Gov. Bill Ritter has something in common with Sarah Palin, The Durango Herald reports. The Colorado Democrat and the Alaska Republican could hardly be more different politically, except for this: Both governors used their power to take on the gas and oil industry, and both paid a price for it. Ritter rewrote the book on environmental regulations for the industry. Palin raised oil taxes.

Gov. Bill Ritter announced a major piece of legislation Friday that would boost the use of natural gas in the state, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports. In an agreement worked out between Xcel Energy, environmentalists and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, the governor’s plan would be to convert by 2017 several coal-fired power plants on the Front Range to natural gas.

STATE BILL COLORADO
Colorado’s Senate gave final approval to HB10-1001, a bill calling for greater use of energy from renewable sources. Here’s how the state’s media covered the debate.

Denver Business Journal: Colorado stands just two steps away from enacting the second-highest standard in the country for renewable-energy production requirements by utilities, a designation that Democrats say would bring jobs and Republicans say would drive utility costs through the roof. The Colorado Senate gave final approval to a bill Friday that would raise from 20 percent to 30 percent the amount of power that Xcel Energy and other investor-owned utilities serving state residents would have to produce from renewable sources.

The Denver Post: Lawmakers referenced the movies “Alice in Wonderland” and “Ishtar” during a sometimes bizarre debate on a renewable-energy bill that tied up the Senate for a day and a half. Republicans argued that the Democrat-sponsored measure mandates that large utilities rely more heavily on “taxpayer-subsidized energy sources,” mainly wind and solar. They also argued that the bill is designed to benefit union workers. Democrats countered that the legislation will help create long- term jobs and make America less reliant on foreign energy sources.

Summit Daily News: The state Senate approved legislation Friday that would increase the state’s renewable energy standard to 30 percent.

A bill to provide tax incentives for hydroelectric plants sponsored by Sen. Gail Schwartz has passed the state Senate and is headed to the House, the Aspen Daily News reports. The bill would provide hydroelectric plants the same property tax structure as solar and wind power facilities. Schwartz, who chairs the Senate Local Government and Energy Committee, had previously sponsored bills that created tax incentives for renewable energy plants.

The Pitkin County commissioners directed their staff on Tuesday to send a letter to the state Legislature supporting a bill that would mandate utility companies obtain at lease 30 percent of their energy mix from renewable sources, like solar and wind, by 2020, The Aspen Times reports. Colorado currently requires a 20 percent renewable mix by 2020. Voters statewide passed the nation’s first “renewable energy standard” in 2004, which mandated 10 percent renewables be in the state’s mix by 2015. State lawmakers doubled the standard to 20 percent in 2007.

By Debi Brazzale, COLORADO NEWS AGENCY

With the governor nudging the state ever further toward reliance on renewable energy, some lawmakers at the Capitol are proposing to break ground by writing “wind rights” into law so landowners can be assured of their standing. Although a legislative committee today stalled a bill that would accomplish that, saying more study is needed before moving ahead, the foray into uncharted legal territory represents the first of its kind in the nation.

“Wind energy is a growing industry here in Colorado, especially in the Eastern Plains,” said Yuma Republican Rep. Cory Gardner, the bill’s sponsor.  “Colorado should be a welcoming place for wind energy, but we also need to keep in mind the rights of property owners.”

His House Bill 1158 seeks to do just that.  Under current law, space above land and water belongs to the surface owner, but the owner can sell mineral rights, giving access and rights to, for example, drill for oil–called severed rights. However, the law does not specify whether wind is part of the space above land and water and remains unclear on whether the property owner may sell or transfer “wind rights” to another while retaining ownership of the surface land.

Some Colorado landowners are already forging ahead, separating wind rights from their property, and they are using voluntary agreements to determine the right of a developer to install wind turbines on their land.

Gardner is concerned that in the absence of clear and defined wind rights, property owners may be entering into agreements that may or may not be upheld in a dispute.

