Sign-on Letter / Petition
in PUC Docket No. 24A-0442E, Xcel JTS

BEFORE THE COLORADO PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION

COMMISSIONERS

  • ERIC BLANK, CHAIRMAN

  • MEGAN GILMAN, COMMISSIONER

  • TOM PLANT, COMMISSIONER

Re: Docket No. 24A-0442E, Xcel Just Transition Solicitation

Perhaps more than any proceeding the PUC has ever presided over, Xcel Energy’s Just Transition Solicitation will have a profound and lasting effect on Colorado’s energy future for decades to come. The seismic transformation of the state’s energy landscape and the projected exponential increase in the amount of electricity needed to power it demands strong and creative leadership to ensure that any buildout of new generating resources furthers Colorado’s progress on decarbonization and protects consumers from costly mistakes. Without that leadership, we risk backsliding on emissions reduction goals and, more importantly, locking millions of Coloradans into higher bills and very likely stuck paying off billions of dollars in debt for stranded, outcompeted and obsolete fossil fuel assets.

For these reasons, we, the undersigned legions of Coloradans who are counting on the Commission to do the right thing, for us and for generations to come, submit the following comments in this proceeding.

Xcel’s proposals in the Just Transition Solicitation are unprecedented, both for the massive amount of new resources the utility says it must bring online in the timeframe around the closure of the Comanche plant and for the utility’s proposal to create a new mechanism outside of what is permitted in resource planning to charge customers for speculative testing of experimental ways to meet ever-growing demand beyond the planning horizon of this ERP – essentially a slush fund for early development.

In its initial filing in October, Xcel said it faces exponential growth in demand for electricity, mainly due to projections for the massive power needs of data centers and artificial intelligence that are expected in Colorado, and to a lesser extent, to account for increased demand from building and appliance electrification and growth in sales of electric vehicles. All told, Xcel said it expects in the range of 10,000 megawatts (MW) to 14,000 MW of new demand for electricity by the time Comanche is fully closed. To put that in perspective, Xcel’s entire portfolio of wind, solar, gas and coal generating capacity in Colorado is currently only 6,200 MW.