Colorado’s renewable energy frenzy has been met with an array of positive news. It’s viewed as clean, modern, and the best alternative to break America’s addiction to fossil fuels. But as facts about recycling the first generation of solar and wind-farm materials emerge, the long-held perception of renewables as a panacea becomes unsustainable.
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) projects that “large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s” as the solar boom progresses. According to IRENA, the amount of solar panel waste could total 78 million tons annually by 2050.
A similar concern exists in the wind industry. Thousands of tons of windmill blades and giant wind towers, rising as high as 500 feet, are currently disposed of in landfills, largely due to a lack of consistent state regulations governing the retirement and disposal of wind farms. The thousands of colossal concrete pads that serve as the base for each wind tower are also simply left in place in perpetuity. The turbine blades are built with a planned life of 20 to 25 years and contain chemicals that can become hazardous after burial in a landfill, yet the government has not caught on. While technologies exist to recycle the blades, the wind industry has been slow to adopt them due to the high cost.
Solar panels also possess a similarly limited life cycle, and, like lithium-ion and other batteries, contain chemicals and metals, such as lead, that create environmental hazards as they degrade. Like the wind industry, the panels can be recycled, but the high cost has prevented large-scale adoption, despite heavy subsidization by the federal and state governments. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that less than 10% of the country’s decommissioned panels are recycled, mainly due to cost. The price to recycle a single panel is about $15 to $45 for a silicon PV module in the US, compared to only $1 to $5 to dump it in a landfill.
Should Coloradans worry? As primarily a headwater state, meaning most of our water begins here and flows out to the Rocky Mountains, toxic leakage into our rivers is particularly concerning. It was only seven years ago when three million gallons of contaminated water turned the Animas River orange.
Environmental and safety concerns are not new in the energy landscape. For example, determining the appropriate distance between oil and gas operations, often referred to as setbacks, used to be a major contention in Colorado. And it doesn’t stop there. The impact on water, air, wildlife and the landscape have all been debated and are now all highly regulated here. But it took years of contentious community discussions, public hearings, legislative compromise and collaboration. Today, operators seem to have struck the right balance of production and protection.
Despite the known hazardous magnitude, the federal and many state governments in the U.S. have not enacted consistent regulations governing the disposal of the massive waste created by these new industries. If the Biden administration’s envisioned energy transition is to progress as planned, a resolution to this toxic issue is mandatory. While most support the expansion of new energy sources, it makes little sense to do it at such a cost to the environment it is supposed to improve.
It comes down to fairness. Why should some industries like oil, gas, coal or nuclear be held to one standard while others like solar and wind are held to another?
There’s no doubt that an energy transformation is underway. After all, energy is the foundation of everything, and finding ways to produce it more efficiently and responsibly is a no-brainer. Everything evolves and energy is no different. But all sources have benefits and drawbacks. Perfect energy does not exist, and the pitfalls must be addressed and remedied. As an environmental leader, this is Colorado’s opportunity to shine. The next step is to proceed responsibly, fairly and transparently.
Gone are the days of gas-burning vehicles. We’re officially in an energy renaissance with a firm trajectory toward clean energy consumption in our transportation methods.There’s a strong push for everything run on gasoline to be phased out. We’re now seeing the great transformation that the state of Colorado has been yearning for, and Colorado is well on its way to becoming a zero-emissions state very shortly due to a variety of sustainable transportation initiatives.
For example, Colorado is proud to be following in the footsteps left by California in its honorable venture to reduce fossil fuel consumption as much as possible. But that’s just the beginning.
Although less drastic than California’s ban on gas-powered vehicles, Colorado is still taking steps to motivate the switch to EVs but offering tax breaks coinciding with an EV purchase or lease.
The minor drawback of late has been the reduction in those incentives for 2023 through 2025. Taxpayers are slightly unsettled by the 20% decrease in the incentive toward the purchase of an EV, causing some confusion about the motivation behind pushing the state to transition quicker. Nevertheless, the incentive is still there, just at a reduced rate.
The reception of the incentive might have been so strong that the reduction we’re seeing is a reactive step to anticipate the scale of new EV purchasers in the next few years. Although seemingly counterintuitive, it would make sense from a certain point of view.