“Right now, landowners are already severing their wind rights without any guarantees that their contracts will hold up in court,” said Gardner.

House Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resources Committee chair Rep. Randy Fischer, D-Fort Collins, agreed on the need to clarify the parameters of the ad-hoc agreements, citing his concern that a developer, who had negotiated wind rights with a previous landowner, could come in and set up wind turbines without a new owner being aware of the prior agreement.  However, he said he was hesitant to support the measure until the issue was more thoroughly vetted in light of the precedent the measure would set.

“We need to be a little more thoughtful on how we approach this very complicated issue with a clear understanding of rights and responsibility regarding wind as a renewable resource,” said Fischer. “There definitely needs to be clarity if people are starting to do this sort of thing.”

After some discussion, the committee decided to lay the bill over until after the session–effectively tabling it for this year–so that a comprehensive study could be done on the wind rights issue by the legislature’s research staff.

“It’s important to understand that this was the first bill of it’s kind in the nation, so hopefully this study will give us more guidance as we move forward,” said Gardner.

Last week, Gov. Bill Ritter, made a rare appearance before another legislative committee to testify on behalf of a bill to raise the minimum amount of renewable energy that investor-owned utilities in Colorado must use in generating power–from the current standard of 20 percent by 2020 to 30 percent by that year. The proposal, House Bill 1001, accelerates a key component of Ritter’s signature New Energy Economy but is drawing criticism from minority Republicans, who say it’s a potentially costly and overreaching policy that ignores the advantages of cheap and reliable coal power.

By Debi Brazzale, COLORADO NEWS AGENCY

By the year 2020, Colorado will have one the most aggressive standards in the country for renewable energy if lawmakers embrace mandates to make utilities use more wind and solar power. That’s the upshot of legislation championed by Gov. Bill Ritter, personally, in a House committee today.

“It’s time once again to push the envelope and keep Colorado out front as a national leader,” Ritter told the House Transportation and Energy Committee in a rare legislative appearance as lawmakers took up House Bill 1001.

The measure, sponsored by first-term Democratic Rep. Max Tyler, of Golden, and Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Aspen, will raise the minimum amount of renewable energy that investor-owned utilities in Colorado must use in generating power–from the current standard of 20 percent by 2020 to 30 percent by that year. The proposal accelerates a key component of Ritter’s signature New Energy Economy but is drawing criticism from minority Republicans, who say it’s a potentially costly and overreaching policy that ignores the advantages of cheap and reliable coal power.

A proposed provision of the bill allows the Public Utilities Commission to take a look at the efficacy of the energy standards in 2014 and permits the regulatory panel to lower the required percentage if it finds that the higher percentage is no longer in the public interest.

The governor also said that enacting the bill will help create thousands of jobs in Colorado over the next decade, spurring new technologies and innovations in a bid to increase economic, environmental and energy security.

“It will keep the brightest light in what continues to be a very difficult economy shining brightly,” Ritter said.

Yet, the GOP’s Rep. Frank McNulty, of Highlands Ranch, went after the governor over aspects of the bill that presume some forms of energy will be more beneficial than others in the future – despite potential economic drawbacks, and efficiency concerns.

“How important is that to you and to your agenda as you move these pieces forward?” McNulty asked the governor.

“It’s the right path toward environmental challenges, and I think that the science supports this,” Ritter said. “We need to take a leadership role in looking at greenhouse gas emissions and what part of that is caused by humans, and human use, and fossil-fuels use”

Stuart Sanderson of the Colorado Mining Association told the panel in testimony that he is concerned that many employed in the industry will lose their jobs if coal is overlooked in favor of other sources.

“Our concern is that this bill does not mandate the most affordable energy source,” said Sanderson.

Rep. Diane Primavera, D-Broomfield, said she was under the impression that there was a limited supply of coal–less than 20 years’ worth–but Sanderson dissented.

“The Energy Information Administration has projected that there is a 250-year supply,” he said.

Ritter, however, said pushing for greater energy diversity is the only responsible path.

