The Trump administration’s rollback of policies that improve the climate and protect human health are slowing Colorado’s progress in curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and it will be critical for the state to chart its own path to reach its goals, according to state officials who track air pollution and climate change.
Federal repeals of environmental programs and polices are setting the state back about a year in achieving its emissions goals, said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office. Colorado is about two years behind schedule in achieving its 2030 benchmark of reducing emissions by 50% from a 2005 baseline. Before Trump took office in January, the state was about one year off target, he said.
The state was supposed to reduce emissions by 26% by 2025, but has eliminated an estimated 21%, Toor said. It’s projected to reach a 46% reduction by 2030.
“What we are seeing is that we still are on a very good trajectory, and while the federal actions do slow things down a little bit, it’s a relatively small impact,” Toor said.
Toor acknowledged that Trump has been in charge for just 11 months, and it’s hard to forecast what else might happen, including a looming battle over the closing of coal-fired power plants in Colorado.
Colorado’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report was presented Thursday to the Air Quality Control Commission, a panel appointed by the governor to set rules and regulations to control air pollution.
Overall, Colorado has made progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by creating policies that forced oil and gas companies to lower the amount of methane leaking from wells, a push to use alternative energy sources to power the electrical grid, and regulations that required industrial manufacturers to reduce their pollution.
But the Trump administration’s policies are undoing some of that work.
The Environmental Protection Agency has said it will roll back federal methane rules for the oil and gas industry, although Toor argued those companies still must follow Colorado’s regulations.
The federal government did away with a rule, known as the California waiver, that allowed states to regulate vehicle emissions standards, effectively allowing automakers to produce cars that pollute more. The administration also eliminated funding for solar projects and erased tax incentives that encouraged people to buy electric vehicles.
In Colorado, the U.S. Department of Energy canceled $550 million in funding for clean energy projects, such as $326 million slated for Colorado State University research on reducing methane, a potent planet-warming gas, from oil and gas wells.
All of those moves will hamper Colorado’s efforts to reduce emissions, said Matthew Twyman, a supervisor in the Air Pollution Control Division’s climate change program, during a presentation to the air quality commission Thursday.
Still, the state’s efforts over the past several years are absorbing some of the blow from an administration that denies climate change is real.
“Colorado, in a way, has insulated itself,” Twyman said.
Greenhouse gases such as methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide are released through human action and they trap heat in the atmosphere, causing global temperatures to rise and impacting Earth’s climate. They also affect people’s health, especially children, the elderly and those who live with chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma.
Colorado has been working to eliminate almost all of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, based on 2005 pollution levels. Progress is marked through complex computer modeling systems, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Air Pollution Control Division is required to report its greenhouse gas progress every two years.
Colorado’s push to use solar, wind and batteries instead of coal to generate electricity was the single most effective strategy in eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, Twyman said.
“That’s true statewide, and that trend is about to drop off a cliff,” he said.
One reason for that slide is that only a few coal-fired power plants continue to operate, so the low-hanging fruit has been plucked, Twyman said.
But Xcel Energy has petitioned to keep a coal plant at its Comanche power station in Pueblo open a year longer than planned, saying it needs to meet growing electricity needs. And Toor said there is concern that the federal government will order the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association to keep open its coal-fired plants in Craig, despite plans to shutter its three units by 2028, Toor said.
“It’s not just that it’s going to mean more pollution, but it’s going to be an extra cost for consumers for absolutely no reason,” Toor said. “There’s no need to keep that coal plant open, and it will be very expensive to electric customers across the state.”
But Colorado can control its own destiny.
For example, Gov. Jared Polis is preparing to expand the state’s incentive program for people who buy electric vehicles, said Stefanie Shoup, the deputy director for regulatory affairs at the state’s Air Pollution Control Division. The state earlier this year announced an expansion of its electric vehicle rebate program in the wake of the Republican-controlled Congress eliminating Biden-era tax credits for EV purchases.
Still, the transportation sector — all the cars and trucks on Colorado’s roads — will be a challenge, Twyman said. In the coming years, that sector will replace electricity, which generally has been powered by coal, as the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution.
“It’s very hard to bend 5.5 million people’s choices,” he said. “But it is still bending.”
Agriculture also will move up in the rankings for producing a larger proportion of pollution as other sectors curb emissions, Twyman said. For now, Colorado does not have any policies to regulate emissions from livestock farms or fertilizer applications on crop lands.
“Agriculture is very hard to change,” he said.
But if Colorado is serious about its goal of eliminating 100% of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, hard choices will need to be made.
“The easy efforts may be already plucked,” Twyman said. “How you go about decarbonizing is a harder and harder nut to crack.
“The reality is it’s not that easy. It’s not that pretty.”
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