Colorado must triple its wind generation and quintuple its solar capacity to meet 2040 clean energy targets and that will call for a lot of land – land developers say it is hard to come by in some counties.
Counties make the land use rules and in some, “procedural hurdles, community opposition, land use concerns and regulatory gaps can impact projects,” according to a survey done by the Colorado Energy Office.
And those local land use decisions can be at odds with the state’s clean energy goals, according to the energy office report.
“There are places where there are local policies that stall or prevent clean energy projects, which we think hurts economic development and rate payers as well as have an impact on overall state energy planning goals,” said Will Toor, energy office executive director.
This comes in the face of growing electricity demand in Colorado and mandated reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
“There are statewide interests to consider,” Toor said.
Municipal and county officials, however, say counties are open to development and the report has been tailored to serve as a springboard for the Gov. Jared Polis’ administration to dictate energy siting much as it has tried to do with housing.
“I’ve seen this movie before,” said Kevin Bommer, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League. “I know how it ends.”
Toor said the report makes no policy recommendations and is just a departure point for a “vigorous discussion” among stakeholders and local governments.
One thing everyone agrees upon is that there is increasing electricity demand at the same time coal-fired generation is being retired to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The solution: build more clean energy projects.
An analysis done for the energy office estimates, in its most economical scenario, that Colorado will need 11,000 megawatts of wind generation, 12,000 MW of solar, 6,000 MW of four-hour batteries and 3,100 MW of 12-hour batteries, along with 8,000 MW of gas-fired capacity.
“This expansion is equivalent to adding approximately three times the current wind capacity and five times the current solar capacity by 2040,” the report said.
The scenario reduces Colorado’s greenhouse gas emissions 94% over 2005 levels by 2040 at a cost of $56.1 billion – to get to a 100% reduction would cost another $7.5 billion.
The report estimates that photovoltaic solar will need 82,500 acres of land. Wind would have a “direct physical footprint” of 17,000 acres, although the total leased land, much of it left to agriculture, will be 1.7 million acres.
New transmission lines would need 10,000 acres of rights of way and battery storage 560 acres.
So, all told these new installations would require 110,000 acres of land. The report notes that is 0.17% of all the land in Colorado.
Development, however, doesn’t fall evenly across Colorado. Existing wind farms are located in nine counties, with proposed development in a total of about 14 counties.
Solar is more dispersed, but in the past four years some of the biggest photovoltaic projects have been proposed on the Western Slope. This has led a dozen counties to impose solar moratoria while they worked on solar land use regulations, with five of those still in force.
About 38 counties now have solar land use regulations, rules that are sometimes restrictive, according to the energy office report.
The report lists nine solar projects in nine counties that stalled due to public opposition, wildlife issues, concerns about the loss of farmland or failing to comply with local rules and plans.
At the same time, Bommer said, dozens of solar projects were approved by local governments all over the state. The 140 solar facilities in Colorado cover approximately 21,000 acres.
And it isn’t only solar that is facing pushback. Elbert and El Paso counties have rejected Xcel Energy’s proposed route for its $1.7 billion Power Pathway high-voltage transmission line.
The line – a 580-mile loop through 12 counties – is designed to bring wind and solar power from the Eastern Plains to the Front Range. Xcel Energy has asked the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to use its so-called backstop power to overrule the counties.
“The successful siting and permitting of clean energy projects have become a critical challenge,” the energy office report said. “Recent high-profile denials of utility-scale solar projects highlight the complex and sometimes contentious nature of local permitting processes.”
The report was required by Senate Bill 212, the 2024 law aimed at facilitating new energy projects. A draft of the bill had included state siting authority, but that was changed to a study after pushback from local governments.
“The report sort of fell a little flat,” said Kelly Flenniken, executive director of Colorado Counties Inc. “It seemed antagonistic to counties for no clear reason.
“We share the concern and the worry that there is some predetermined path,” Flenniken said. “Should we be keeping our eyes out for a legislative fix to this nonexistent problem?”
Toor, the energy office director, said there is no hidden agenda.
“We are not even making policy recommendations, rather doing an assessment of the current state of clean energy siting in Colorado.”
KC Becker, the executive director of Colorado Solar and Energy Storage Association, a trade group, said the industry isn’t looking for statewide permitting either.
“Would it benefit solar developers, if they have the same thing that oil and gas currently has, which is statewide permitting, sure. But we are not seeking that,” Becker said. “No one’s asking for that.”
Still, municipal and county representatives remain wary. “We continue to be told, you know, that that’s not the intent, but we’re not so sure we buy that,” Flenniken said.
Bommer said “the report just comes out with a strong bias against local regulation of projects … and a presumption that local regulations are roadblocks and not justifiable regulation.”
One of the complaints about the report is that it is based on a lengthy survey that was completed by only a handful of local governments.
“I think they spoke to a dozen counties,” Flennkin said, “and as you know, there’s 64 of them.” Eighteen municipalities were included.
“This seems to indicate a desired outcome in the policy options without actually doing the work,” Bommer said.
The study does have its supporters.
“We think they did a really good job of identifying a lot of the barriers and things that we have to overcome,” said Severiano DeSoto, an energy siting policy advisor at Western Resource Advocates.
“This is really where the rubber meets the road,” DeSoto said. “Colorado has set really high, ambitious greenhouse gas emissions goals, but we can’t do that if we can’t build projects.”
Counties vary and it is only fitting that their regulations would vary as well, Flenniken said.
