Colorado utility commits to unprecedented renewable energy goal

[davebarnes]

https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/n..._news_headline
It would be the end of their coal in Colorado': Energy firm offers to buy, shutter Tri-State coal plants
"A renewable energy company is offering a rural power provider hundreds of millions of dollars to shut down coal-fired power plants in Colorado and New Mexico and replace their output with cleaner energy sources.

The deal offered by Denver-based Guzman Energy increases the pressure on Westminster-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the wholesale power provider to 43 rural cooperative utilities, to speed up its retirement of coal plants generating electricity and replace them with power from Guzman generated using solar, wind and natural gas.

“It would be the end of their coal in Colorado and Wyoming,” said <a href="denver/search/results?q=Chris Riley">Chris Riley</a>, Guzman Energy president. “We would accelerate the shutdown to within the next couple years. It would allow Tri-State to actually lower the members’ rates.”

Guzman Energy’s offer covers half of the coal-fired electrical power Tri-State generates for its member utilities in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Nebraska.

Guzman Energy says it has commitments from investors to finance a deal in which it would pay Tri-State an amount still to be negotiated, likely more than $500 million, to buy coal-fired power units in Moffat County and northwest New Mexico and close them as soon as possible. In exchange, Guzman would want a 15- or 20-year commitment from Tri-State to buy replacement electricity from Guzman, at least 70% of which would be from wind or solar that Guzman will build, Riley said.

The offer is an ambitious leap for Guzman, which has organized several renewable energy projects supplying power for rural utilities, but nothing of such a large scale.

There’s interest from some Tri-State member utilities and from large investors for the deal, Riley said.

“We do have the economic ability to execute this,” he said.

Tri-State, which recently replaced its CEO , has said it can’t evaluate and respond to the offer until after new regulations are in place in Colorado and Tri-State’s legal fight with one of its member utilities is settled. Both of those issues will take several months to resolve.

The Delta-Montrose Electrical Association, a southern Colorado power co-op, is pushing to leave Tri-State so it can buy more renewable energy than Tri-State’s membership rules allow. The two organizations are fighting in court and before the Colorado Public Utilities Commission over how much DMEA should have to pay to leave.

The PUC is also extending some oversight to Tri-State’s wholesale business for the first time. A new Colorado law taking effect this year requires Tri-State to submit a plan to the PUC outlining the sources energy it will use and meet the state’s goal for reducing carbon emissions.

Tri-State employs about 1,500 people. Nearly a third of the electricity produced by Tri-State and its members comes from renewable power sources.

Member co-ops’ contracts with Tri-State, which run through 2050, cap their self-generating capacity at 5% of what they sell to customers; the rest they must buy from Tri-State. That rule is being relaxed after a membership change to Tri-State’s bylaws made in April."