Because of this, it creates all the more reasons for potential EV purchasers to resort to more affordable options, like used electric vehicles.
Along the same lines as those general tax incentives are tax breaks for businesses that successfully manage to migrate their fleets over to electric vehicles.
The Revolution of eBiking and eScooters
On a different note, bikes are a thriving medium of transportation in Colorado. The state proudly sits as the leader of electric bike funding in the U.S. as of 2022. As a likely outcome of the funding, it’s imminent that rebates will commence applicable for current e-bike owners who proactively adopted them.
By the same token, ride-sharing companies like Lyft havetransitioned their fleets to electric bikes as an affordable and clean way of providing transportation for city residents.
We’ve also seen a burst of electric scooter groups permeate cities in Colorado, offering a more diverse mode of clean travel.
Although mildly controversial, the methods by which we contain and control hydrogen fuel are getting better each year. We’re entering a period where it’s becoming more of an option for vehicles to run off the stuff. Some are even surmising that hydrogen fuel will one day soon be the primary alternative to traditional fuels.
However, there is still a lot of stigma surrounding the safety and volatility of hydrogen leveraged as a fuel, which has caused many to remain cautious of it. It may be a little while before hydrogen fuel becomes mainstream, as there’s still a bit of leeriness surrounding it.
Continually Growing Greener
Colorado isn’t the biggest leader in green energies yet, but it’s definitely been a rising star throughout the last few years. With how recently that most of these programs have been put in place, there’s still a lot of room for the state to race up to speed with other states leading the revolution to clean energy.
This is all to say, however, that no matter what clean energy transportation steps Colorado takes in the future, it’ll ultimately benefit its citizens and the planet in the long run.
Indiana Lee is a writer, reader, and jigsaw puzzle enthusiast from the Pacific Northwest. An expert on business operations, leadership, marketing, and lifestyle, you can connect with her on LinkedIn.
From Aaron Million’s 12th-floor office in downtown Fort Collins, you can see Wyoming in the distance. Depending upon the route, it can be 3,000 feet uphill. The downhill side of that equation, however, has become a key feature in Million’s pipeline vision.
Million wants to import water 338 miles from the Green River in Utah just below Flaming Gorge Dam. The water would flow through pipelines paralleling Interstate 80 across Wyoming before tumbling into Colorado’s northern Front Range. In that tumble, Million and his company, Water Horse Resources, say they intend to build pumped-storage hydro projects to generate electricity when most needed.
The company’s diversion plans call for delivering up to 55,000 acre-feet of water annually to the Fort Collins and Greeley area. This would be roughly comparable in size to water from the Winter Park area imported to Denver and its suburbs through the Moffat Tunnel.
That new pumped-storage element will produce income along the way, but the water itself will have many other uses. “Almost all of the water supplies in Colorado are seasonal,” Million says.
“We will be able to deliver water throughout the year. But it is also a project that will have environmental benefits by augmenting existing stream flows, helping renewable green energy, helping the agriculture side, and alleviating some of the municipal demand. Most of the projects in Colorado were developed with singular purposes. We are not.”
Million’s project may be the most audacious ambition yet in Colorado’s century-long quest to dismantle the geography of native water flows. In Colorado, more than 70% of the water originates west of the Continental Divide, but close to 90% of the state’s population lives to the east, mostly along the Front Range. The Moffat Tunnel, which began diversions in 1936, was the first major transmountain diversion. Now, the mountains have become a Swiss cheese of diversion tunnels. Anywhere from 30% to 50% of water along the Front Range originates on the Western Slope in any given year. As well, Western Slope water augments native flows to irrigate farms along the South Platte and Arkansas rivers and their tributaries.
This, however, would be different from all others. It would be a private enterprise, while all the other major projects have had public sponsors. It would also divert water from another state. That adds a complication.
Million, now 62, first conceived of this new plumbing in 2002. It was a summer of searing drought. Denver spray-painted the parched grass green at City Park before an unveiling of a statue. He was then a graduate student at Colorado State University. Four years later, I met him one afternoon at a restaurant on College Avenue in Fort Collins. ColoradoBiz delivered the first story.
