The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission, or ECMC, which regulates the oil and gas industry, said Wednesday that it issued what’s called notices of alleged violations to seven companies. The companies have 28 days to file a response and hearings will be held.

The ECMC announced in November 2024 that it was looking into reports that two Denver-area environmental consultants hired by Colorado oil and gas operators had submitted false data on tests of soil, groundwater and contamination at hundreds of locations in Weld County. The results are intended to show whether work to clean up spills and waste meet state standards.

The information stretched from 2021 to 2024 and was submitted on behalf of oil and gas companies. The ECMC has said it started investigating when operators notified the state of potential problems

ECMC staffers said Wednesday that the manipulated data ranged from wrong signatures to incorrect dates to results falsely showing that chemicals were below levels considered harmful. In a case the staff called an extreme example, levels of benzene, a component of crude oil known to cause cancer, was actually over the threshold considered safe by an order of three times. The benzene was in the ground, not the air.

“This remains a disheartening and heavy subject and as you will hear, our investigation has revealed further issues than were initially reported to us,” ECMC Director Julie Murphy told commission members during a hearing.

The investigation continues and it is taking time to determine what information submitted to the state is accurate or not, Murphy said. All the sites affected by the falsified data must be retested, investigated and brought up to state state standards.

Staffers said the ECMC has established additional safeguards to prevent falsified data from being turned in and is examining records for potential problems. A random sampling of documents should be completed by the end of September.

The agency believes there is no new risk to public health beyond the original conditions that prompted the work. Most of the sites are in unincorporated Weld County. A few locations are in the following communities: Berthoud, Dacono, Erie, Evans, Firestone, Fort Lupton, Frederick, Greeley, Johnstown, Keenesburg, Kersey, Milliken, Northglenn, Platteville, Severance and Windsor.

The ECMC issued notices of alleged violations to Kerr McGee Oil and Gas, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corp., and Noble Energy, a subsidiary of Chevron USA. The following subsidiaries of Denver-based Civitas Resources also received notices: 8 North, Bonanza Creek Energy Operating Company, Crestone Peak Resources Operating LLC, Extraction Oil & Gas and Highpoint Operating Corporation.

Eagle Environmental Consulting submitted data on behalf of Chevron and Civitas Resources, according to the ECMC. Tasman Geosciences submitted information on behalf of Occidental Petroleum.

A spokesman for Tasman said the company notified Occidental when it first became aware of issues with the data. The oil and gas operator then contacted the state, the ECMC said.

“When Civitas Resources learned of the falsified reports by our third-party contractor, we notified the ECMC and conducted our own internal audit to understand the extent of the wrongdoing by the individual assigned to our compliance,” the company said in an email.

Civitas is quickly seeking to remedy the contractor’s failures and create new requirements to prevent this from happening again, the company added.

Occidental is reviewing the notice from the ECMC, spokeswoman Jennifer Brice said. The company was told by a third-party consultant in late 2024 that one of its employees had altered data related to some of its sites, she said.

“We promptly reported the issue to the ECMC and immediately began working with regulators to remedy the issue,” Brice said. “We are committed to ensuring that everything submitted on behalf of Oxy is accurate.”

Chevron said when it became aware of the falsified information, it launched an investigation, disclosed a list of potentially affected locations to the ECMC, hired additional personnel to review contractors’ reports and increased its audits of laboratory reports and third-party consultants.

“We remain committed to conducting business in full compliance with the laws and regulations in Colorado, as well as in all other jurisdictions in which we do business,” Chevron said in a statement.

The ECMC referred the matter to criminal prosecutors for further review and said it will cooperate with the appropriate law enforcement as requested.

Updated July 23, 2025, at 4:33 p.m. to add comment.

Republicans cheered President Donald Trump’s signing of the “big, beautiful bill” on July 4 as “driving down energy costs.” But homeowners planning to install solar panels were hit with a tight deadline to claim thousands of dollars in tax credits.

In addition to slashing federal funding, the nearly 900-page bill eliminated the solar tax credit that homeowners could claim for installing solar panels on their properties.

Here’s what you need to know about the changes to the solar tax credit and how it’ll likely affect everyone — including those without solar panels.

What is the solar tax credit?

The solar tax credit, also known as the residential clean energy credit, reduces homeowners’ taxes if they install qualifying solar equipment. It essentially lets homeowners use money they would have paid in taxes to install solar energy systems. Taxpayers can claim up to 30% of the installation costs for new clean energy systems on their properties.

The incentive often makes the upfront costs of switching to renewable energy more affordable for homeowners, and it has saved Americans a lot of money. In fact, more than 1.2 million taxpayers claimed $6.3 billion with the residential energy tax credit during the 2023 tax year, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Rooftop solar electricity systems represented 60% of those claims.

What’s changed for the solar tax credit?

The current version of the solar tax credit was introduced as part of former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which continued a tax break for homeowners who installed solar panels through 2034. The IRS planned to phase out the credit starting in 2033 rather than end it abruptly.

However, Trump’s bill ends the solar tax credit on December 31, 2025 — cutting off nine years of potential savings for consumers who were considering certain renewable energy systems. The end-of-year deadline also drastically reduces the time people have to schedule qualifying installations.

Homeowners who want to claim the solar tax credit for the 2025 tax year need to make a financial transaction before the new December 31 deadline, says Hector Castaneda, a certified professional accountant and president of Castaneda CPA and Associates. That means either paying with cash or financing the purchase ahead of the deadline.

What this means for consumers

Ending the solar tax credit can have far-reaching ramifications for consumers — even those who never planned to switch to solar panels.

More expensive solar installations

The average installation costs for solar panels was $27,720 in early 2025, according to EnergySage, an online solar marketplace. The federal solar tax credit saved homeowners an average of $8,316, dropping the price to $19,404.

But anyone purchasing solar panels for their homes after 2025 will have to rely only on state-based incentives to save money. States vary in what incentives they offer, saving some residents money upfront with sales tax exemptions, or money over time with property tax exemptions. But even combined with local tax credits and rebates for solar installations, state incentives won’t make up for the thousands of dollars in savings homeowners will lose after 2025.

To complicate matters, solar panel costs were already becoming volatile before Trump rang the solar tax credit’s death knell. Tariffs on imported solar components and equipment began affecting the industry earlier this year, creating uncertainty about supply chain reliability and affordability.

Cal Morton, owner of EasTex Solar, a solar installer serving the East Texas region, says the tariffs kicked off a turbulent market for solar companies. “It was already the craziest year that I can think of,” Morton says.

Consumers quickly began to feel the effects of an unstable market. The average cost of residential solar energy systems increased 3% between the first quarters of 2024 and 2025, according to a June 2025 Wood Mackenzie report. Prices are likely to continue to rise, making the solar market more unsteady without the solar tax credit.

Longer payback periods for new systems

Homeowners who purchase solar panels without the benefits of the solar tax credit will likely pay a higher price tag. This translates to a longer gap between solar installation and breaking even with a system’s savings, also known as the payback period.

The average payback period for solar customers was just over seven years in early 2025, according to EnergySage. But homeowners in some areas were already looking at closer to 20 years before breaking even on their purchases. Price hikes and the loss of the tax credit will likely lengthen those payback periods.

Lease, PPA and battery trends

As homeowners back away from solar panel purchases, companies that offer leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs) are likely to become the major competitors, says Chris Hopper, co-founder and chief executive officer of Aurora Solar, a software platform that streamlines the solar array design process for installers.

Homeowners might be able to still save money after 2025 by leasing solar panels or entering a PPA before July 4, 2026, when solar companies’ tax credits change. These arrangements allow homeowners to generate solar energy without purchasing the equipment, while the companies that own the equipment receive a tax break. If a company passes on that tax break to the consumer, it can lower the overall cost of the system.

Additionally, the deadline changes don’t apply to solar battery purchases. Homeowners who purchase batteries to use as storage systems, such as pairing with a new or existing solar energy system, can claim a tax credit to offset up to 50% of the cost. The credit will begin to phase out in 2034 and end on December 31, 2035.

