Colorado Public Utility Commission greenlights Xcel’s TEP – What does that mean?
Early Wednesday evening, Colorado’s utility regulator gave a greenlight to our largest utility’s Transportation Electrification Plan, a proposal to invest millions in electric vehicle infrastructure. As we wait for the details, one thing is clear - this is one of the biggest actions taken this year in Colorado to tackle climate change and it will bring big consumer benefits for years to come.
As many people head out for an early Christmas break, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) was hard at work finalizing a decision that will have huge impacts on our climate and the way we pay to fill up our vehicles in Colorado.
For months, the PUC has been weighing a proposal from our state’s largest utility, Xcel Energy, to allow them to go big into the electric vehicle space by building thousands of electric vehicle chargers and launching a number of programs designed to provide technical expertise to governments and businesses to convert their fleets of cars, vans, buses and trucks to electric-powered.
This is a big deal. The decision to allow Xcel Energy to dive into the electric vehicle space might have the biggest impact on climate change of any policy decision rolled out in 2020.
Authors
Danny Katz
Executive Director, CoPIRG
Danny has been the director of CoPIRG for over a decade. Danny co-authored a groundbreaking report on the state’s transit, walking and biking needs and is a co-author of the annual “State of Recycling” report. He also helped write a 2016 Denver initiative to create a public matching campaign finance program and led the early effort to eliminate predatory payday loans in Colorado. Danny serves on the Colorado Department of Transportation's (CDOT) Efficiency and Accountability Committee, CDOT's Transit and Rail Advisory Committee, RTD's Reimagine Advisory Committee, the Denver Moves Everyone Think Tank, and the I-70 Collaborative Effort. Danny lobbies federal, state and local elected officials on transportation electrification, multimodal transportation, zero waste, consumer protection and public health issues. He appears frequently in local media outlets and is active in a number of coalitions. He resides in Denver with his family, where he enjoys biking and skiing, the neighborhood food scene and raising chickens.
