Good evening, Mayor Francis and Councilmembers Pignataro, Fudge, Potyondy, Hoeven, Nelsen, and Conway –

The Fort Collins Sustainability Group proposed a four-part resolution at the council meeting tonight, related to PRPA’s non-carbon goal and the sale of renewable energy credits.  We hope that you will carefully consider each element of the proposed resolution, and bring forward as many as you can.  Those elements are:

1. Set a specific non-carbon generation goal for 2030 of between 85% and 95%.
2. Set a new date for achieving 100% non-carbon generation, no later than 2040.
3. Either halt plans to build a new fracked gas generating plant, or decommission at least part of the PRPA’s existing 388 MW fracked gas generating fleet.
   1. Keeping those existing turbines in service will mean that other utilities in the Southwest Power Pool will continue calling on the PRPA’s fracked gas generators to sell them power during the middle of the day in peak ozone season as they have done this past summer, polluting our air, damaging the climate, and making it impossible to ever come close to 100% non-carbon.
4. Halt the sale of renewable energy credits, or RECs, to entities outside of the PRPA’s four member communities.
   1. REC sales mean that in 2025, Fort Collins will see a drastic reduction in its progress toward meeting its climate pollution reduction goals compared to 2024. In exchange, the PRPA gets $2 million from the likes of Amazon, Google, and Meta, so those firms can claim that THEY are making progress on their renewable energy goals.  The benefit to the average residential customer is just 40 cents per month off their electric bill.  This is a betrayal of the efforts so many city employees, councilmembers, and community members have made over the years to work toward our climate goals.

We didn’t hear anyone on council express any thoughts tonight on why element #1 or element #4 would not be possible.  If there isn’t the will to get all elements in the resolution, please consider elements #1 and #4 at a minimum.

Update: After one week, we still haven’t heard back from the mayor or any of the other six councilmembers concerning our proposed resolution to protect our community’s climate and clean energy goals.  It is difficult to avoid that conclusion that this City Council does not take the City’s declared climate emergency seriously.

Fort Collins Sustainability Group

P.O. Box 672, Fort Collins, CO  80522