Aaron Million on the cover of ColoradoBiz, Oct. 2006
Those two decades could not have been easy for Million. Colorado’s wizened water leaders pushed back. High cost and high risk, they said. He’s had trouble securing permits. But after spending four or five intermittent years on the project during the last two decades, he’s back at it full-time.
Nine months ago, Million announced a new relationship with Florida-based MasTec, an engineering and construction company that is ranked 429 on the Fortune 500. Even before then, Million had recalculated the project to harness the power of falling water to generate electricity. The concept is called pumped-storage hydro. “In the long run, the renewable piece will be one of the largest in the West,” he says.
Colorado has very few pumped-storage hydro projects. The largest is Cabin Creek, near Georgetown. Water is pumped from a reservoir along the road to Guanella Pass at night when electricity generally is most available and at the lowest cost, then released to flow downhill and generate electricity when needed to meet peak demands. The total capacity is 324 megawatts, equal to a modest-sized coal-burning power plant. As they stretch to accommodate higher and higher quantities of emissions-free but intermittent renewable generation, electrical utilities will need more storage. Pumped-storage hydro is one option. Several sites have been identified in the Grand Junction, Craig and Hayden areas.
The Green River water, once arrived in the northern Front Range, would have other purposes, too. Million reports interest in up to 400,000 acre-feet. This interest reflects the rapid population growth. Places that were small towns a half-century ago — think Timnath and Berthoud, Windsor and Johnston, Erie and Lafayette – have in some cases become small cities. “This region is a job-generating factory, and that is what is bringing people here,” says Jeff Stahla, public information officer for Northern Water.
Northern Water operates Colorado’s largest transmountain diversion. The project diverts an average 261,000 acre-feet annually from the Colorado River at Grand Lake through the Alva Adams Tunnel to the Estes Valley. From there, the water is distributed across Northern’s service territory from Broomfield to Wellington and along the South Platte River to Julesburg. In 1957, when the federally financed work was completed, the Colorado-Big Thompson project delivered 97% of the water to agriculture. Today, it’s roughly 50%.
Prices for Colorado-Big Thompson water have been rising rapidly. A chart assembled by Northern Water shows shares in 2012 selling for a little more than $7,000. This summer, Lafayette paid $70,000. That’s roughly $100,000 an acre-foot. Eyebrows were raised. Thornton and Aurora, meanwhile, plan to import water from the Fort Collins-Greeley area. The cities began securing those agricultural water rights decades ago.
These numbers bolster Million’s case for revenues. His new backer is the largest pipeline company in North America, he says. “They know their business. They know their costs.” Those costs come in at $2.5 billion, he reports, compared to $5 billion in potential revenues.
But can water be had from the Green River? Million insists there are no major obstacles. Most challenging in the permitting process will be securing the right to cross federal lands, he says. This is despite the proposed pipeline paralleling many other pipelines, although the others have been laid for fossil fuels.
More troublesome yet may be getting a permit from Utah to divert from the Green. The state has denied the application by Water Horse Resources. Million argues that the 1948 Upper Colorado River Compact accommodates diversions by one state from another within the Colorado River Basin. That is why Santa Fe and Albuquerque can divert water from the San Juan River near Pagosa Springs before that water flows into New Mexico. The Green River flows into Colorado for 40 miles on its way to join the Colorado River near Moab.
Million is an outsized, colorful character. He seems to have no fear. You can imagine him picking up a rattlesnake. He has, he confirms, and in fact had a pet rattlesnake while an elementary school student then living near Trinidad. He was schooled mostly in Boulder but spent his summers and a year or two of primary school living on a family ranch along the Green River near the eponymously named town in Utah.
His explanations are littered with cows, horses and hats. For example, in reviewing his long-dormant journey with this idea, he reports an evolving detachment. “When you let go of the reins of a horse, sometimes it has a tendency to find its own trail. And I think we’ve done that here,” he says of the new energy-focused plans.
That horse has been steered by the massive game-changer of the warming climate. The risks predicted decades ago are being realized. This has driven the enormous push to shift to renewables, creating new business opportunities, including the potential for new pumped-storage hydro plans.