“We absolutely must diversify our energy portfolio in order to protect everything that makes Colorado so special,” Ritter said.

Committee members postponed a vote on the measure until their next meeting although passage is deemed likely; Ritter’s fellow Democrats hold a majority in both chambers of the General Assembly.

A flurry of last-minute negotiations helped forge a compromise between environmentalists and energy firms on a bill to require companies like Xcel to generate more of their energy from renewable sources, The Denver Post reports. Gov. Bill Ritter and a team of Democrats said this morning that House Bill 1001, which gets its first committee hearing today, will bolster home-based energy production from solar and biomass as well as the companies that develop and install those technologies.

State Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, plans to introduce a bill this session that would make it legal to build community “solar gardens,” the Boulder Daily Camera reports. “The intent of (the bill) is so people can have the benefit of what they would get if they had solar panels on their rooftops,” Levy said. “It’s for people who are renters, who live in condominium projects and don’t have rooftops, people whose lots are shaded, people whose houses aren’t the right orientation — a whole variety of things.”

By Gene Davis, DENVER DAILY NEWS
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced Wednesday that former President George W. Bush’s “anywhere, anyhow” policy on oil-and-gas development is coming to an end under a new set of more stringent regulations.
Meanwhile, Colorado Republicans and lobbyists for the oil-and-gas industry slammed the new regulations as being harmful to energy development and job creation.
The regulations will require the department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees onshore drilling activities, to take a more active role in deciding which parcels of federal lands should be leased for oil and gas development. Under the Bush administration, the BLM largely relied on energy companies to nominate the areas they wanted to explore.
“The difference is in the prior administration the oil and gas industry essentially were the kings of the world,” Salazar, a former Colorado Senator, said in a telephone briefing with reporters. “Whatever they wanted to happen essentially happened and the department essentially was the handmaiden of the oil and gas industry.”
Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., however, said that the regulations are just another example of how out of touch the Obama administration is with the American public.
“We need jobs and energy independence, not more roadblocks from this no-domestic-energy administration,” he said.
While the reforms would likely slow the permitting process to search for oil and gas on government lands and decrease the number of acres available for energy exploration, Salazar rejected claims that the Obama administration’s policy change would reduce domestic energy supplies. He added that in the past, the public lands were a “candy store” for the oil and gas industry where they could “walk in and take whatever they wanted.”
Under the regulations, the BLM will continue to accept industry requests regarding where to offer leases. The agency, however, will also promote leasing in already developed areas and will carefully plan for leasing and development in new areas.
BLM staff will also seek more public input and conduct more on-site visits to potential lease areas, rather than work from their offices, to ensure endangered wildlife and habitat would not be harmed from drilling activities.
“We need a fresh look — from inside the federal government and from outside — at how we can better manage Americans’ energy resources,” Salazar said. “The new guidance BLM is issuing for field managers will help bring clarity, consistency and public engagement to the onshore oil and gas leasing process while balancing the many resource values that the Bureau of Land Management is entrusted with protecting on behalf of the American people.”
As of 2005, the oil and gas industry contributed almost $773 million in total business taxes to Colorado while also employing nearly 70,000 people, according to Stan Dempsey of the Colorado Petroleum Institute.
A press release from the Colorado Senate Republicans states that Colorado’s oil and gas development has been hit especially hard by the recession — the number of active rigs operating in Colorado since December 2008 has dropped more than 60 percent. Some in the oil and gas industry and Colorado Republican Party attribute the drop-off to the increased regulations on the industry that Gov. Bill Ritter put into place to increase the protection of Colorado air, wild life, environment and public health.
“Punitive restrictions on this important industry have already caused devastating job losses in my hometown,” said a statement from Rep. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction. “Why on earth would Secretary Salazar want to take Colorado’s job-killing rules national?”
The new oil and gas leasing regulations will be implemented once BLM has completed final internal reviews, according to Salazar’s office.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Distributed by Colorado Capitol Reporters