5 Whistleblowers: CDPHE air pollution supervisors unlawfully told pollution modelers to ignore federal law in drawing up industry permits and also demanded the use of bad data to get permits to fit under EPA emission limits

Denver Post and Colorado Sun articles, April and May 2021

Colorado far from meeting emissions-reduction goals, report says, Denver Post, May 14, 2021. Polis rejects sector-by-sector emissions caps, while a new report from Energy Innovation and the Rocky Mountain Institute shows the state is way off track for meeting 2030 and 2050 goals set by 2019 legislation.  

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) air pollution control supervisors unlawfully told pollution modelers to ignore federal law in drawing up industry permits, and also demanded the use of bad data to get permits to fit under EPA emission limits.

The whistleblowers currently or formerly employed by the Air Pollution Control Division, who have grown from three to five since the complaint first went public March 30, want the AG’s investigation to include new allegations about the state’s handling of multiple coal-fired power plants and Newmont Mining’s Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine in Teller County.  The whistleblowers claim the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment “has not only done a disservice to Colorado’s public, but has unnecessarily endangered their health and wellbeing by exposing them to high levels of air pollution that could and should have been prevented,” according to their attorneys at the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.  The original whistleblower action asked the EPA’s Office of Inspector General to investigate their allegations that air pollution supervisors unlawfully told pollution modelers to ignore federal law in drawing up industry permits, and also demanded the use of bad data to get permits to fit under EPA emission limits. CDPHE says it asked Attorney General Phil Weiser to launch a state probe of those claims; environmental and social justice groups also petitioned Weiser for an investigation.  Weiser’s office has issued a request for proposals from outside counsel.  The new whistleblower claims say state pollution control officials:

  • Ordered staff not to disclose technical analyses to the EPA that showed meteorological data used to model permits at the Comanche, Hayden and Craig power stations did not meet federal guidelines.
  • Misled the EPA with “false interpretations of data” on modeling of one-hour pollution emissions at Pawnee and Drake power plants, in order to get results to comply with federal limits. 
  • Engaged “in preferential treatment and non-public arrangements with some permit applicants,” including Cherokee Power Station.
  • Engaged in “environmental racism towards the residents of Commerce City” by not complying with certain Clean Air Act requirements on a permit for Cherokee, which is in Adams County. 
  • Engaged in “wrongdoing” in approving permits for the Cripple Creek & Victor mine, one of the largest gold mines in the Western Hemisphere, by approving “substandard” pollution monitoring methodologies not approved by the EPA.

5 CDPHE Staff Join Whistleblower Complaint: Allegations Widen Attorney General Phil Weiser will hire an independent investigator to probe whether employees at the state Department of Public Health and the Environment falsified data and illegally issued air quality permits. Read more HERE. Two more people have now joined the complaint for a total of five. They have asked the attorney general to expand the investigation to include new allegations about multiple coal plants and mines. More details HERE. A broader roster of in-house complainants wants the investigation widened to include allegations about power plant and gold mine permits issued by state Michael Booth, Colorado Sun, May 7, 2021

Xcel Energy’s Comanche Generating Station, shown here in a March 5, 2020, photo, is the largest power plant in Colorado. The steam-driven, coal-fueled plant, located in Pueblo, generates 1,410 megawatts of power. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Attorneys for the whistleblowing state air pollution division employees late Friday asked the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to broadly expand the scope of its previously announced investigation into the state health department’s handling of numerous industry permits. 