Climate change has also exacerbated the long-festering problems in the Colorado River Basin. The interstate compact adopted 100 years ago November by the seven basin states assumed roughly 20 million acre-feet of river flows. In this century they have averaged 12.5 million acre-feet. The river ceased to reach the Pacific Ocean in the 1990s except in one artificial discharge from dams. If climate models are accurate – and they have now been validated by time – the water situation will worsen.
This sounds grim. Actually, it’s worse. Approximately 25% of the river flows are apportioned to 22 federally recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin. The tribes have only partially claimed them. They are, however, senior to all others — including the diversions by cities along Colorado’s Front Range. This cart has been upset, apples everywhere.
Droughts do come and go. But when drought departs, the warming climate will remain. A 2017 study, for example, found roughly half the drying now observed in the Colorado River Basin was the result of human-caused global warming. Other studies have come to similar conclusions.
Might the warming climate actually deliver more snow or at least rain? That’s possible. Climate models 15 years ago suggested the San Juan Mountains would become drier, and they have become so. The San Juan River that flows through Pagosa Springs has had a 30% reduction.
Colorado’s northern mountains might actually get more snow or at least rain. Million pins part of his argument on a wetter future roughly north of Interstate 70. Jeff Lukas, a water and climate consultant from Lafayette who co-authored a book about climate change impacts, says Million is not entirely wrong. “But it’s not a free pass out of climate change,” he adds. Even if the Green River in Wyoming does get more snow and rain, that gain may be more than offset by increased evaporation.
The upper Green River – the portion in Wyoming, upstream from Million’s proposed diversion – has had 17% less precipitation in the 21st century than before. A 2022 study by researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and other institutions found that “the Green River Valley area may experience large drought pressures from increasing aridity combined with changes in the seasonality of runoff contribution to streamflow and snowmelt upstream.”
So, will there be water to divert? Million argues yes. He points out that Colorado and the other upper-basin states have not been taking their share of water apportioned under the Colorado River Compact. That’s the position of Colorado and other upper-basin states. In this view, it’s time for California and Arizona to get their houses into order, as they have been the principal reasons for the decline of the two big reservoirs, Mead and Powell.
Million contends the 1948 Upper Colorado River Compact clearly allows Colorado the diversions, even if from Utah. After all, New Mexico diverts water from the San Juan River near Pagosa Springs, before that river enters New Mexico. It’s analogous to what Million and Water Horse Resources want to do, but from an entirely different era. It was completed in 1976.
Many in Colorado’s water establishment – which Million clearly is not – fret that an additional diversion, particularly of the size of Million’s pipeline, will put Colorado close to dangerous edges. “Particularly when there are no customers for the project,” says Peter Fleming, the general counsel for the Colorado River District, a Glenwood Springs-based organization that represents most of Colorado’s Western Slope.
That’s an ultra-touchy subject. Colorado water law does not allow speculation. Water has to be used or the right to it is lost. Million says he has interest from 17 different users. He has not, however, identified them.
But even if the lower-basin states have been using more than their share, there’s also the issue – which I first wrote about for ColoradoBiz in 2009 in a story called “Tapped Out – about whether Colorado might risk being forced to curtail diversions from the Colorado River. This is because of a provision in the 1922 compact that says the upper basin states cannot cause less water than 7.5 million acre-feet to flow past Lee Ferry (near the Grand Canyon) on a rolling 10-year average.
That messy situation, both legal and political, is one reason the South Metro Water Supply Association pulled back from a parallel plan to Million’s. The Greenwood Village-based organization – which includes Castle Rock, Parker and 12 other water providers — had created the plans after Million first outlined the vision. It was called the Colorado-Wyoming Coalition, and it had organizations from both states. That interest has waned, at least among South Metro members.
“Complications with a Flaming Gorge project, given the cost, needed infrastructure and the myriad of issues involving the Colorado River (which, as we know, conditions of which have worsened significantly in recent years) certainly served to shift attention to other projects,” says Lisa Darling, executive director. “For example, one of my members, Parker Water, has been working with agricultural interests and other partners on the lower South Platte on a project called the Platte Valley Water Partnership, an innovative water project that will provide sustainable water supplies and support continued ag production.”