Less solar power and higher electricity bills

The elimination of the solar tax credit comes at the same time that the U.S. energy market is experiencing a growing demand for power, Hopper says. Solar energy has been helping with that demand. It was responsible for 69% of the new electricity-generating capacity that utility companies added to the U.S. power grid in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Wood Mackenzie report from June 2025.

Although commercial solar projects can continue to see tax benefits longer than residential systems, they tend to take longer to put into operation. The lengthy timeline means less solar energy production to support the growing need for more energy in the meantime.

Energy Innovation, a non-partisan think tank specializing in energy, climate research and policy analysis, estimates that the loss of that additional energy will raise the cost of electricity for consumers.

Janice DiPietro, chief integration and customer officer at ReVision Energy, a New England-based solar company, agrees. She cites the combination of new tariffs, the loss of the solar tax credit and the increased demand for power as primary factors.

“As a result, electricity rates will increase at a faster than average pace,” DiPietro said by email.

Whitney Vandiver writes for NerdWallet. Email: wvandiver@nerdwallet.com.

The article The Solar Tax Credit Is Ending: What That Means for Homeowners originally appeared on NerdWallet.

Xcel has proposed strategies for providing electricity across its territory in Colorado while meeting growing demands for power and preparing to close its last coal plant by the end of 2030. What’s called a just transition plan includes ways to assist communities facing the loss of jobs and revenue as retirements of the utility’s coal facilities are accelerated.

But in a recent hearing, the chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission questioned Xcel about a forecast that residential customers could see a roughly 50% increase in rates in 2031 when compared with 2024 levels while commercial and industrial rates remain flat.

The Office of the Consumer Utility Advocate filed a new document with the PUC that said questions about which customers will bear the brunt of serving “large load” users, such as data centers, “are the most significant issues” for the office.

A filing by two environmental groups said Colorado “stands at the precipice of allowing a massive cross-subsidy from existing ratepayers to new large load customers.” The current approach to allocating costs “grossly underrepresents the system costs driven by new large loads,” Western Resource Advocates and the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project said.

“This has just really ballooned beyond what we need. I think it’s just an oversized plan and the PUC needs to right size it,” said Danny Katz, executive director of the CoPIRG Foundation, a consumer advocacy organization.

Katz said Xcel’s plan for up to 14 gigawatts of new electricity is beyond what it will need to replace the output from its coal facilities, including the 750-megawatt unit of the Comanche Generating Station in Pueblo. The unit would be Xcel’s last coal plant in Colorado.

There are 1,000 kilowatts in a megawatt and 1,000 megawatts in a gigawatt. There are different variables, but a 1 gigawatt facility could power about 340,000 homes, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Xcel wants to replace the power being turned off with more wind and solar power, battery storage and natural gas.

Ratepayers left on the hook?

Katz said it’s reasonable for Xcel to plan for new generation considering demands created by more electric vehicles, heat pumps, further electrification of buildings and the prospect of more data centers opening in the state.

“But there’s no guarantee that we’re going to see as big of an increase in energy needs for these data centers,” Katz said. “History has shown us there have been projections where energy growth is going to be huge and it wound up not meeting those expectations and led to overbuilding the energy grid at higher costs.”

He also criticized sections of the plan that would establish a $500 million fund to pre-purchase equipment and another fund for emerging technologies. CoPIRG held a news conference Thursday to encourage members of the public to comment on Xcel’s plan.

“It’s critical the PUC only approves what is needed and doesn’t leave ratepayers on the hook for any unnecessary expenses,” said Katz.

The PUC has gathered comments and testimony and is expected to start deliberations in early to mid-August. Other proceedings will deal with what costs the PUC will authorize Xcel to recover from ratepayers.

Even people who question Xcel Energy’s proposal acknowledge the challenges the utility faces. Xcel, Colorado’s largest electric utility, must meet state goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions; forecast and prepare for anticipated higher-than-normal demands for electricity; help provide a just transition for workers and communities affected by coal facility closures; and build out new power sources when federal incentives and programs for renewable energy are disappearing.

Besides Pueblo, Moffat, Routt and Rio Blanco counties, home to coal plants and mines, will be hit hard by the phasing out of coal operations.

Xcel Energy spokeswoman Michelle Aguayo said the company is investing in reducing wildfire risks across its system, enhancing the distribution grid to meet growing customer needs and to integrate electric vehicles, solar installations and storage batteries.

“For the last several decades, energy growth has been flat as technological efficiency combined with our nationally recognized energy efficiency programs have allowed customers to do more with less consumption. That dynamic is changing and with that, how we plan our system must change as well,” Aguayo said in an email.

The demand for power could grow at a compounded rate of 4% through 2031, compared with an average annual rate of 0.7% over the past five years, according to a forecast Xcel filed with the PUC. In 2024, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy said it planned to spend $45 billion on capital investments in the next five years, with about $22 billion of that targeted for Colorado.

The company said the surge in demand for electricity is being driven by the electrification of homes, businesses and transportation and the need for more power to run large computing centers as the use of artificial intelligence expands. Data centers consume large volumes of electricity and water for cooling.

Xcel, which serves portions of eight states, said a substantial portion of the growth in its data-center customers will likely be in Colorado.

However, Western Resource Advocates and the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project said in their filing that Xcel Energy has seen requests from large-load users withdrawn during consideration of the company’s plan. They said the record in the case shows that service requests from data centers in particular are speculative.

What more data centers might mean for Colorado customers came up during a June 23 PUC meeting on Xcel’s plan. Eric Blank, commission chairman, asked about Xcel’s forecasts showing that residential customers could see their rates jump by roughly 50% by 2031 over 2024 rates while bills for commercial and industrial customers could remain flat.

“You can see the commission’s concern with this larger residential rate increase, while the (commercial and industrial) transmission rates are declining in real terms,” Blank said.

Jack Ihle, Xcel’s regional vice president for regulatory policy, replied that upgrades to the distribution system and other costs affect residential customers but not commercial and industrial ratepayers. He added there’s room to consider how costs are allocated among different types of customers.

Recommendations to the PUC on Xcel’s proposal include creating a rate class just for customers consuming large loads of electricity.

Aguayo said the projected rates show trends and aren’t meant to be as accurate as calculations in a rate-setting case.

“To address how costs are allocated across customer classes, in an upcoming proceeding we will engage with the Commission and stakeholders on the appropriate allocations, terms, and conditions for new large loads,” Aguayo said. “To be clear, we will not engage in contracts with data centers that will disadvantage our residential customers.”

The EPA published a notice in the Federal Register that it intends to deny Colorado’s plan to shutter coal-fired power plants as part of the state’s strategy to reduce the regional haze that clouds views at Rocky Mountain National Park and other federal lands. Colorado was previously allowed to list coal-plant closures as an acceptable strategy to reduce haze.

Cyrus Western, director of EPA Region 8, which includes Colorado, affirmed to The Denver Post that the denial is part of the Trump administration’s plan to make sure no federal regulations stand in the way of coal-fired power generation.

Western, a Trump appointee from Wyoming, which is the nation’s largest producer of coal, did not say the EPA would override Colorado’s laws that require the coal-burning plants to close, although the Federal Register notice indicates the agency might do so.

“What the legislature does and what the governor does, the laws they pass, that is the state’s business,” Western said. “But from a federal standpoint, we want to be sure there will not be a single shutdown of a coal-fired generation unit because of federal regulation or by the federal government breathing down their necks.”

The EPA’s proposal alarmed environmentalists who have been leery of President Donald Trump’s repeated remarks about “beautiful, clean coal” and his executive orders that promote the coal industry.

The president this year has used executive orders — citing energy emergencies — to force coal plants to remain open in Michigan and Pennsylvania. And the EPA under Trump’s leadership has proposed repealing Biden administration regulations that would have reduced greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants and required the power sector to cut mercury and other air toxics.

“It’s in keeping with the ideology of this administration to do everything possible to prop up the dying coal industry,” said Jeremy Nichols, senior advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s absurd.”

The ruling is a pivot from past EPA decisions that allow the closing of coal-fired power plants to count toward clean air goals, Nichols said, and it could pave the way for Xcel Energy and other utilities to keep their coal-fired plants running.

“It doesn’t help to have the EPA telling the state it’s illegal to close coal-fired power plants,” Nichols said. “This is a punch in the face to Colorado’s climate progress.”

