One year into partnership with Xcel Energy, Boulder beginning projects, developing goals
Oct. 31—It's been a year since Boulder voters approved a franchise agreement with Xcel Energy, pausing its years-long quest to form its own municipally owned utility.
In that time, the city has been working with Xcel to get its new partnership off the ground. It held meetings with the executive team and seated a Community Advisory Panel that will represent residential and commercial electricity and gas customers in Boulder, review projects and make recommendations to the project oversight team.
And the franchise last month was officially approved by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, often referred to as the PUC.
"While franchise agreements typically move pretty expeditiously through the PUC process, ours did actually have to go through a formal litigation process," Energy Manager Carolyn Elam said in Tuesday's Boulder City Council meeting.
Some of the initial projects happening through Boulder's partnership with Xcel Energy include converting streetlights to more-efficient LED lights and moving power lines underground. The city already is working on the latter, as it nears completion on a project moving the main line running along north Broadway from Violet Avenue to U.S. 36 underground. It's been done in conjunction with the ongoing North Broadway reconstruction project.
The partnership, according to city officials, remains centered on Boulder's climate goals: 100% renewable energy by 2030 and 100 megawatts of local renewable energy generation by 2030.
"We retain that goal, even though we know that currently Xcel is not projected to get to that," Elam said. "So part of our goal is to close that gap."
The city recently advocated for this in front of the PUC, the entity tasked with approving Xcel Energy's Electric Resource Plan. Currently, Xcel is proposing a number of steps, including accelerated closure of its coal plants and seven potential portfolios to meet or exceed Colorado's requirement for 80% emissions-free electricity by 2030.
However, in a recent city update, Boulder argued it's important to push the utility company given that Xcel's proposals affect the state's ability to achieve aggressive greenhouse gas reductions and Boulder's ability to achieve its goal of 100% renewable electricity by 2030.
In his PUC testimony, Boulder's Policy Advisor Matt Lehrman said it's well past time for the public utility to work with communities to build a 24/7 zero emissions generation portfolio well before 2050.
"The last resource plans left bids on the table that, if developed, could have produced zero emissions, firm, dispatchable generation — had the business model and cost recovery mechanism been in place," Lehrman said.
Some argue the city should be doing more to ensure the partnership is effective in its primary mission: helping Boulder accomplish its aggressive climate goals.
Residents are "keenly aware that climate change is advancing at an alarming rate, which requires significant action now, not decades down the road," Community Advisory Panel member Julie Zahniser said in an email.
"The Advisory Panel is chomping at the bit to be more informed and involved in helping this partnership move forward to reduce emissions from electricity, which at 44%, is Boulder's great source of (greenhouse gases)," she added.
Among other things, Zahniser said she wants to know the amount of metric tons of greenhouse gas reduction being achieved as a result of completed projects.
In Tuesday's meeting, Elam acknowledged some residents have been pushing for more concrete information about how the partnership is going.
She also noted some of the projects the city hopes to accomplish — such as working with Xcel to forecast the cost and feasibility of replacing the city's current gas infrastructure with infrastructure that supports 100% electrification — require extensive research, while others may require regulatory or legislative changes.
"We're not doing easy things," she said. "We're doing things that require material change to existing systems."
The community may not see immediate impacts, but there will be "large step-wise impacts" that affect local and state-level goals, Elam said.
