Colorado, like many states in the Rocky Mountains, is rich in natural resources. However, policies in Colorado focused on reducing CO2-emissions are increasingly dictating energy production, energy use, and energy prices.

Aggressive emissions-reduction requirements put in place by 2019 legislation require Colorado to reduce CO2 equivalent emissions by 80% in the power sector and 50% across all sectors against 2005 levels by 2030. The Administration has also released two policy “roadmap” reports on policies aimed at achieving these target reductions. The first was done during the height of the pandemic in 2021 and reflects the realities of the time. The second one was released in February 2024 and outlines aggressive policies to cut CO2 emissions but does not address grid and power reliability, major cost factors for aggressively reducing emissions, nor Colorado’s role in global CO2 emissions. It also does not address Colorado’s ability to compete with other states as the costs of heating and fueling homes, transportation, and manufacturing in Colorado are all underpinned by energy prices, access, and reliability.

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Prior to the Biden-Harris administration, electricity prices had been flat for a decade at around 13 cents per kilowatt-hour. They’re now at 18 cents per kWh—an increase of nearly 30% since 2020.

U.S. consumers are paying more for everything, especially electricity, as price increases ripple through the economy. Although food and housing inflation receive a lot of attention, a hidden cost of both home ownership and renting is rising electricity costs.

This is despite the fact that natural gas powers half of the U.S. grid and prices for it hit record lows this year.

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Trisha Curtis, the president and CEO of PetroNerds, says it’s time to stop fighting and start producing. “In the U.S., we need more energy, so it’s really about building more power generation capacity,” she said. “Then you can argue politically about what you’re going to fuel it with. Coal and natural gas are energy-dense, reliable baseload power sources that are not intermittent,” she said.

Curtis said that the United States has “more than enough” natural gas, noting the challenge there is in building the infrastructure to move the gas to power plants.

Coal, too, has to be part of the domestic energy strategy.

“Stop decommissioning coal,” she said. “You dig it out of the ground, put it next to a power plant, and use it when you need it. Wind and solar aren’t going to cut it — there’s not a lot of power density.”

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Energy groups and advocates described President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright as energy secretary as a return to normality for an agency that, under the Biden administration, has been more of an obstacle than an ally.

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With the 2024 presidential election looming, energy and energy prices are in the news thanks to continually high gasoline prices (resulting from high oil prices) and overall inflation. As Americans look to the country’s future and policies that should take center stage in the next White House, there are a lot of reasons to support American energy producers and domestic oil and gas production.

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The resiliency of US shale continues to confound skeptics. Despite fewer rigs drilling and fewer wells drilled,
US oil production hit 13 million barrels per day (mbd) in July of 2023 and remained above 13 mbd for the last five months of 2023. These production levels, 12.97 mbd on average for full year 2023, are above the pre-Covid record highs of 2019.

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“Wind only works from winds and sun only works from the sun shining, and those are really expensive forms of energy because the intermittency,” Trisha Curtis, chief executive of the consultant group PetroNerds told InsideSources.

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“If we put a pause in the permitting, that tells [the EU and Asia] this natural gas from America may not be available in the future,” Trisha Curtis, CEO of energy consultant Petronerds, told DVJournal.

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“Both wind and solar, they just don’t give you a lot of energy,” Trisha Curtis, chief executive of the consultant group PetroNerds told NHJournal. “They require either a massive base load —  you have to have a backup power for when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining either with coal or with natural gas.”

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