You know those streaming services that quietly raise their prices every few months, and suddenly you’re paying $49.99 a month to watch one show? That’s what a lot of Coloradans tell me their budgets feel like over the last five years. Except unlike with a streaming service, you can’t unsubscribe from groceries, rent, insurance or heating.
People understandably ask: How does this keep happening?
One reason – not the only one, but a dependable repeat performer – is the hidden tax of bad public policy. These are costs that nobody votes on, but everybody pays. Extra costs that appear on your bill when a regulator you’ve never voted for decides to improve your world by making it more expensive.
A new one is coming your way, and it hits home.
You didn’t vote for a single member of Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission. But that isn’t stopping them from issuing climate-driven rules that pressure Colorado families and businesses to replace their natural-gas heating systems. Without rewriting the laws of physics, regulators have only one practical way to make that happen. And that’s to make natural gas more expensive and push people to switch to electric heat pumps. So the policy translates to: Your furnace still works, but we require that you buy a different one; namely the expensive kind that needs a new electrical panel.
For working families in Durango, Pueblo, the San Luis Valley and Grand Junction, this isn’t some abstract policy. It’s the question of how to keep a home warm in January without creating a financial emergency. Heating is already one of the biggest monthly expenses for many households. When government restricts natural gas used to heat homes and businesses, people deserve to know what that means for their budgets – not just see a graphic about emissions targets.
The assumption behind these mandates is that families can transition smoothly and affordably to heat pumps. That assumption is … optimistic. Heat pumps do a lot of things well, but functioning in subzero temperatures is not one of them. They frequently require costly electrical upgrades, and full-home conversions can run well into the tens of thousands of dollars. For a working family in Bayfield or Dolores, that’s not a “transition” – it’s an unwanted plot twist that hits them hardest.
And even if you pay for the heat pump, don’t forget the electricity rates – because the more we push everyone onto electric heating, the more pressure our already strained grid faces. Colorado has transformer shortages, transmission constraints and growing demand from data centers. More load plus the same infrastructure equal higher prices. These increases eventually show up on your bill under a description like “Regulatory Cost Recovery.” That’s code for “Regulators made a decision and you’re paying for it.”
Meanwhile, the environmental justification is more complicated than advertised. Residential natural gas use is not the primary source of Colorado’s emissions. Modern gas systems are cleaner than they used to be. And heat pumps only reduce emissions if the electric grid is both clean enough and strong enough to handle the load.
When regulators intentionally raise the cost of natural gas or require utilities to spend billions complying with mandates, the expense doesn’t evaporate. It becomes a hidden tax on every household – seniors on fixed incomes, young families juggling child care and heating bills, small businesses doing math they’d prefer not to do. And given how often I hear about affordability concerns in Western and Southern Colorado, this is exactly the wrong direction. Colorado families should not be punished for trying to heat their homes. Turning energy policy into an experiment in forced consumer behavior doesn’t make it wise, it makes it expensive.
Of course, hidden taxes aren’t just a state phenomenon. Washington supplies plenty of them too – costly environmental and energy rules that drive up production costs, permitting delays that inflate electric rates and fuel prices, and federal compliance mandates that quietly bake themselves into everything from groceries to construction materials. I’m fighting those in Congress for the same reason I’m fighting this one: Working families should not have to bankroll regulatory experiments.
Energy policy should start with common sense, not mandates. And common sense says this plainly: No Colorado family should have to pay a hidden tax just to stay warm, or feel like their home-heating bill is the latest streaming service they can’t cancel.
Congressman Jeff Hurd represents Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. He serves on the House Committee on Natural Resources and the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.
