The Fort Collins Energy Board, Fort Collins Sustainability Group, Sierra Club Poudre Canyon Group, Larimer Alliance, Community for Sustainable Energy, and 350 Northern Colorado have all recommended that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) or another respected organization review the Platte River Power Authority’s (PRPA’s) recently-released Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which includes their plan to build a new gas plant. The FCSG finds it beyond troubling that City Council has not acted on those recommendations to date.
Last month, the PRPA released a presentation that appears to respond to the Energy Board’s and community organizations’ call for a third-party review. The PRPA admits that NREL has not reviewed their IRP. They then go on to claim that if NREL WERE to review their IRP, it would conclude that gas generation is necessary.
This argument is a rhetorical sleight of hand. We are asking for a review of the need to build a NEW gas plant, not for a review of whether any gas generation is needed in the near term. The PRPA already has 388 Megawatts of gas generation capacity, none of which is scheduled for retirement. That is approximately 50% of the PRPA’s peak load. The existing gas turbines – in conjunction with contracts for dispatchable power with other generators – can likely tide the PRPA over until other technologies such as long-term storage batteries and virtual power plants can be implemented at the scale needed.
A new gas plant will be very expensive. The PRPA has estimated that its rates will increase by 6.3% annually to cover those costs. That rate increase does not include the potential future conversion of the plant to run on hydrogen. The PRPA has refused to provide even a ballpark estimate of those costs, but they are likely to be extraordinarily high. These rate increases will make electricity less affordable for the residents of Fort Collins, and will also make it difficult for the City to effectively promote building electrification, which council established as one of its goals earlier this year.
A review by NREL would evaluate whether building a new gas plant is truly optimal from the perspectives of affordability, climate, and air quality, and might recommend a better approach. City Council is responsible both for setting electric rates and for ensuring that the City’s climate and air quality goals are met. We believe that City Council owes it to the people it serves to commission an independent review of the PRPA’s plans.
Note: This is a slightly edited version of the statement that was originally posted on October 14th.