“The idea that it should just be the same in Weld County and in Boulder County just isn’t a very good argument,” she said.
“The fact remains that in order to meet that goal, some community is going to have to host a project for a very long time, and they have to give up quite a bit in the process to get that project and give up hundreds, if not thousands, of acres,” Flenniken said.
“They need to make sure that that is the right thing that the community wants,” she said. “That they are balancing state goals and local goals.”
The stories of two solar projects in two counties highlighted in the report – one successful and one not – underscore issues around siting and local control.
Seattle-based OneEnergy Renewables got a lease from the Colorado State Land Board on 640 acres of sagebrush and cedar on Wright’s Mesa, about 30 miles northwest of Telluride, where the company planned to install a 100-MW array with thousands of solar panels and a 500-MW storage battery.
When the company held a community meeting in Norwood, the mesa’s one town, population 550, more than 200 mostly angry people showed up.
“We’re not laughing. We’re pissed,” one resident said, according to a news report.
It turned out that the land OneEnergy had set its sights on, while having ready access to a transmission line, was also a vital patch for water resources, wildlife and the mesa’s viewshed.
The ensuing battle spilled all the way to Telluride where the county commission imposed a moratorium on solar projects while it developed a solar land use ordinance.
“OneEnergy acknowledges that it entered the Norwood/San Miguel County communities with a development and community engagement approach that worked in other communities in Colorado, but was not well-adapted for this one,” the energy office report said.
“Norwood and Wright’s Mesa are agricultural, even pastoral, communities that have almost no history of industrial development or industrial uses. OneEnergy states that it was not sensitive to this distinction.”
The energy office survey, however, did not go to Norwood officials.
“Neither the Town of Norwood nor any of our partner agencies were contacted or interviewed for the Colorado Energy Office report, so the Wright’s Mesa example doesn’t accurately reflect what took place here,” Norwood Mayor Candy Meehan said in an email.
“Our community’s response to the OneEnergy proposal was never about opposing solar or clean energy – it was about doing it right,” Meehan said. “Wright’s Mesa relies on a single source-water system, limited fire and EMS capacity, and an agricultural landscape that has almost no history of industrial-scale development. Those realities matter.”
After 18 months, San Miguel County adopted a 43-page land use code and the moratorium was lifted in September 2024.
The energy office report said some developers found the rules “exceptionally lengthy and burdensome.”
One wildlife organization (not identified) while praising the wildlife protection measures in the code said some elements such as a limit on the number of solar facility permits granted in a five-year period and restrictions on the amount of developable prime farmland that can be used to be onerous.
All of which leaves Galena Gleason, a county commissioner and Wright’s Mesa resident, frustrated. The energy office staff spoke to the county planners but not the commissioners.
“Our geographic limitations were the factors that led to the standards and restrictions that are laid out in our code,” Gleason said. “We’re an incredibly remote county with geographic limitations. … We have the mountainous and desert landscapes, limited roads, limited emergency response.”
Large-scale solar is not permitted on Wright’s Mesa, but is allowed anywhere else in the county with some “really ideal sites” on the desert terrain of the county’s west side, Gleason said.
A number of other counties, including Mesa, Routt, Pueblo and Weld, were praised in the report for codes with “clarity, conciseness, and completeness.”
The story of the Garnet Mesa solar project in Delta County had some of the same themes as Wright’s Mesa, but with a very different ending.
Guzman Energy, a clean energy developer and wholesaler, was set to put an 80-MW solar installation on about 470-acres of private land in the county when it ran into opposition from neighbors and worries from the county commission about the loss of farmland.
In March 2022, the county commission rejected a zoning change for the parcel effectively blocking the project. Guzman Energy returned with a plan – approved by the commission – to add irrigation to the site to support grazing as many as 1,000 sheep.
It is now the largest agrivoltaics project in the state.
“What we learned from that project is how important it is to take into consideration the interests of the local community and be aware of the trade-offs that go into any development,” said Robin Lunt, Guzman Energy’s chief commercial officer.
“Solar takes about five to six acres per megawatt, so there’s a lot of land use that goes along with solar, and in counties like Delta County, there’s a strong history and tradition of agriculture,” Lunt said.
There is tension between getting a project done and taking the time to work through local issues, Lunt said.
“It needs to be thoughtful and considered and balancing that with the speed and standardization that is often necessary for $100 million projects to advance,” she said.
That, Lunt added, doesn’t mean “let’s run roughshod through rural communities and do whatever we need to do” because finance providers need to make money.
“Compromise always adds costs,” she said.
Much of the problem stems from the way renewable energy projects are developed and how they are evaluated, Becker said.
“There are a lot more projects being proposed than will never get built, because a lot of developers are looking at projects, looking at sites, trying to put things together,” she said.
When projects are put together, including local permits, they have to bid into a utility’s call for projects or find a buyer for the electricity.
“It becomes the utility’s decision about which one they are going to go with,” she said. “Then you have the PUC considering what amount of power we need.”
“There are all these different players,” Becker said. “Only a fraction of the projects proposed ever get built.”
Still, this could leave a county facing multiple project proposals, even if in the end only one or none is constructed.
Twelve counties surveyed said that they had staffing challenges in dealing with the complex solar applications, while developers complained about a wide range in fees, sometimes expensive, levied by counties.
“We have chosen in the state, and maybe not even consciously, but just by default, a very decentralized process that relies on counties performing all of this work at the local level,” Becker said.