But Colorado regulators said the EPA’s proposed denial of Colorado’s plans will not have an impact on the state because the retirement dates for all of the state’s remaining coal plants remain enforceable under state law and the transition already is underway.

“Utilities are moving away from coal because it’s no longer the most affordable or reliable option,” said Michael Ogletree, senior director of state air quality programs at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. “Many coal plants have already shut down or are on track to retire — driven by economics and cost savings for consumers, not federal mandates. That transition is locked in through utility planning and will continue regardless of this federal decision.”

Gov. Jared Polis’ office reiterated the point that the utility companies operating in the state already have plans to close those plants.

“Colorado utilities have their own ambitious plans to reduce costs, including retiring costly coal plants to transition to more stable clean energy, and lower costs,” Ally Sullivan, a governor’s spokesperson, said in an email. “The EPA’s proposed denial has no meaningful impact on utilities’ plans to move away from coal because it’s no longer the most affordable or reliable option.”

Utilty wants to keep plant open

However, the EPA’s notice in the Federal Register stated that Colorado Springs Utilities told the agency in April that it wants to exclude its Ray D. Nixon Power Plant in Fountain from the state’s closure plans. The utility also met with state regulators on April 23 to ask that Nixon be allowed to remain open, according to the Federal Register notice.

Danielle Nieves, a Colorado Springs Utilities spokesperson, said the company is still scheduled to shutter Nixon in 2029, but that date is causing reliability challenges and the utility is having difficulties finding resources for the transition to renewable energy.

“The market for renewable energy resources across the country is tremendously challenging with ongoing supply chain congestion and regulatory uncertainty — resulting in renewable energy resources being three to five times more expensive than originally forecasted,” she said in an email.

Nieves said the utility is supportive of the EPA’s recommendation to exclude Nixon from the regional haze plan “because Colorado doesn’t need the Nixon closure to achieve its reasonable progress targets, and that choosing to include Nixon could present serious reliability challenges for Colorado Springs Utilities.”

Spokeswoman Michelle Aguayo said Xcel remains committed to retiring its coal units — including the Comanche Generating Station in Pueblo — by the end of 2030.

“Nothing in this action from the Environmental Protection Agency directly changes our Colorado resource plans,” she said in an emailed statement.

Although Western said that “what Colorado does is Colorado’s business,” the EPA’s notification argued that the Clean Air Act does not give states the ability to order coal power plants to close, citing the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the government from taking private property without just compensation.

The EPA also argues — although without specific evidence — that forcing the closures would violate Colorado state law.

Coal is one of the dirtiest forms of electricity generation, annually releasing millions of tons of pollutants into the air that contribute to global warming and harm human health. Those emissions include carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, sulfur dioxide and fine particulate matter. Those power plants also create a coal ash byproduct that leaches contaminants such as lithium and selenium into groundwater.

‘Turning that progress backwards’

Coal emissions help create a haze in the skies, and that haze has become a problem at national parks across the country, including Rocky Mountain National Park, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Mesa Verde National Park and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, said Tracy Copolla, the National Parks Conservation Association’s Colorado program manager.

“We are still in a situation where there is significant regional haze in Colorado,” Copolla said. “It goes for miles and miles and miles.”

Ulla Reeves, the National Park Conservation Association’s clean air program director, said the EPA’s proposal is undercutting Colorado’s progress to clean its air.

“Colorado had one of the strongest plans that we’ve seen in the entire country,” Reeves said. “This is really turning that progress backwards. It’s extremely concerning what the EPA is doing here and undercutting the state’s authority.”

The EPA opened a 60-day public comment period on the proposed rule and multiple environmental groups said they plan to weigh in. They hope Colorado does as well.

“The state really needs to flex its muscles and try to stymie the feds,” Nichols said.

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At 75, Stilp is still at it — now protesting Baltimore-based Constellation’s plans to restart a reactor at the Harrisburg-area power plant, one not involved in the accident, in a deal with Microsoft. Stilp, who has lived nearby for decades, started Stop TMI Restart last fall. The group has about 32 members.

“We are two generations away from the accident that happened at Three Mile Island,” said Stilp, who accused Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, officials in an April lawsuit of failing to safeguard residents’ health and safety. “People have forgotten that nuclear power stands for dedicated dead zones with nuclear waste…People who are environmentalists have forgotten about all these things that their parents and their grandparents used to know. The new generations are not up to speed on nuclear power.”

But as Bob Dylan once sang, “the times they are a-changin.’”

As Maryland and other states push for clean air amid rising power demand, advocates increasingly see nuclear energy as a key, cost-effective climate solution. Leading the push in Maryland is Democratic Governor Wes Moore, who is backing policies to support new technologies touted as safer, more efficient, and more versatile than traditional reactors.

Valerie Gardner, a California environmentalist, argued that anti-nuclear stalwarts are refusing to focus on the goals of reducing carbon emissions. She said that too many focus on renewables such as wind and solar while rejecting nuclear. The founder of the nearly 10-year-old Climate Coalition said she has come around, now taking on fights to keep nuclear plants open, including Diablo Canyon, California’s last nuclear power plant.

“It was just complete insanity and stupidity to try to close a large, reliable source of clean energy,” said Gardner, who called out anti-nuclear activists holding “30-year-old gripes” stemming from “fearmongering promulgated by groups to make the public afraid.”

“They lost the fight and the plants were built, but they continued to carry the flag all this time,” she said. “In its 68-year-old history, it’s the safest known energy we’ve ever had, with no pollution and fewer deaths” than those caused by fossil fuels.

Anti-nuclear movement evolved as officials look to lower costs, meet goals

The “No Nukes” movement that grew out of anti-war protests in the late 1960s has ebbed and flowed, expanding from weapons to energy and gaining followers after nuclear disasters such as Fukushima. Shortly after Stilp helped organizers of 1979’s Coalition Anti-Nuclear Rally in Washington, said to be the largest anti-nuclear protest at the time, Bruce Springsteen joined Musicians United for Safe Energy in the fall of 1979 for Madison Square Garden’s No Nukes concerts. By the mid-2000s, natural gas had gained favor as a cleaner, more plentiful energy source, causing investment in nuclear plants to decline.

In Maryland, bipartisan lawmakers have focused on rising energy costs and want to encourage new power generation in the state. Moore, who backs expanding nuclear, has said the state has not gone far enough to generate energy to hit its targets.

Moore said in mid-June some proposals that did not make it into energy bills would have “allowed more nuclear into the state, that would have allowed nuclear to be seen as a clean energy source, which it is,” adding “we need to be able to do more.”

Senator Mary Beth Carrozza, a Republican member of the Education, Energy and the Environment Committee, sees opportunities to address the climate crisis as “more and more people understand nuclear energy is reliable, clean, and safe. There’s a recognition by … the general public that with the challenges we’re facing in Maryland with the energy crisis, we have to take an all-of-the-above approach. We cannot rely on wind and solar to make our goals.”

Groups like the Clean Air Task Force—founded in the late 1990s to highlight the dangers of coal power—are now pushing for nuclear energy policies in both the public and private sectors. Their focus is on lowering costs, speeding up development, and addressing challenges faced by older nuclear plants. The organization is exploring how state and federal governments can expand nuclear energy in the most cost-effective ways, including upgrading or restarting retired facilities.

Beyond renewable energy, such as wind and solar, it will take advanced nuclear, advanced geothermal and other technologies to achieve a 100% carbon free grid, said John Carlson, a senior regional policy manager for CATF, particularly given the needs of industries such as transportation and utilities looking to control costs for rate payers while meeting decarbonization goals.

“We see nuclear energy as a proven technology that can help meet climate and decarbonization goals in the United States,” said Victor Ibarra, senior manager for CATF’s advanced nuclear energy program. He said it will take “a wide suite of technologies beyond nuclear energy to effectively and efficiently produce the next electricity grid of tomorrow.”

Upgrades at plants in Maryland, elsewhere

John Phillippi, a nuclear engineer at Constellation’s Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Lusby, oversees the high-security plant as director of operations. The two-reactor facility, originally owned by Baltimore Gas & Electric, began operating in 1975 and 1977 and was rebranded Calvert Cliffs Clean Energy Center last year.

