Electric Utilities
The Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) helps implement the Governor’s Climate Action Plan and the New Energy Economy goals at the utility scale. To do this, the GEO’s Utilities Program works as a liaison between utilities and the GEO’s other program areas. and serves as an informational resource and forum for Colorado’s investor owned and public utilities. Unlike the GEO’s other programs, the Utilities Program is policy and regulatory focused and is not designed to offer financial incentives and grants to government agencies, utilities, non-profits, and businesses.
In addition to information about the GEO’s Utilities Program, this section includes pages about how utilities work, what they are doing to advance Colorado’s New Energy Economy and how the various stakeholders in the utility industry interact.
GEO’s Utilities Program currently focuses on the following three categories:
- Efficiency – the GEO is working to help utilities increase the proportion of Demand Side Management (DSM) within their resource portfolios. DSM is an economically-sound and clean alternative to building new power plants to meet uncontrolled demand growth. The DSM process includes planning, implementing, and monitoring the activities of electric utilities to assist them with encouraging consumers to modify their level and pattern of electricity usage. The GEO’s Utilities Program works with investor owned utilities (IOUs) and public utilities to incorporate increasing percentages of DSM into their resource plans. As conventional fuel costs climb over time, investments in DSM will serve as a strategic hedge to protect customers into the future.
- Generation – The GEO’s Utilities Program is working to assist utilities with meeting and exceeding compliance with Colorado’s Renewable Energy Standard. Colorado has established a goal of 20% of IOUs’ electric retail sales coming from renewable energy by 2020, and 10% of large municipal utilities’ and all rural electric associations (REA) electric retail sales coming from renewable energy by 2020.
- Transmission - The GEO’s Utilities Program is working to assist Colorado with constructing the necessary high voltage transmission lines to supply the growing demand for electric power. Specifically, the GEO is working to connect Colorado’s vast renewable resources, as identified in the SB07-091 Report, with the markets. the GEO's Utilities Program also provides support to the Colorado Clean Energy Development Authority.