The whistleblowers currently or formerly employed by the Air Pollution Control Division, who have grown from three to five since the complaint first went public March 30, want the AG’s investigation to include new allegations about the state’s handling of multiple coal-fired power plants and Newmont Mining’s Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine in Teller County.  The whistleblowers claim the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment “has not only done a disservice to Colorado’s public, but has unnecessarily endangered their health and wellbeing by exposing them to high levels of air pollution that could and should have been prevented,” according to their attorneys at the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.  The original whistleblower action asked the EPA’s Office of Inspector General to investigate their allegations that air pollution supervisors unlawfully told pollution modelers to ignore federal law in drawing up industry permits, and also demanded the use of bad data to get permits to fit under EPA emission limits. CDPHE says it asked Attorney General Phil Weiser to launch a state probe of those claims; environmental and social justice groups also petitioned Weiser for an investigation.  Weiser’s office has issued a request for proposals from outside counsel. 

The new whistleblower claims say state pollution control officials:

  • Ordered staff not to disclose technical analyses to the EPA that showed meteorological data used to model permits at the Comanche, Hayden and Craig power stations did not meet federal guidelines.
  • Misled the EPA with “false interpretations of data” on modeling of one-hour pollution emissions at Pawnee and Drake power plants, in order to get results to comply with federal limits. 
  • Engaged “in preferential treatment and non-public arrangements with some permit applicants,” including Cherokee Power Station.
  • Engaged in “environmental racism towards the residents of Commerce City” by not complying with certain Clean Air Act requirements on a permit for Cherokee, which is in Adams County. 
  • Engaged in “wrongdoing” in approving permits for the Cripple Creek & Victor mine, one of the largest gold mines in the Western Hemisphere, by approving “substandard” pollution monitoring methodologies not approved by the EPA.

The attorneys, Chandra Rosenthal and Kevin Bell, said they included substantial documentation of the employees’ and former employees’ accusations in their filing with the attorney general. 

After the AG’s investigation request was first made, state officials said they felt they were within the bounds of what was legal. A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office said they would have no comment Friday. 

**

Suncor Update: Exciting Win for Cultivando Cultivando’s independent air-monitoring proposal wins approval for just under $1 million of the Suncor settlement funds. Read more about the settlement HERE. Also tying Suncor to the whistleblower complaint, the draft Suncor permit was cited in a 2010 guidance memo that has since been “retired” after the whistleblowers claimed it was illegal. More details HERE.

New Podcast: Eco! Colorado In partnership with Safe and Healthy Colorado, Trish Garcia-Nelson (from Bella Romero), Ean Tafoya (Green Latinos), and Henry Lai have started a podcast called Eco! Colorado that gives environmental news in bite-size chunks. Check out the podcast HERE. The first one is about Suncor’s Title 5 permit renewals.

Value of (Distributed) Solar – Blog Series This month’s entry examines a study by Michigan Technological University that finds that distributed solar decreases the utility’s costs, which in turn should decrease the rates of ratepayers who don’t have solar. Read the story on the CEA website HERE.

May 16, 2021 Written By Mark Miesch

The first article in this series, The Cheapest Grid of the Future Includes Distributed Solar, made the case that distributed solar makes the grid cheaper as a whole. But might utilities also benefit from greater use of distributed solar?

A recent study from Michigan Technological University (MTU) suggests that the answer to the question above is yes [1][2]. The idea is that the production of solar energy by homes, businesses, and communities can be harnessed by the utility to provide energy to other users. This is often handled through a system called net metering in which producer/consumers only pay for their net usage. For example, let’s say that the solar panels on your roof generate more energy during the day than you actually use. This energy would go back into the utility grid. But, during the night, when your solar panels are no longer producing, you may take energy back out of the grid to power your home. You only pay for the difference. In effect, the utility is purchasing energy from you each day at the same price that they are selling it to you each night.

But according to the MTU study, net metering greatly underestimates the benefits of distributed solar to the utility. Why? Because it allows the utilities to avoid various costs and liabilities, which, ideally, are passed on to all ratepayers. Among these avoided costs is the energy generation itself; if consumers provide energy through distributed solar, then this reduces the energy generation needed from new and existing power plants. As found by the VCE study in the last article, this reduces not only the average electrical demand but also (disproportionately) the peak demand, so power plants can be smaller and more efficient, operating closer to capacity for longer. Cost savings from transmission and distribution infrastructure, also highlighted in the VCE study, further benefit the utility companies. The MTU study includes additional benefits to the utility companies from avoided environmental and health liability costs, which are expected to grow.