During a plant tour, Phillippi said Constellation is evaluating upgrading the plant to expand capacity — a highly costly and years-long process to plan for and rebuild the turbine and steam-producing side of the operation. Locking in long-term customers is one way Constellation and other nuclear operators have been able to do that.

Other types of modifications have altered Calvert Cliffs from its earliest days, making it more efficient, reliable and safer, he said. In the plant’s 24-hour control center, reactor operators monitor flat panel displays, touchscreens and automatic alarm functions. The right side of the room is dedicated to Unit 1, while a mirror image on the left side monitors Unit 2. Equipment in the center links to the switchyard, which controls power on its way to customers.

Thousands of data points filtered through computers and alarms “can detect changes in any of our systems that would alert the operators to an early indication of something they need to take action for,” Phillippi said.

Gardner, the founder of Climate Coalition, said it’s imperative to allow nuclear plants not only to stay open but expand like Calvert Cliffs. A technology entrepreneur, Gardner began to embrace nuclear after she’d spent tens of thousands of dollars in 2008 to install solar panels but her energy bills still weren’t covered.

“I began to realize, we can’t put this enormous [climate] crisis and its solutions on the backs of individual residents,” she said. When she found “two-thirds of all clean [power] came from nuclear, my jaw just dropped. I didn’t even imagine that nuclear was clean.”

Future of nuclear energy

Gardner said the “No Nuke” opposition to nuclear power may have shifted last year when Constellation signed a 20-year deal to supply electricity to Microsoft data centers in the mid-Atlantic by restarting Unit 1 at Three Mile Island, now known as the Crane Clean Energy Center.

“That news might have been the inflection point where people realized this anti-nuke thing is just wrong, and that arguments against nuclear are not based on fact, not based on data,” Gardner said.

Last month, Constellation signed a similar deal with Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to power artificial intelligence technology with nuclear energy for 20 years at its Clinton Clean Energy Center in Clinton, Illinois – about 170 miles southeast of Chicago.

Those deals come amid growing demand for artificial intelligence that has big technology companies and data center operators rushing to lock in long-term clean power sources. Data centers require a consistent and steady electricity supply and have increasingly turned to nuclear for dedicated power.

Such deals continue to be opposed by activists, who argue electricity goes to far-off data centers, not consumers near a plant. Such groups include Harrisburg-based Three Mile Island Alert, which was founded in 1977, two years before Unit 2 came online and experienced a partial meltdown.

The partial meltdown, the worst nuclear power plant accident in the U.S., started about 4 a.m. March 28, 1979, with a mechanical or electrical failure in the non-nuclear section of the plant that prevented pumps from sending water to the steam generators, leading to a reactor shutdown, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The NRC said small radioactive releases had no detectable health effects on workers or the public, but opponents have challenged findings in court.

Coincidentally, the 1979 film “The China Syndrome, depicting a nuclear accident, had been released just weeks earlier. It provided additional fodder for the “No Nukes” movement, along with another film,1983’s Silkwood, based on the true story of a nuclear plant worker who was possibly murdered after raising concerns about radiation safety practices.

For its part, Three Mile Island Alert said its advocacy has brought about improvements in communication, security and evacuation plans. In its most recent battle, the group wants to stop Constellation’s plan to restart the plant’s Unit 1, which was restarted in 1985 and then shut down for economic reasons in 2019. TMI Alert advocates for the phasing out of both nuclear and fossil fuel power generation, arguing that enough renewable energy and storage projects are under consideration in the regional grid.

Eric Epstein, the group’s chair, said he has the same concerns now as 45 years ago.

“Nuclear power is an economic boondoggle,” Epstein said. “I thought then as I do now, there’s nowhere to store the waste. Nuclear has rebranded itself as renewable, which is crazy. The industry over time has subdued the public into believing that by putting green gift wrapping on toxic waste  makes it an attractive alternative.”

Have a news tip? Contact Lorraine Mirabella at lmirabella@baltsun.com or (410) 332-6672.

The talk surrounding the budget package caused uncertainty in the sector over how it could impact incentives and financing, analysts said, likely leading to the pause in the projects.

The new law speeds up the phase-out of incentives and tax credits approved in the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump criticized as the “green new scam” during the 2024 presidential campaign. Tax credits for rooftop solar will go away at the end of this year and incentives for electric vehicles run out Sept. 30.

The bill also accelerates portions of the incentives for advanced manufacturing. Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, said renewable energy provisions in the budget bill will undercut development of the advanced manufacturing industry in the U.S.

“We’ve already seen things like the recent announcement about the Amprius battery factory in Brighton where the direct impact of this federal policy is already causing manufacturers to pull back on their investments and remove economic growth and jobs,” Toor said.

Amprius Technologies announced in 2023 that it would open a 775,000-square-foot lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility in Brighton that would employ about 330 people in the first phases. But in May, the California company told shareholders that it was pausing the project as it monitors “market dynamics.”

Amprius CEO Kang Sun said in a statement that while the company has completed the plant’s design, there are no immediate plans to move forward to the next phase. Producing cutting-edge battery technologies at scale in the U.S. requires “a highly capital-intensive process” and technical expertise that is still developing, he said.

“Meanwhile, other countries have spent years building mature, cost-efficient battery industries, giving them a significant head start,” Sun said.

The national organization Environmental Entrepreneurs, or E2, maintains that projects were canceled or put on hold leading up to the debate and approval of Trump’s budget bill because of the uncertainty around federal policy on renewable energy, incentives and funds. A report by the group said $15.5 billion in new factories and clean energy projects have been canceled across the country since Jan. 1 as the incoming administration signaled that changes were ahead.

E2 and Clean Economy Tracker release frequent updates on the renewable energy and advanced manufacturing industries.

Susan Nedell, senior advocate in the West for E2, believes the targeting of renewable energy incentives and programs played into the cancellation of plans to build a $250 million factory in Brighton to make solar panels.

VSK Energy Inc., a joint venture between India-based Vikram Solar and the private equity firm Phalanx Impact Partners and the development firm Das & Co., announced the project in 2023. At the time, Sriram Das, chairman of VSK Energy and managing director of Das & Co, called the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act “a landmark moment for the clean energy future of the United States.”

A spokesperson confirmed Wednesday that the Brighton plant isn’t moving forward, but didn’t give a reason.

“In Colorado, as well as the nation, we’ll see more cancellations of big projects, more jobs lost, more layoffs, less investment in solar and wind because of the uncertainty,” Nedell said.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Gabe Evans, a Republican whose district includes Brighton, said Amprius had been reconsidering the Brighton location since March, according to news reports, months before the text of the budget bill was released.

Evans joined most of his fellow Republicans in Congress to support the budget bill. However, the congressman’s spokeswoman, Delanie Bomar, and a spokeswoman for Pivot Energy, which develops solar and energy storage projects in Colorado, said Evans worked to ensure that renewable energy tax credits weren’t abruptly eliminated as some wanted and a proposed excise tax on wind and solar wasn’t imposed.

“As the representative for one of the highest energy producing districts in the country, I fought hard to protect the clean energy tax credits in the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ and ensure the tax on clean energy was removed,” Evans said in a statement.

Toor, of the Colorado Energy Office, said the state remains committed to boosting the use of renewable energy and addressing climate change. “The underlying economics are still there. Wind and solar are both still highly competitive. Electric vehicles will still cut your fuel bill.”

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ABILENE, Texas — Bolstered by $3.2 million from a former Midland oilman, this West Texas city of 130,000 people is helping the Lone Star State lead a national nuclear energy resurgence.

Doug Robison’s 2021 donation to Abilene Christian University helped the institution win federal approval to house an advanced small modular nuclear reactor, which might be finished as soon as next year. Small modular reactors are designed to be built in factories and then moved to a site, and require less upfront capital investment than traditional large reactors.

The company Robison founded, Natura Resources, is investing another $30.5 million in the project. Only two small modular reactors are in operation, one in China and another in Russia. Natura Resources is one of two companies with federal permits to build one in the U.S.

“Nuclear is happening,” said Robison, who retired from the oil business and moved to Abilene to launch the company. “It has to happen.”

