{"id":38810,"date":"2022-08-18T13:27:26","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T19:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/how-democrats-climate-bill-will-supercharge-colorados-clean-energy-efforts\/"},"modified":"2022-08-18T19:27:26","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T19:27:26","slug":"how-democrats-climate-bill-will-supercharge-colorados-clean-energy-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/how-democrats-climate-bill-will-supercharge-colorados-clean-energy-efforts\/","title":{"rendered":"How Democrats\u2019 climate bill will \u2018supercharge\u2019 Colorado\u2019s clean-energy efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"President
President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tour the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Flatirons Campus in Arvada on Sept. 14, 2021. (Adam Schultz\/The White House\/U.S. government works)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

With a signature from President Joe Biden<\/a> on Tuesday, congressional Democrats\u2019 $369 billion package of spending to fight climate change became law \u2013 and federal officials say it won\u2019t be long before Colorado and other states start to see the benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will see some impacts immediately,\u201d Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a call with reporters Wednesday. \u201cA good example is the tax credits for new electric vehicles \u2013 once the president signed the dotted line, that tax credit was made available for new vehicles all across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new federal EV tax credit of up to $7,500 per vehicle \u2013 subject to an array <\/a>of requirements and restrictions \u2013 is one of many incentives for clean energy contained in Democrats\u2019 Inflation Reduction Act, a scaled-down bill passed as a compromise<\/a> with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia that also includes corporate tax increases and health care provisions.<\/p>\n

Other tax credits and investments in the bill will help boost wind- and solar-powered electricity generation, carbon capture and storage, clean-heating technologies such as heat pumps and more \u2013 all with the aim of reducing the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re certainly very excited,\u201d Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, said in an interview. \u201cWhile it\u2019s going to take a while to fully understand what the implications are going to be, it really feels like it\u2019s going to accelerate and supercharge a lot of our efforts to move toward decarbonization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Toor, the Energy Office has coordinated efforts by Gov. Jared Polis\u2019 administration to meet the emissions-reduction targets set by legislation <\/a>enacted in 2019, including a 50% statewide cut by 2030. The agency will be responsible for overseeing and distributing money for some of the Inflation Reduction Act\u2019s clean-energy programs, like its $9 billion in rebates for home energy improvements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat will be something like $150 (million) to $180 million that we\u2019ll be able to use to support residential adoption of energy efficiency and home electrification,\u201d Toor said.<\/p>\n

The rebates will combine with new federal tax credits for electric heat pumps, rooftop solar and other household clean-energy technologies, as well as state-level incentives<\/a> passed by the General Assembly this year, to enable more homes and commercial buildings to move away from natural gas as a heating fuel, advocates say.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou put that all together, and there\u2019s really going to be an opportunity to start moving toward much wider-scale adoption of heat pumps in both commercial and residential properties,\u201d Toor said.<\/p>\n

A fact sheet<\/a> released by the White House on Wednesday projected that more than 120,000 additional Colorado households will opt to install rooftop solar panels as a result of the bill\u2019s incentives. Its grants to help local governments adopt the newest energy-efficient building codes, officials claimed, would help the average new homeowner in Colorado save $423 per year on their utility bills.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Day 1, President Biden made it clear that America would resume its position as the global leader on climate change,\u201d Regan said. \u201cThis law does that.\u201d<\/p>\n

$8 billion in federal investment<\/div>\n

At an event held last week to promote the adoption of electric school buses<\/a>, Polis highlighted the importance of federal incentives for emerging clean-energy technologies, which can send a powerful, nationwide market signal where more limited state-level programs can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state program alone wasn\u2019t enough to drive manufacturers to prepare to gear up the manufacturing of electric buses,\u201d he said. \u201cThe EPA program is, because they know the demand will be there nationally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toor said the new federal climate law will \u201cshift the economics\u201d for the deployment of new technologies, especially when it comes to less-developed sectors like electric trucks, buses and other heavy-duty vehicles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s an arena where we can do a lot to push demand in the state, but we need the supply. The federal action on heavy-duty vehicles is really going to help bring that supply,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that one\u2019s going to be pretty transformational.\u201d<\/p>\n

Substantial new tax credits for wind and solar power could also further drive down emissions in Colorado\u2019s electricity sector. Since Polis took office in 2019, his administration has secured commitments from the state\u2019s top utilities to reduce emissions by about 85% by 2030.<\/p>\n

Toor said the additional credits could help utilities meet those targets as they begin their procurement processes, incentivizing new wind and solar projects rather than natural gas generation and potentially leading to steeper emissions cuts in future electric resource plans<\/a> filed with the Public Utilities Commission.<\/p>\n

In all, the industry group Advanced Energy Economy estimates that Colorado will receive about $8 billion in federal investment from the IRA, adding an estimated $53 billion in economic activity.<\/p>\n

Administration officials have long expressed cautious optimism that the state was on track to meet the targets in its 2019 emissions law, despite skepticism from some of the law\u2019s proponents<\/a> about Polis\u2019 approach to getting there. Now, with billions of dollars in federal help on its way, officials are more confident than ever that Colorado will be able to meet or exceed the goals it has set for itself, starting with a 26% statewide emissions cut by 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo combine the effects of the IRA and all of the policies that we\u2019ve adopted in Colorado \u2026 we\u2019ll be trying to figure out how those intersect, and what trajectory we are now on,\u201d Toor said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be very interested to try to understand that more quantitatively.\u201d<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billions in federal funding to supplement state-level incentives, \u2018shift the economics\u2019 of new technologies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1427,875,1906,28,1426],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-energy-general","tag-energy-and-resource","tag-energy-saving","tag-headlines","tag-renewable-energy"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38810"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}