UPDATED July 17, 2024, 3:00 p.m. July 17
The following clarifying information was received after the story about tonight’s final public meeting on the Integrated Resource Plan was published.
This plan is yet to be adopted by the PRPA board and details the proposed portfolio of resources that will be used to generate electricity for Estes Park and its three other member communities: Longmont, Loveland, and Fort Collins for the next 10-20 years.
The final public presentation on the IRP is tonight from 6-8 p.m. at PRPA’s Engagement Center, located at 2000 E Horsetooth Road in Fort Collins.
PRPA provides low-cost wholesale energy for its four member communities. In 2018, PRPA’s board of directors resolved to move to zero-carbon emissions by 2030; however, higher costs involved in this transition has led PRPA to propose the “optimal new carbon” option instead of the “no new carbon” in its new IRP. These details will be presented at the public meeting in Fort Collins tonight but were also presented at the July 9 Estes Park Town Board meeting.
“The portfolio recommends to Platte River’s board of directors ‘optimal new carbon,’ per the results of the utility’s IRP,” said Javier C. Camacho, PRPA’s Director of Public and External Affairs.
“This portfolio includes acquiring 200 megawatts (MW) of thermal, dispatchable resources in the form of aeroderivative combustion turbine units that would initially run on natural gas with technologies allowing it to transition to green hydrogen when it becomes available,” he explained.
“Each portfolio was measured against Platte River’s board-support foundational pillars of reliability, environmental responsibility and financial sustainability. The portfolio ‘optimal new carbon’ allows the utility to responsibly balance these three foundational pillars while achieving deep decarbonization efforts.”
The “no new carbon” option would have resulted in 126,000 CO2 tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Adding the thermal resources with their natural gas (and eventually hydrogen gas)-fueled turbines under the optimal new carbon option will result in 241,000 CO2 tons, Camacho said.
“Beyond CO2 emission levels, the other difference to note is the cost of each portfolio – no new carbon will cost approximately $5.34 billion NPV (net present value) versus optimal carbon of $2.77 billion NPV,” he added.
While either option sounds like they would result in a lot of pollution, it’s actually about 85% less that was emitted by PRPA’s resource mix in 2005, explained Raj Singam Setti, PRPA’s Chief Operations Officer of innovation and sustainable resource integration.
When asked if this IRP is behind the proposed 5% increase in Estes Park Power and Communications (PNC) rates, the Town’s utility director Reuben Bergsten said, “to claim a portion of the 5% is solely due to PRPA’s transition would be an oversimplification. Modernization of our local distribution operations is required with or without the PRPA transition plan.”
Public hearings on the proposed Estes Park PNC rate increase will be held during the next two Town of Estes Park board meetings on July 23 and August 6.
The Estes Valley Voice will cover tonight’s public hearing.
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2030 is now just five and a half years away but the Town of Estes Park’s wholesale power supplier, Platte River Power Authority (PRPA), is projected to surpass the state’s goal of a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by then.
In fact, carbon emissions created by PRPA’s power generation will be approximately 85% less than 2005 levels by that time, reported its representatives at the July 9 Town Board meeting.
PRPA has completed its Integrated Resource Plan, the framework for sources of energy production for the communities of Estes Park, Longmont, Loveland, and Fort Collins, for the next 10-20 years. The Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) requires such a report be filed every five years; the last one submitted by PRPA was in 2020.
The biggest steps toward pollution reduction by PRPA include commissioning new wind and solar plants in northern Colorado and decommissioning its coal-fired operations at Rawhide Energy Station Unit 1, located in Larimer County north of Wellington, as these new systems come online.
“Optimal new carbon” producing systems, in the form of natural gas, must be brought into the mix because wind and solar energy production alone cannot maintain the reliability of the current system, said Raj Singam Setti, PRPA’s Chief Operations Officer of innovation and sustainable resource integration.
The last public meeting before the IRP is adopted and filed with WAPA will be held Wednesday, July 17, from 6-8 p.m. at PRPA’s engagement center, located at 2000 E. Horsetooth Road in Fort Collins. The doors open at 5:30 p.m.
PRPA is a member-owned nonprofit company, created by the municipalities of Longmont, Loveland, Fort Collins, and Estes Park in 1973 to provide low-cost wholesale electric power to its member communities.
In 1985, PRPA opened Rawhide in Wellington, which currently provides about half of the baseload capacity for its communities, 280 net megawatts, and utilizes coal from the Powder River Basin.
Rawhide’s coal-fired generation produces the lowest cost energy in PRPA’s portfolio with the greatest reliability but will be completely retired by 2030; similarly, power generated from the Yampa Valley Project, two coal-fired power plants owned by a consortium of energy companies (PRPA has 18% ownership), will be taken out of the resource plan by 2025 (Craig Unit 1) and 2028 (Craig Unit 2).
In 2018, PRPA’s board of directors adopted the goal of having net zero emissions by 2030. Since then, energy diversification has been the model. PRPA’s resource mix now includes a variety of zero-emissions production methods including wind energy, solar (including the largest solar plant in Northern Colorado, Black Hollow Solar, which broke ground earlier this week); and, hydropower through the Colorado River Project and the Loveland Area Project (with power plants at Marys Lake and Lake Estes in Estes Park).
But rising costs of green energy production, storage, and distribution have adjusted PRPA’s goal slightly, said Setti in the presentation on July 9. Natural gas turbines, including the “optimal new carbon” proposed in the IRP, have a much-lower carbon footprint than coal and will continue to be in the resource mix.
“The rapidly changing electric industry has many high-stake risks,” explained Town of Estes Park’s utility director Reuben Bergsten. “PRPA’s diversified portfolio plan allows us to meet future regulatory requirements and reduce those future risks by investing in aero-derivative generation resources that can run on green energy as it becomes available.”
More information about PRPA’s IRP and Wednesday’s meeting can be found here, including a zoom link to the public presentation.
The need for the natural gas-fired plant to replace the rawhide coal-fired plant is controversial. Many environmentalists say it is not needed. It really depends on how fast utility scale battery storage can be developed and deployed. PRPA thinks it will not be fast enough to fill the dispatchable power requirement, but others disagree and point to the $250 million + cost to ratepayers. The PRPA Board (including the Estes Park members) think the need is there and the cost is justified.