Robison’s words are being echoed across the country with new state laws that aim to accelerate the spread of projects that embrace advanced nuclear technology — decades after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl calamities soured many Americans on nuclear power.

In the past two years, half the states have taken action to promote nuclear power, from creating nuclear task forces to integrating nuclear into long-term energy plans, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, which advocates for the industry.

“I’ve been tracking legislation for 18 years, and when I first started tracking, there were maybe five or 10 bills that said the word ‘nuclear,’” said Christine Csizmadia, who directs state government affairs at the institute. “This legislative session, we’re tracking over 300 bills all across the country.”

The push is bipartisan. In New York, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul recently directed the New York Power Authority to build a zero-emission advanced nuclear power plant somewhere upstate — her state’s first new nuclear plant in a generation. In Colorado, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in April signed legislation redefining nuclear energy, which doesn’t emit a significant amount of planet-warming greenhouse gases, as a “clean energy resource.” The law will allow future plants to receive state grants reserved for other carbon-free energy sources.

But no state is more gung-ho than Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed legislation creating the Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Office and investing $350 million in nuclear expansion.

“Texas is the energy capital of the world, and this legislation will position Texas at the forefront of America’s nuclear renaissance,” Abbott wrote in a statement.

In addition to legislative action, the Texas A&M University System has invited four nuclear manufacturers to build small modular reactors at the school’s 2,400-acre RELLIS campus in the city of Bryan.

In Texas and other fast-growing states, rising electricity demands are fueling the push. Tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon that require a tremendous amount of electricity to power vast data centers are teaming with nuclear developers to provide it.

Last October, Google signed an agreement with nuclear energy producer Kairos Power to deploy multiple small modular reactors capable of generating a total of up to 500 megawatts by 2035. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced in December that it is also looking to reach a similar deal. Some of the largest data centers require more than 100 megawatts of power capacity, enough to power around 100,000 U.S. households.

Constellation Energy announced last September that it would reopen Three Mile Island, shuttered since 2019, as part of a deal with Microsoft to power the tech giant’s AI data centers. One of the two reactors at the plant, which is located south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, partially melted down in 1979. But the remaining reactor reliably produced electricity for the next four decades.

“Folks shouldn’t sleep on nuclear,” Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said as he welcomed back workers to the plant recently. “They should be aware of the important clean role it plays in our energy portfolio.”

But opponents say the renewed interest in nuclear energy is misguided.

In Colorado, a coalition of two dozen environmental groups, including the state chapter of the Sierra Club, urged Polis to veto the bill.

“The idea that nuclear power is a clean energy source could not be further from the truth,” the groups wrote in a letter to the governor. “Nuclear power is the only energy resource that generates dangerous waste that will remain radioactive for thousands of years.”

Some critics say small modular reactors are actually more expensive than traditional reactors, when they are judged per kilowatt of the energy they produce. And one 2022 study, conducted by researchers at Stanford University and the University of British Columbia, concluded that small modular reactors will produce more radioactive waste than traditional reactors.

“There’s a pretty healthy skepticism about advanced nuclear projects,” said Adrian Shelley, who heads the Texas office of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. Shelley said many environmental groups “are just deeply concerned about Texas’ ability to responsibly manage nuclear storage and especially nuclear waste in the long term.”

Ramping up

The United States currently has 94 nuclear reactors at 54 plants in 28 states. The oldest began operating at Nine Mile Point in New York in 1969; the newest reactors, Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Burke County, Georgia, began operating in 2023 and 2024.

Scott Burnell, a spokesperson for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that between the mid-1990s and 2005, there were “no applications at all” for new reactors. In 2007, there was a surge of a dozen applications when the federal government began offering tax incentives. But interest in new reactors plunged again when the fracking boom boosted fossil fuels as an economical power source.

Over the past several years, activity has ramped up again. “There are a number of factors that we are seeing drive this increased interest,” Burnell said. “Probably the biggest one is the growth in data centers.”

The commission has approved three new nuclear projects in the past three years, including the one at Abilene Christian University. It is reviewing three other applications and is discussing potential projects with a dozen other nuclear developers, Burnell said.

Texas currently has two nuclear plants — Comanche Peak near Glen Rose in North Central Texas and the South Texas Project in Matagorda County on the Gulf Coast. The two plants, each of which has two reactors, provide about 10% of the state’s electric power, according to the Texas comptroller. The new small modular reactors would face the same safety standards as these plants.

The project at Abilene Christian began when Robison’s Natura Resources established a research alliance with that school, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the project in 2024.

The reactor will be constructed at a laboratory at a different site, but its home already awaits in a trench at the bottom of a cavernous room at Abilene Christian’s Dillard Science and Engineering Research Center. The trench is 25 feet deep, 80 feet long and 15 feet wide, with a radiation shield made of concrete 4 feet thick. When the 40-ton reactor is finished, possibly by the end of next year, it will be transported to its home on a flatbed truck.

“The future is uncertain, but we’re ahead of the pack and moving at an amazing clip,” said Rusty Towell, an Abilene Christian engineering and physics professor who is working on the project. “So I think that there’s a great reason for optimism.”

Towell asserted that the project will produce only “small amounts of low-level waste” and that storing it safely will not be a significant challenge.

‘What Henry Ford did for cars’

John Sharp, the outgoing chancellor of Texas A&M University, said he invited nuclear companies to build small modular reactors at the school to help meet the country’s desperate need for more power. He said it made sense to give developers access to the faculty and students at the university’s nuclear engineering department.

Sharp said his pitch was simple: “Hey, we got some land. We got it next to some really smart people. Would you like to come and build a plant?

“And four folks said, ‘You betcha.’”

Matt Loszak, the 34-year-old CEO of Austin-based Aalo Atomics, one of the companies that answered Sharp’s call, said he had two employees 18 months ago. Now he has more than 50.

“We want to do for reactors what Henry Ford did for cars,” Loszak said, “which is really make them mass manufacturable and make it economical to deploy around the world.”

Robison said he’s been speaking at town halls in Abilene, a conservative community that is home to Dyess Air Force Base, for about five years. He claims the residents are “overwhelmingly excited” about having the small modular reactors at Abilene Christian, he said.

“Texas is an energy state,” he said. “We understand energy and what happens when you don’t have it.”

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But environmentalists worry that is a big “if” as long as the Trump administration is in power, and now they are asking the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to include the Comanche Generating Station’s projected closure date of Jan. 1, 2031, in the Pueblo power plant’s latest Title V air permit.

They hope putting the date in a permit that needs Environmental Protection Agency approval will guarantee that Xcel, the largest utility company operating in Colorado, will shutter its last coal-fired power plant in the state by that deadline.

“I really want to emphasize the need to ensure that these retirement dates, which Xcel has committed to and everybody has agreed to, are established and set in stone via this Title V air permit,” said Jeremy Nichols, a senior advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Right now, the federal government has launched an unprecedented assault on states like Colorado who are trying to do their part to confront the climate crisis and protect clean air and to enable a transition from coal to clean energy.”

Colorado’s utility companies have been planning for nearly two decades to shutter their coal-burning power plants and transition to cleaner alternatives, including natural gas, solar and wind power. Comanche is the largest coal-burning power plant in the state, and two of its three operating units still create electricity from coal.

Xcel is on track to shutter Comanche’s Unit 2 in September and remains committed to closing the plant’s Unit 3, which generates 750 megawatts of electricity, by January 2031, said Michelle Aguayo, a Xcel Colorado spokeswoman. Unit 1 is already closed.

“We continue to make significant progress towards our emission reduction goals approved by the state, which would require us to retire our coal units by (the end of) 2030,” Aguayo wrote in a statement. “We’re working with the administration and our states to continue delivering customers safe, clean, reliable energy while keeping our customers’ bills as low as possible.”

But President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin want the United States to continue burning coal, saying it is needed now more than ever to fuel a growing demand for electricity. That demand is being sparked, in part, by a growing reliance on artificial intelligence, which consumes massive amounts of power.

In April, Trump signed executive orders aimed at boosting the industry, calling it “America’s beautiful, clean coal,” and vowing to prevent states from curtailing its use. As part of that push, the president has ordered utilities in Michigan and Pennsylvania to keep their coal plants open even when some were on the verge of shutting down.