What exactly the Fortune 500 company brings to the table, that’s not clear. Million says the agreement is confidential, but he does say MasTec will have a construction stake and also be a customer for the water. The company has constructed a 51-megawatt wind farm near Burlington and a solar project in Douglas County.
On the face of it, this looks to be a high-risk but potentially high-reward project. Million says that’s backward. “The fact that we’ve landed a Fortune 500 publicly traded company would reflect the opposite,” he says. “Publicly traded companies don’t enter into investments with high risk. They’ve done their homework.”
As for Million’s quest, he reports devoting six or seven years in the past two decades to this quest but also says he has been involved in other things. But he does acknowledge the perception of a Sisyphean undertaking. He tells about riding an elevator in Fort Collins with an attorney who called out to him. “So you’re the Walt Disney of water,” she said.
Disney, notes Million, was rejected 300 times by bankers with his vision of Mickey Mouse and a park.
Allen Best has been writing about Colorado water steadily for the last 20 years for ColoradoBiz, Headwaters magazine and now for his own publication, Big Pivots.
Since the start of the Industrial Age, affordable and reliable energy has helped fuel economic growth. Studies have shown that there is a positive correlation between energy consumption and economic growth. Each time the material we use for energy changes (from wood to coal to nuclear, for example), society adapts.
The energy industry, a sector that has long fueled Colorado’s labor force, has seen a recent shortage of its own: an insufficiently skilled workforce committed to the continued safe and responsible development of energy. And on the heels of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, a skilled workforce will be more important than ever.
Of the $740 billion aimed at reducing inflation, $370 billion over multiple years is earmarked for energy and climate provisions in the form of tax rebates, credits, research dollars, loans, and grants to jump-start our energy future. The ultimate outcome of the bill’s priorities will be realized in the future, but we know the provisions will be impactful on all forms of energy: solar and wind, oil, natural gas and hydrogen.
For decades, the oil and natural gas industry has served as one of Colorado’s strongest economic engines. Colorado is the fifth-largest crude oil producing state, the seventh largest natural gas producing state, and 35% of the state’s net electricity generation comes from renewables — wind accounting for four-fifths, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The U.S. Department of Energy estimated that the energy industry as a whole in Colorado directly employed 146,238 people in 2021. That figure doesn’t even account for the indirect or induced jobs as a result of the direct industry contribution. This includes research facilities like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, skilled union and labor jobs, and support activities related to the industry and project.
It’s been estimated that 55 percent of the electric and natural gas utility workers across the country are set to retire, along with nearly a third of the oil and natural gas industry’s engineers and geoscientists to retire within the decade. However, considering the continued growth in clean energy and renewables’ burgeoning technology sector, Colorado has a tremendous opportunity to continue its energy leadership. But in order to meet the country’s evolving energy needs, Colorado will depend on a new generation of workers to build upon the successes already achieved over the past decades and innovate the way we develop energy that is more efficient, cleaner, and safer.
Other industries in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields share the energy industry’s struggles to fill their ranks, although the healthcare industry saw a spike during the pandemic. According to a study released by Pew Research Center, minorities and females are still underrepresented in terms of the overall share of employment and growth. While the inclusion of women varies by field, Black and Hispanic graduates are underrepresented compared to their share of all degrees.
In other words, there is plenty of opportunity to help expose kids across Denver supporting their STEM skills within the energy industry. There were 12,000 new clean energy jobs in Colorado alone in 2021. Addressing the gaps in our STEM workforce begins with recognizing that our future leaders and innovators are currently sitting in classrooms, curious about the world, hungry for knowledge and eager to imagine their future careers. It is up to us to inspire them.
As part of greeting the new school year, trade associations and companies within the energy space are working together to host Denver’s fifth annual Energy Day Colorado Festival at East High School on Sept. 24, 2022, which is a year-round initiative that engages students’ interests in energy and STEM education through summer camps and a capstone festival with hands-on demonstrations across the industry.
We encourage you to join us at Energy Day Colorado — and work with us to inspire and encourage the next generation of energy leaders.
Andrew Browning is the chief operating officer of Consumer Energy Alliance and the chief organizer of Denver’s Energy Day festival.
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