Despite these benefits, utilities may still prefer to sell consumers power produced from a solar farm (which would also avoid environmental and health liabilities) than manage power from distributed systems. But the two are not mutually exclusive; in the optimal clean-energy VCE scenario, the power generation from utility-scale solar is actually greater with co-optimized distributed solar than without (offset largely by a reduction in nuclear power generation).

The conclusion to be drawn from the VCE and MTU studies is that, as a society, our energy future must include a healthy mixture of solar farms, community solar, and rooftop solar. Utility-scale solar alone is not enough. Bringing distributed solar into the mix not only offers cost benefits for the consumers and for the utility companies themselves, but it also increases opportunities for private investment and employment: new jobs to build a new, improved electrical grid. Other advantages of distributed solar include improved reliability and robustness: spreading out solar power generators over a wider area guards against power outages due to mechanical problems, transmission failures, and weather.

[1] “A Review of the Value of Solar Methodology with a Case Study of the U.S. VOS”, K.S. Hayibo &
J.M. Pearce, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 137 (2021) 110599
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032120308832?via%3Dihub

[2] “Shining a Light on the True Value of Solar Power” Christensen, Michigan Tech News,

The Value of Solar – Distributed Solar Benefits Everyone (Even Utilities)

May 16, 2021 Written By Mark Miesch

The first article in this series, The Cheapest Grid of the Future Includes Distributed Solar, made the case that distributed solar makes the grid cheaper as a whole. But might utilities also benefit from greater use of distributed solar?

A recent study from Michigan Technological University (MTU) suggests that the answer to the question above is yes [1][2]. The idea is that the production of solar energy by homes, businesses, and communities can be harnessed by the utility to provide energy to other users. This is often handled through a system called net metering in which producer/consumers only pay for their net usage. For example, let’s say that the solar panels on your roof generate more energy during the day than you actually use. This energy would go back into the utility grid. But, during the night, when your solar panels are no longer producing, you may take energy back out of the grid to power your home. You only pay for the difference. In effect, the utility is purchasing energy from you each day at the same price that they are selling it to you each night.

But according to the MTU study, net metering greatly underestimates the benefits of distributed solar to the utility. Why? Because it allows the utilities to avoid various costs and liabilities, which, ideally, are passed on to all ratepayers. Among these avoided costs is the energy generation itself; if consumers provide energy through distributed solar, then this reduces the energy generation needed from new and existing power plants. As found by the VCE study in the last article, this reduces not only the average electrical demand but also (disproportionately) the peak demand, so power plants can be smaller and more efficient, operating closer to capacity for longer. Cost savings from transmission and distribution infrastructure, also highlighted in the VCE study, further benefit the utility companies. The MTU study includes additional benefits to the utility companies from avoided environmental and health liability costs, which are expected to grow.

Despite these benefits, utilities may still prefer to sell consumers power produced from a solar farm (which would also avoid environmental and health liabilities) than manage power from distributed systems. But the two are not mutually exclusive; in the optimal clean-energy VCE scenario, the power generation from utility-scale solar is actually greater with co-optimized distributed solar than without (offset largely by a reduction in nuclear power generation).

The conclusion to be drawn from the VCE and MTU studies is that, as a society, our energy future
must include a healthy mixture of solar farms, community solar, and rooftop solar. Utility-scale
solar alone is not enough. Bringing distributed solar into the mix not only offers cost benefits
for the consumers and for the utility companies themselves, but it also increases opportunities
for private investment and employment: new jobs to build a new, improved electrical grid. Other
advantages of distributed solar include improved reliability and robustness: spreading out solar
power generators over a wider area guards against power outages due to mechanical problems,
transmission failures, and weather.