But Colorado officials pushed back, with Gov. Jared Polis calling the president’s orders “federal overreach.” By eliminating coal-fired power plants, Colorado will inch closer to meeting its goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and addressing climate change.

Now, though, Polis’ regulators are being asked to put that commitment in writing.

“We are exploring if we would have legal authority to include an enforceable retirement date for Comanche’s Unit 3 coal plant in the draft Title V operating permit — and what exactly that would mean,” said Kate Malloy, an Air Pollution Control Division spokeswoman.

Coal is a dirty substance, emitting more carbon dioxide than other energy sources and accelerating climate change. Coal also contains multiple other contaminants such as mercury, sulfur dioxide, fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide that are released into the air and are a threat to human health.

It also leaves a toxic byproduct called coal ash, which contains arsenic, lithium, selenium, cobalt and other metals, that must be dumped into landfills in the state. Millions of tons of coal ash are buried in Colorado, and at least three sites have been documented as leaking lithium and selenium into groundwater.

Even though Xcel plans to shutter Comanche’s Unit 3 within five years, it still needed to renew its Title V air permit, the document that details how much pollution the company is allowed to spew into the air.

Under the proposed permit, the amount of pollution coming from Comanche would be reduced by thousands of tons of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and hazardous air pollutants, said Carrisa Money, the state health department’s Title V operating permits unit manager.

The permits are supposed to be renewed every five years. Xcel’s was last renewed in 2018.

Xcel submitted its renewal application in 2022, and now the Colorado health department is on the verge of approving it.

The state’s Air Quality Control Commission, which sets state air pollution regulations, on Tuesday held a public hearing on the permit application at which five people asked the state to do its part to slow climate change. Another 54 people submitted letters, most of which asked for the closure date to be included in the permit.

“We want to be responsive to the feedback we have received and do what’s best for Colorado, so we are working to evaluate this issue,” Malloy said in an emailed statement. “Once we have an answer, we will respond to public comments as appropriate.”

Utility companies like Xcel plan for years to shutter power plants as they replace coal with cleaner power generation. And they set goals with approvals from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, which is responsible for making sure there is enough power surging through the grid to keep people’s lights on at an affordable price.

Malloy noted that the Comanche Unit 3 retirement date is enforceable through the company’s clean energy plans, which are required by state law and were submitted with Xcel’s electric resource plan to the PUC. The Air Pollution Control Division supports clean energy plans by verifying data and sharing them for public review and input, she said.

“Even if a federally enforceable permit condition were not on the table, the state does still have oversight and enforcement authority for coal plant retirement dates,” Malloy said.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump from making his demands. So Nichols believes it is necessary for the state to put the closure date in the Title V permit.

“We urge Colorado to create a bulwark, a defense, so to speak, against the federal government’s attacks on our climate progress and our progress in transitioning away from coal,” Nichols said during Tuesday’s public hearing on the permit. “I think that emphasizes the need to find perhaps more creative ways to ensure that the Comanche coal-fired power plant retirement dates are fully set in stone through this Title V permit.”

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The Elbert County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to reject Xcel’s request, saying the application was incomplete and didn’t meet the county’s regulations. The commissioners will meet Wednesday, July 2 to finalize their decision.

Xcel, which launched the transmission project in 2021, said it will review the county’s final resolution and consider its options, which could include taking the matter to court or the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

“We have collaborated with the Elbert County community for four years, addressing questions, concerns and acquiring land rights voluntarily,” the company said in a statement. “Projects like the Colorado Pathway are vital to maintain the reliability Coloradans expect from their electrical system.”

The transmission lines, power substations and other equipment will stretch over 12 counties, mostly in eastern Colorado, home to several solar and wind farms, and include 550 miles of lines. The project will carry about 5,500 megawatts of new wind, solar and other energy sources.

One megawatt of solar or wind energy can supply electricity to several hundred homes.

Construction has been completed in two of the Power Pathway’s five segments. Xcel said nine counties have approved permits for the project. Along with Elbert, the company is also seeking approval in Arapahoe and El Paso counties.

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission gave the project the green light in 2022.

However, residents and officials have strongly objected to the proposed location of the transmission lines through Elbert County. They have urged Xcel Energy to route the 48 miles of double-circuit lines about 50 miles farther east where it is more sparsely populated.

“There are routes that actually have utility easements and transmission corridors where they could use rights of way so they wouldn’t have to use eminent domain to get rights of way,” said county resident Kerry Jiblits. “They’re choosing not to do it.”

Xcel’s preferred route could have impacts on wildlife, forested areas, property values and people’s views, said Jiblits, a member of the Elbert County Environmental Alliance. “It’s going down Highway 86, the main highway in the county.”

Before voting on the permits, the Elbert County commissioners asked Xcel Energy representatives why it chose the route it did and why people who don’t want to sell land for the project have received letters about the company’s plan to acquire the land through condemnation even though the permits haven’t been approved.

“Personally, I just feel like people are being bullied,” Commissioner Byron McDaniel said.

During a recent county planning commission hearing, Xcel said 27 properties have been acquired while condemnation proceedings on 13 properties have started. Negotiations are being held on additional nine properties.

“It is our goal to acquire land rights voluntarily, and we remain hopeful that this will be the case for this project,” Xcel spokesman Tyler Bryant said in an email. “However, when negotiations are unsuccessful, we have to exercise our eminent domain authority.”

McDaniel said running the transmission lines near people’s homes and businesses will drive down property values, affecting the county’s tax revenue and ability to pay for services.

Xcel evaluated 500 miles of routes in Elbert County alone and hundreds more miles of routes across the length of that segment of the Power Pathway, Bryant said.

“This route best balances the factors we must consider in siting new infrastructure, including cultural and historic resources, technical and engineering requirements, environmental constraints, existing and planned land use and other factors requested by the community, landowners and other stakeholders,” Bryant said.

This route is also near existing roads and other transmission lines, which provides access for construction and maintenance, keeps costs low for customers and minimizes impacts, he added.

The planning commission and the county staff recommended denying the permits. One of the issues they cited was the failure of Xcel to adequately address the wildfire risks associated with more transmission lines running through the county and whether those risks will unfairly burden local fire agencies.

Xcel representatives told the commissioners that they continue to talk to and coordinate with the fire departments. However, a county report said the company had not submitted prevention and safety agreements with two of the departments.

The utility didn’t respond to all the comments from other agencies, either, county officials said.

Xcel plans to scoop most of the coal ash from a landfill at the site and turn it into an ingredient in concrete to be sold in metro Denver. The project awaits approval from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

The utility company expects to spend $24 million over the next 10 to 12 years to remove ash and treat contaminated groundwater, said Michelle Aguayo, an Xcel spokeswoman.

Officials at Boulder County Public Health are on board with the coal-ash cleanup, saying that recycling hazardous waste into a useful product is a proven solution. It would rid the site of a toxic substance and prevent anyone from trucking it to another community.

“That’s one reason we like this project — we’re not just putting this project on someone else. Another reason we like it is it will be a net greenhouse gas reduction,” said Bill Hayes, the county health department’s air quality program director. “We aren’t trucking it nationally. We are creating something that will be used locally and won’t have to be trucked in from thousands of miles.”

“Boulder County Public Health supports the project,” he said. “The beneficial use project will have global impacts. But there will be some risk with it.”

Xcel will be the first utility company in Colorado to initiate such a large-scale coal-ash cleanup after lithium and selenium leaked into groundwater and seeped toward wells used for drinking water on nearby properties.

But there are millions of tons of coal ash in other landfills and ponds around Colorado, and almost all of those sites are leaching pollutants into groundwater.

Over the years, public reporting of coal-ash contamination has been inconsistent because there was no regulation of the waste before 2015. Even after that, utility companies were only required to report monitoring results from landfills that were still in use — and those documents can be hard to find and difficult to understand.

Then, last year, the Biden administration expanded those reporting requirements to all waste disposal sites, although nothing has yet resulted from that rule change.

In 2022, two environmental organizations compiled a list of coal-ash waste sites across the United States, using Environmental Protection Agency reports, and their research identified 12 known coal ash locations in Colorado.

Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project estimated that over the decades 14 Colorado power plants created more than 1.7 million tons of ash per year that went into landfills and retention ponds, according to their 212-page report.

The report placed three of Colorado’s coal-ash waste sites among the 50 most contaminated sites in the United States.

While Xcel has a plan to remove coal ash at the old Valmont station, environmentalists say it is unlikely that most utility companies will clean their sites unless forced by federal or state regulators, or if sued by impacted communities. Utility companies have a track record of doing the minimum amount required under the EPA’s Coal Combustion Residuals rules, said Abel Russ, senior counsel with the Environmental Integrity Project.

“They find ways to formally comply with the rule but not do much with cleanup because it’s expensive and they don’t want to spend the money,” Russ said.

Xcel’s cleanup project at Valmont comes as the Trump administration shows little appetite for enforcing existing coal-ash disposal rules, as the president and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin push their “Powering the Great American Comeback” agenda, which prioritizes coal as a leading source of energy in the country.

On Thursday, a Republican-controlled House environmental subcommittee held a hearing to review coal-ash regulations and to discuss whether or not “government red tape and bureaucracy can stifle innovation surrounding the use of coal ash,” according to an announcement of the hearing.

In Colorado, utility companies are phasing out coal-burning power plants as the state strives to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and pivot toward renewable energy such as wind and solar. Those companies will continue to produce coal ash until that happens. Meanwhile, the retention ponds and landfills that have held the ash for decades are not going away.

For example, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association’s ash disposal facility near its Nucla Station in Montrose County received waste from 1987 until 2019, when the coal plant was retired. The company reported last year that 4.8 million tons of coal ash are in a landfill, and that the electric cooperative continues maintenance at the waste site.

Last year, Tri-State said it had taken steps to prevent erosion, including adding riprap along the perimeter and building a 1.5-foot-tall berm, according to the company’s 2024 inspection report.

The Valmont Power Station on North 63rd Street in Boulder operated as a coal-fired electricity generation station for almost a century, until it was converted to a natural-gas-powered station in September 2017. During that time, Xcel dumped its coal ash — also known as coal combustion residuals — into three ponds and a landfill.

In 2020, Xcel’s groundwater monitoring detected lithium and selenium leaching from a 60-acre landfill that was in operation from 1993 until 2017. That led the company to come up with a plan to remove the ash from the site and stop the leaks.

But it’s been a long process.

Xcel submitted its engineering and design plan earlier this year to explain how the cleanup will work. That plan is still under review by the state health department’s Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division and will be subject to public comment once preliminary approval is given.

The company also must apply for a permit to emit pollutants into the air during the cement-making project, and that must also be approved by the state.

Work cannot start until those approvals have been given. Still, Xcel says it will begin in 2026.

A national problem

Nationally, 5 billion tons of coal ash are estimated to have been created by coal-powered electricity plants since the late 1800s, said Lisa Evans, senior counsel with Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group.

Coal ash is the second-largest industrial waste stream in the country, accounting for 70 million tons pouring into landfills and retention ponds every year, Earthjustice research found.

“If you ask if there’s a big problem with coal ash in the U.S., the answer is yes because coal ash was mismanaged for decades,” Evans said.

Hazardous chemicals found in coal ash include arsenic, boron, cobalt, chromium, lead, lithium, radium and selenium. Those chemicals are known to cause an increased risk of various cancers, heart and thyroid disease, respiratory illnesses and neurological problems.

Lithium is a naturally occurring metal and has various commercial uses, including as a material used in batteries. The EPA has placed lithium on a list of priority contaminants in drinking water, but has not established regulations on how much is an acceptable minimum level. Lithium has been known to cause renal and neurological problems in people.

Selenium is also a naturally occurring metal and has useful purposes, including as an essential nutrient at low levels. The EPA has established a maximum level for that metal, which can damage the liver, kidneys, nervous system and circulatory system, and cause hair loss.

Coal-ash disposal in the United States was unregulated until after the December 2008 Kingston TVA coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee.

In that disaster, a dike used to contain coal ash broke near the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, dumping 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash into nearby water, including the Emory and Clinch rivers, and contaminating more than 300 acres of land. It took more than six years to clean the mess from rivers and streams, and private property. Hundreds of workers were sickened — and dozens died — from exposure to arsenic, lead, mercury and radium that was in the coal ash.

“That was just so dramatic that it focused everyone’s attention on it. It reminded everyone that it’s a huge waste stream,” Russ said.

When Americans first started burning coal to provide electricity, no one thought about the ash byproduct left over after the coal burned. The ash was dumped in unlined lagoons and landfills without much thought.

“It’s the sheer volume of it and the concentration of heavy metals in it,” Russ said. “They didn’t wrap their heads around it until it was too late.”

The EPA established the first rules for coal-ash management in 2015 in the wake of the Kingston disaster. The rules addressed the risks associated with coal-ash disposal, including leaks into groundwater, dust blowing into the air and failures of barriers around landfills.

The federal government also began requiring record-keeping and reporting at active coal-ash landfills across the country, and the regulations allowed for the beneficial use of coal ash, which is what Xcel is planning for the Valmont Power Station in Boulder.

Those 2015 rules only applied to active landfills and excluded some of the oldest coal-ash ponds and landfills in the country. In 2024, the EPA, under President Joe Biden, tightened rules governing those older ponds and landfills that required monitoring for pollutants and cleanup.

However, the Trump administration has already signaled that it will not prioritize coal-ash enforcement, Evans said.

In March, Zeldin announced a plan to shift coal-ash regulation to the states with EPA support, and pledged to change the rules on compliance deadlines by the end of this year.

That means there will be uneven enforcement across the country, with coal-friendly states such as Wyoming and North Dakota becoming lax while other states, including Colorado, tackle the challenge, Evans said.

“Coal ash is like running on a treadmill. We gain ground and lose ground,” Evans said. “We made progress with Obama, and Trump tried to rescind it, but ended up just delaying. Then we got a new rule with President Biden to fill the gaps. And now the Trump administration wants to undo it.”

A Colorado problem

There are 12 known locations in Colorado where coal ash has been dumped, and those sites include 38 coal-ash ponds and landfills, according to a database maintained by Earthjustice. There could be other unknown sites where coal ash was stored long before any regulations existed, the environmental group says.

Those 12 sites are on the grounds of former or active coal-burning power plants, or nearby landfills, and are the responsibility of the utility companies that own them. It’s unclear exactly how much coal ash is buried in the ground in Colorado because of incomplete reporting.

Xcel is responsible for seven of the coal-ash waste sites in the state: the former Arapahoe Generation Station in Denver; the former Cameo Generation Station in Mesa County; the Cherokee Generation Station in Denver; the Comanche Generation Station in Pueblo; the Hayden Generation Station in Routt County; the Pawnee Generation Station in Morgan County; and Valmont.

The other sites in Colorado include: Colorado Springs Utilities’ Clear Spring Ranch Landfill, which holds waste from the Ray Nixon Power Plant and the former Martin Drake Power Plant; Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association’s Nucla Ash Disposal Facility, which holds waste from its former Nucla Station in Montrose County and its Craig Station in Moffat County; and the Platte River Power Authority’s Rawhide Energy Station in Larimer County.

Earthjustice also reported there is a coal-ash waste site at the former Martin Drake Power Plant in El Paso County, but there are no available reporting documents online and efforts to reach Colorado Springs Utilities were unsuccessful.

It is also unknown whether there is coal-ash waste associated with the former W.N. Clark Power Plant in Fremont County, which was decommissioned in 2012.

Earthjustice lists three Colorado coal-ash sites among the 50 most contaminated in the country because they have multiple pollutants exceeding EPA standards: Valmont is ranked 31st; Tri-State’s retired Nucla station is 39th; and Xcel’s Hayden Station is 44th.

While it is unclear exactly how much coal ash is buried in landfills and sitting in retention ponds across the state, a Denver Post review of available 2024 coal combustion residual inspection reports found more than 30 million tons at the various sites. No reports are available for landfills that were closed before 2015.

Xcel’s seven sites contain more than 19 million tons of coal ash, according to inspection reports the company posted online. However, not every Xcel disposal site has an updated report on the company’s coal-ash management website, in part because of the change in reporting rules for coal-ash sites. The Post found online reports missing for Arapahoe, Cameo, Cherokee and Pawnee’s north landfill sites.

