Xcel Energy’s sprawling new Mountain Energy Project is one step closer to reality.
Xcel and a coalition of mountain towns have reached a settlement on this $155-million energy upgrade, affecting more than 33,000 customers in Summit County, Winter Park and Leadville.
The Mountain Energy Project promises more reliable natural gas while meeting state and local goals to slash emissions. The coalition fought for reliability and affordability, especially in cold winter months when energy use spikes.
Only one group is against this settlement, the state Utility Consumer Advocate Office.
Jessie Burley, the sustainability and parking manager for town of Breckenridge, represented the mountain coalition over months of negotiations.
“The Eastern Mountain gas system, of which Summit County is a large part, is reaching a capacity limit where the utility has to make some major improvement decisions around the future of the gas,” Burley tells Krystal 93.
The first solution, pitched years ago, was a $300 million gas pipeline. The coalition fought for a cheaper solution without compromising how much customers pay, or how well they can heat their homes.
“The gas shortage that the company is projecting is very much related to extreme weather events, so we are not arguing for everybody to get off gas,” Burley says. “The company has proposed what they call ‘non-pipeline alternatives,’ and so it’s a suite of opportunities to avoid that major gas pipeline.”
The first alternative you might notice are new gas tanks above ground in Frisco, Keystone and Breck. Xcel installed the first of these tanks in 2022. They currently sit on private property near Gold Hear off Highway 9.
You might also notice incentives paying you to upgrade from gas to electric appliances.
“What it’s doing is kind of tipping the scale for people that do want to electrify,” Burley says.
In Summit County, some locals are already walking the walk. From 2023 to 2024 natural gas use in Summit dropped by 5%, despite adding several hundred new homes in Silverthorne alone.
But some Silverthorne residents are not convinced this plan will prevent another year like this past one, when multiple blackouts left people in the dark and cold.
“I was dismayed to see that the town council of Silverthorne is planning to join the Summit County intergovernmental energy reliability suicide pact,” Silverthorne resident Wendall Grogan wrote in an email to town council. “All of this based on a totally theoretical dramatic increase in electrical supply to the county. For those of us in Silverthorne who experienced an electrical blackout last winter with an outdoor temperature of negative 15 degrees, the prospect of this happening on a regular basis while Colorado undergoes its planned ‘green energy’ transition is not a happy prospect.”
Burley says one of the coalition’s biggest wins was a cost-share guarantee, spreading that $155 million price tag across the state, so that mountain locals are not shouldering the burden.
“No matter what decision gets made, Excel is going to have to roll this thing out,” Burley says. “And we’re only going to achieve the success if we all collaborate, both as the utility and as impacted communities.”
You can weigh in on the Xcel Mountain Energy Project on Monday, Aug. 4 when it goes before the Public Utility Commission. The PUC has the final say. Or, submit comments online.