A new roadmap is supposed to guide Colorado toward major greenhouse-gas reductions within the next two decades, but environmental advocates say it’s sort of like needing to drive from Denver to Los Angeles but the map stops in the middle of the Mojave Desert, just shy of the destination.

Like that motorist on the road to California, Colorado could almost eliminate the state’s carbon emissions in the desired timeframe, advocates say, but there is no direction on how to complete the journey.

“A good analogy is that the roadmap doesn’t actually lead to the destination, which is meeting Colorado’s science-based climate goals,” said Katie Schneer of the Environmental Defense Fund’s state climate policy team.

Gov. Jared Polis introduced the Colorado Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap 2.0 last week while standing at an RTD light rail station in Westminster. It’s the second such roadmap the governor has released, and he said Monday that many of the policies recommended in 2021 have been enacted.

Polis championed the latest plan as nation-leading in its ambition to eliminate greenhouse-gas pollution and declared the state would come close to meeting its goal of having net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“We’re building on the momentum of the original road map and identifying many new cost-effective strategies that will further reduce emissions from transportation, from electricity generation, from building, from oil and gas, from industry, from agriculture and natural and working lands,” Polis said during the news conference about the plan. “You know improving our air quality isn’t just good for our own health and for the environment. It’s also good for business.”

The plan offered 49 recommendations to follow, including:

Streamlining how and where electric vehicle charging stations will be placed.
Plugging more unused oil wells.
Expanding public transit routes and rider usage.
Improving energy efficiency in buildings.
Pursuing federal funding that can accelerate renewable energy technology in agriculture and other industries.

Polis and his team also tied their greenhouse-gas reduction goals to a push for a comprehensive land-use strategy in Colorado that would place more housing around transit stations encouraging people to use buses and trains more than cars to get to work and to entertainment destinations.

An attempt at sweeping land-use reforms failed last year in the Colorado General Assembly but lawmakers are taking another swing in 2024.

Falling short of goals

But the administration’s own analysis of the roadmap shows that even if Colorado follows every recommendation in the plan, the state still will miss its greenhouse-gas reduction goals.

And that’s not good, environmentalists said.

“There’s a crystal-clear benchmark for success when it comes to climate action in Colorado,” Schneer said, “and that is whether or not we are meeting the goals established by our lawmakers to drive down climate-warming pollution. We’re not just talking about numbers pulled out of a hat. These goals were established to set the pace of emissions cuts needed for the state to do its part in securing a stronger climate future for all Coloradans.”

In 2019, the General Assembly passed a climate action plan that set greenhouse-gas reduction targets. The law directed state leaders to reduce carbon emissions by 26% by 2025, by 50% by 2030 and by 90% by 2050 — all based on a 2005 baseline of 146.8 million metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions per year.

Last year, the legislature moved the targets, asking the state to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 100% by 2050.

Today, Colorado is about 80% of the way to reaching the 2030 goal, with the latest projections saying the state will hit that 2030 target of 76.8 million metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions between 2031 and 2032, according to the new roadmap.

On top of the state’s self-imposed goals, Colorado’s nine-county northern Front Range region has been listed by the Environmental Protection Agency as being in severe non-attainment of National Ambient Air Quality Standards. That designation means consumers will pay higher gas prices, starting this summer, and more companies will be required to apply for federal air pollution permits, which are complex, time-consuming and expensive.

Meeting greenhouse-gas reduction goals would help Colorado get back into compliance with federal standards.

The United States’ decades-long reliance on fossil fuels has accelerated global warming, increasing the frequency of drought, heat waves, massive wildfires and rising sea levels. In Colorado, climate change is drying up important waterways such as the Colorado River, fueling devastating wildfires such as the 2021 Marshall fire and making people sick because they are breathing dirty air.

Scientists say the United States and other countries can slow the damage by reducing carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse-gas pollution. All of those things are byproducts of gas-powered cars, trucks and lawn equipment, as well as oil and gas drilling and refining.

The need for improvement is urgent, and Polis said the new roadmap should raise the bar to push the state closer to its goals,

“This plan is really a reflection of the priorities and feedback that we heard across the state where people are crying out for cleaner air and for us to do a better job leading the nation on reducing greenhouse gases,” he said.

It’s good for the governor to lay out a plan, but the various state boards and commissions charged with establishing policy need to follow through, Schneer said.

“It’s important to emphasize that, when it comes to climate change policy, Colorado has an implementation problem,” she said. “We’ve seen this play out before. Legislators pass strong climate and environmental justice laws that Coloradans have demanded, but too often the results get delayed and weakened during implementation.”

As an example, Schneer referenced a September decision by the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission to create a system where the state’s 18 largest manufacturers can pay into a fund rather than invest in technology to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals they pour into the air. Environmentalists have labeled it a “pay to pollute” plan.

Because of the commission’s decision, legislators last week filed a bill, HB24-1339, that would prevent such a fund from being created.

Alana Miller, Colorado climate policy director for the National Resources Defense Council, said if the state really wants to move the needle, it needs to increase the electrification of cars and homes. That will require Colorado’s utility companies to build out a lot of clean energy such as solar and wind.

“The electrical sector will carry a lot of weight for the rest of the economy,” Miller said.

“Realistic and clear-eyed” about technology

Polis’ roadmap also emphasizes emerging technologies such as clean hydrogen, advanced geothermal and carbon capture — a system to pull air into machines, eliminate pollutants and then release the air back into the atmosphere. The governor believes those technologies can lead to new jobs in the state.

But those technologies are unproven and some, such as hydrogen, come with their own environmental risks, depending on how they are generated.

Parks Barroso, clean energy attorney for Western Resource Advocates, said emerging technologies need to remain an option, but the state needs to think about what are the best, most affordable methods for reducing emissions. For example, heat pumps and heat-pump water heaters are proven to reduce carbon in buildings, so the state should invest in more widespread usage of them.

“It’s important not to take technologies off the table but to be incredibly realistic and clear-eyed about the technologies we know we have today and how far they’ll be able to take us,” Barroso said.

One thing Schneer would like to see in the plan is a move by the state to set specific reduction goals on certain businesses or industries. Offering incentives to get businesses to cut emissions isn’t working, she said.

“Without that sort of pollution limit there’s no way to ensure voluntary action will add up and that’s what we are seeing now with emissions levels continuing to exceed the state’s expectations,” she said.

While the roadmap falls short of the state’s ultimate greenhouse-gas goals, many environmentalists, local governments and business groups applauded it, saying the climate crisis is urgent and Colorado needs to do its part to address it. The governor’s office collected statements of support from 30 people to promote the new roadmap.

“Actions that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions also reduce pollutants that contribute to our unhealthy ozone days, helping us secure a healthier future in more ways than one,” said Danny Katz, executive director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group.

“There’s no one solution and this roadmap underscores the need to reduce pollution wherever we can, using every tool we can, as quickly as we can.”

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