Colorado’s energy future: The high cost of 100 percent renewable electricity by 2040

Preview:

This report is the first in a series of three reports analyzing the costs and reliability impacts of Colorado’s climate change mitigation policies. It is a continuation of the work performed by Center of the American Experiment modeling the cost of renewable energy mandates in states throughout the country.

Key findings from the report include:

• Colorado Governor Jared Polis’s goal of a 100 percent renewable (wind, solar, and batteries) electric grid by 2040 (hereafter, the “Polis Plan”) would cost the state $318.8 billion through 2050.
• Colorado electricity customers (residential, commercial, and industrial) would see their average monthly electricity bills increase to $628 by 2040.
• The transition would reduce the reliability of the grid by making the state more vulnerable to fluctuations in electricity output from weather-dependent energy sources like wind and solar.
• Under the Polis Plan, the electric grid would experience capacity shortfalls, which means there is not enough electricity on the grid to prevent blackouts, due to weather-driven fluctuations in electricity generation from wind and solar facilities.
• Colorado would experience 25 hours of blackouts spread across three separate events in January and early February 2040 if electricity demand and wind and solar output are the same as they were in the year 2021.
• Alternatively, Colorado could meet Polis’s electric-sector decarbonization goals on the same timeline, without reliability issues and at just over a quarter of the cost, by transitioning the state’s generating assets to nuclear energy.

A full copy of the report can be viewed here.