[1] “A Review of the Value of Solar Methodology with a Case Study of the U.S. VOS”, K.S. Hayibo &
J.M. Pearce, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 137 (2021) 110599
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032120308832?via%3Dihub

https://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2021/february/shining-a-light-on-the-true-value-of-solar-power.htm

Methane blog article HERE.

Coal Burning Not the Right Path to Secure Pueblo’s Future See Leslie Glustrom’s op-ed to Xcel and the Pueblo community about Pueblo Unit 3 HERE.

Xcel-Colorado (PSCo) Still Contributing More to Xcel’s Earnings than Minnesota This trend continues in the first quarter of 2021, even though Minnesota has a larger system, more capital expenditures, and more employees. Source: Xcel Energy First Quarter 2021 Earnings Report, Page 5

RMI Report Reveals Colorado is Far From Meeting Its Emissions-Reduction Goals Far short of Colorado’s legislated GHG reduction goals of 50% by 2030 and 90% by 2050, a Rocky Mountain Institute Report says Colorado is on track for just 3.4% by 2030 and 18% by 2050. More details and the full report can be found HERE.

CEA supports:

HB21-1269 | Public Utilities Commission Study Of Community Choice Energy – Up for House Vote

HB21-1238 | Public Utilities Commission Modernize Gas Utility Demand-side Management Standards – Passed House

HB21-1246 | PERA Public Employees’ Retirement Association Divestment From Fossil Fuel Companies – Failed

HB21-1266 | Environmental Justice Disproportionate Impacted Community – Passed House

SB21-200 | Reduce Greenhouse Gases Increase Environmental Justice

SB21-238 | Create Front Range Passenger Rail District – Story – Passed Senate

SB21-246 | Electric Utility Promote Beneficial Electrification – Passed Senate

SB21-108 | PUC Gas Utility Safety Inspection Authority – CEA supports, but would like to see inspection authority consolidated under one agency, like the Air Pollution Control Division, which already has inspection capabilities – Passed Senate

HB21-1189 | Regulate Air Toxics – Passed House

CEA opposes:

SB21-072 | Public Utilities Commission Modernize Electric Transmission Infrastructure – CEA opposes as written – needs assurances that other solutions will be preferred before new transmission is built. – Passed Senate

Back to the well, Searchlight New Mexico, May 19, 2021. In 2020, oil and gas funds made up more than a third of the state’s general fund, leading Gov. Grisham and the Democrat-majority legislature to focus on a future energy transition there. See also Analysis finds $8.1 billion gap in New Mexico bonding requirements, clean up costs for oil and gas, NM Political Report, May 20, 2021. But also see New Mexico strengthens proposed regulations to reduce greenhouse gases, Capital & Main, May 12, 2021, and ‘You’re fracking welcome.’ Billboard points to strain between oil and gas, Santa Fe, Carlsbad Current Argus, May 17, 2021.

Colorado’s coal country searches for “the next thing” to keep communities afloat, Denver Post, May 16, 2021. The state embarks on a years-long effort to protect people, main streets, and budgets through its new Office of Just Transition, which stands to get a substantial boost in state funding from this year’s legislative session. 

White House announces efforts to curb emissions in buildings, Reuters, May 17, 2021. The Biden administration announces it is setting new efficiency performance standards for federal buildings and speeding up adoption of technologies to heat buildings with electricity rather than fossil fuels. See also Department of Energy launches a national initiative for clean heating and cooling systems in buildings, DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy news release, May 19, 2021, touting its Initiative for Better Energy, Emissions, and Equity (E3 Initiative).

The EPA updates its Climate Change Indicators in the United States on the agency’s webpages, detailing how the nation has entered unprecedented territory, in which climate effects are more visible, changing faster, and becoming more extreme. The Trump administration essentially sat on the release of the data. See U.S. has entered unprecedented climate territory, EPA warns, Washington Post, May 12, 2021.