Xcel declined to make its coal-ash managers available for interviews with The Post. Instead, Aguayo, the company’s Colorado spokeswoman, sent an emailed statement and referred the newspaper to the company’s website for any information on coal-ash management.

“Protecting our customers and the environment is a priority, and we have a strong record of environmental leadership,” Aguayo said in the statement. “We’re committed to responsibly managing impacts from our operations, including from prior coal plants, like Valmont.”

In the past three years, Xcel has been cited twice by the EPA for failures to comply with coal-ash regulations.

Xcel’s Cherokee Generating Station transitioned to a natural-gas-fired power plant in 2017 and closed five dumpsites, including a retention pond, on the property. But closing a coal-ash disposal location does not mean the coal ash is removed. Rather, no more waste is dumped there.

Xcel was fined $134,500 in September after lithium was discovered leaking from its Cherokee plant, identifiable by its red-and-white smokestack visible from north Denver. The EPA cited the company for failing to adequately prepare groundwater monitoring reports, failing to meet groundwater monitoring performance standards, failing to accurately represent readings in groundwater quality, and failing to use the most effective statistical methods to analyze groundwater data, according to the agency’s consent agreement.

Xcel agreed to correct its missteps, according to the consent agreement between the company and the EPA.

The utility is still assessing how to treat the lithium plume, said Lauren Whitney, a state health department spokeswoman. Xcel is evaluating two solutions and will hold a public meeting before selecting a method and starting work.

But that’s not the largest fine Xcel has paid for coal-ash violations.

In 2022, the EPA penalized the company for failing to comply with regulations on the disposal of coal ash and not properly monitoring groundwater at its Comanche station in Pueblo. The company paid $1 million to settle with the federal government.

That site is releasing cobalt into the groundwater.

Xcel has identified the plume, tested the groundwater and is putting together a remediation strategy, Whitney said.

Between August 2024 and February, the remediation strategy included injecting a treatment reagent into six injection wells using an EPA-approved method, Whitney said. Wells near the plume did not have cobalt levels that exceeded the drinking water standards.

Meanwhile, Xcel continues to dump coal ash into a landfill in Pueblo until the coal plant is decommissioned, no later than Dec. 31, 2030. As of 2024, about 4.9 million tons of coal ash are in the ground at Comanche, according to the most recent inspection report.

Cleaning up Valmont

Valmont Station will be the first site in Colorado where Xcel plans to convert coal ash into Portland cement, an ingredient used to make concrete. And it is the only site with such a massive cleanup in the company’s plans, Aguayo said.

The company has contracted with Charah Solutions, a Kentucky-based company that specializes in coal-ash management and cleanup. Charah has hired Geocycle, an industrial waste management company, to help with the project, Aguayo said in the utility’s statement.

Charah is expected to process about 2 million tons of ash over 10 years to remove the hazardous waste.

Charah and Geocycle use a proprietary system to recycle the ash into cement. It involves a mobile kiln that would be set up on the Valmont property, and the companies would use a baghouse — an industrial dust collector — to prevent harmful air emissions, Aguayo said.

Charah will only excavate the amount of ash that its workers intend to process in one day to avoid leaving excess ash on the ground that could blow into the community at night when the work stops, she said. The equipment is enclosed to manage dust, and the noise it makes is similar to Valmont’s normal operations.

The cement created onsite will be sold and used in the Denver market, Aguayo said.

“This project provides large-scale environmental benefits by eliminating the need to mine new raw materials for Portland cement and by eliminating the need for cross-regional transport of Portland cement and/or concrete to Denver’s local market,” her statement said.

Operations will run during daylight hours, seven days a week. Work will stop when wind gusts exceed 55 mph or sustained winds exceed 40 mph, according to the company’s engineering and design plan.

Once the ash is removed, the contractor will grade the area and put down clean soil and grass seed. Any ash that is not suitable for recycling will be placed in a specific area of the landfill, and then the landfill will be closed.

Hayes, the air quality manager at Boulder County Public Health, said he is most concerned about how much dust will flow into the air once the project starts. The engineering and design plan calls for dust control systems but lacks details.

“That’s what I’m really waiting to see are the controls we want to see in that dust control plan,” Hayes said. “The dust concerns from start to finish are when they are excavating the landfill sites.”

Hayes hopes more of those details will be included in the company’s air-pollution permit. He wants the state health department to require continuous air-quality monitoring at the site, but so far, the state has not agreed to consider it once the air permit is filed.

“CDPHE says they’ve never required it in an air permit,” Hayes said. “I said, ‘Yeah, but we’ve never issued an air permit for a coal-ash landfill project.’ This is a unique and novel project, and we just don’t need to go with what we’ve done in the past.”

Hayes said he’s not optimistic that a monitoring requirement will be included in the air permit, so he is searching for outside funding to pay for it.

“In our current climate, getting funding for air monitoring is proving to be a little challenging,” he said. “Federal grants that used to be available for that are dwindling and going away.”

But the air quality problem at a coal-ash landfill only occurs once a company starts excavating the material.

The more critical problem at most coal-ash waste sites is the groundwater contamination.

“It’s a huge problem. We’ve been burning coal since the early 1900s,” said Evans, with Earthjustice. “The ash was not regulated until 2015, so billions of tons of coal ash have been dumped in pits and ponds and used as fill across the United States. Almost every state had a coal-burning power plant.”

For years, companies were allowed to dump the ash without lining the landfills. More than 90% of coal-ash waste sites have contaminated groundwater above federal safety standards, she said.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that whenever you dump coal ash, you’re going to get water contamination,” Evans said.

At the Valmont Station, Xcel has monitored groundwater with a network of wells that the utility drilled in the area, said Carl Job, a water quality specialist with Boulder County Public Health. Those wells detected elevated levels of lithium and selenium in a plume moving north and east of the property, and the plume was moving toward nearby drinking water wells.

Xcel filed an ash landfill remedy selection report, which proposes a cleanup method, in May with the state health department. The report said two plumes were creeping out of the landfill. The first plume contains elevated concentrations of lithium and selenium, while the second plume exceeds lithium levels mandated by the EPA.

“These plumes are not adversely impacting drinking water in the area, and the groundwater will continue to be monitored to ensure ongoing protection of human health in the area until remedy completion,” the report stated. “There are also no public drinking water supplies in the vicinity of the impacted groundwater.”

The contaminated plumes are not a threat to most Boulder residents, who get their water from the city system, Job said. The real concern surrounds the few wells nearby where people get their drinking water, which are not as regulated as public water systems.

Only one well has shown higher levels of lithium contamination, and Xcel is providing an alternate source of water, said Erin Dodge, Boulder County Public Health’s water quality program coordinator.

The plumes are not impacting Boulder Creek or South Boulder Creek, she said.

Groundwater remediation is proceeding under a compliance order from the state, Whitney said. Xcel has submitted a proposal for treating the groundwater, and it is under review by the state and Boulder County. Once it is approved, Xcel will submit a design plan for the state health department to review.

Xcel is proposing to use reverse osmosis, which is a proven method for cleaning water. That system will extract groundwater through wells and collection trenches and truck it off-site for treatment, the report said.

The remedy selection report estimated it would take 15 to 35 years to treat the groundwater.

Meanwhile, there is no other long-term plan for removing the millions of tons of coal ash buried in Colorado.

Some utilities, such as the Platte River Authority, sell some ash for beneficial reuse. Platte River sells ash to architectural block manufacturers and to liquid-waste disposal facilities, according to its company website.

Officials at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment say they are committed to making sure coal ash does not contaminate groundwater.

The state regularly monitors coal-ash waste sites, said Tracie White, director of the health agency’s hazardous waste division. And Valmont is of particular interest because of the size of its ash reuse project.

“We are committed to making sure coal ash landfills in Colorado are protective of human health and the environment,” White said. “At Valmont Station, our team is closely reviewing the proposed cleanup remedy to ensure it meets all state regulations and prevents further impacts to groundwater. We regularly monitor these sites to track, trace, and treat potential contamination, and we work in partnership with local communities throughout the process.”

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