Beneficial Electrification Planning for Colorado. Have you been loving the Sun and CPR's fear porn about Trump's second term?

Beneficial Electrification Planning for Colorado

Do you like buzzwords?  If so, have I got a deal for you.

Complete Colorado recently ran a story about a letter Polis sent to a bunch of state government agencies.  That story is linked first below.

The purpose of the letter was to, quoting the letter itself linked second below, "...encourage the development of an all-of-government approach to beneficial electrification across Colorado, emphasizing the opportunity to put downward pressure on electricity rates, support clean energy, and further economic success."

Get all that?  The letter's just chockablock with that stuff.  Lots of "if's" in there.  Lots of conditional statements and cheerleading.

Hiding behind all this, however, is (and this is hinted at in the Complete article too) a whole lot of state-level planning and control.  

Our Libertarian, free-market governor, feels the best way to prevent the costs of his party's carbon-cutting and market-meddling from spiraling out of control for consumers in this state is to (checks notes) get the government more involved in the market.

This includes a lot of incentives (financed by you), lots of the state stepping in on local decisions, and lots of demand response by customers (whose flexibility) our governor greatly appreciates.**

All this so that we can capitalize on all the savings in energy costs, as electrification (quoting the letter again), "... insulates customers from price spikes that are common among unregulated energy commodities like natural gas, as the electricity they consume will increasingly come from fixed price renewable energy."

I suppose that's right.  I mean the unit price for the electricity (when renewables are hugely subsidized by you and I) can be less.

But reality has to creep in at some point.  This letter is dressed up marketing.  It's our governor sweeping things like the costs we'll all pay to build the electrification infrastructure under the rug while dazzling us all with a future full of fancy multisyllable words.  

It's a prediction of net benefit to us all thanks to the decisions that he and his fellow Democrats made (all while pushing aside the fact that for this to even approach a net benefit a long time will have to pass and everything, including faraway technology, will have to go right).  

Ah to live in that world with our governor, the one where you have resources enough to buy your way out of the adverse consequences you foist on others, and to be long out of office when the chickens come home to roost.

**Not sure if Polis here refers to the flexibility about when the power is generated and consumed for large industrial/commercial consumers alone or them alongside regular consumers.  Frankly, I could see it meaning either and know that Demand Management is a pillar of how Xcel plans to meet the state's mandates.

https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2024/11/07/gov-polis-pushes-state-agencies-puc-on-electrification/

http://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/wp-content/uploads/2024.10.08-re_-Beneficial-Electrification-Planning-for-Colorado.pdf

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Have you been loving the Sun and CPR's fear porn about Trump's second term?

Definition: Fear Porn (informal), mainstream media content that deliberately and enticingly plays on people's fears about disaster, disease and death


The Sun and CPR (likely others too, but they're my usual go-to's) have been pumping out the fear porn for their liberal readers these past few days. The picture at the top was The Sun's banner on their website for a few days.

CPR's been a little more toned-done, but they've still joined the game with a couple articles here and there.

I'll leave it to you to delve into them as much as you'd like. In my own informal review of them I would say the repeated theme goes something like "well, we don't know what exactly Trump will do, here's what he said, and now here's an expert from some left-leaning group to tell you the horrors that would be visited upon us if Trump gets his way."

Biased and shaded, free space given over to rampant speculation by people that I think it's fair to say are not Trump supporters nor conservatives. And little in the way of counterpoint.

I keep getting reminded of the over-the-top language you would see in the trailers for B-grade Hollywood monster movies.

Splashed across the screen: "Thrill to the terrors that conservatives could wreak upon Colorado's social progress!"

Still, at least these late efforts are not as bad as 9New's "synthetic" coverage (see the last link below), which was even more open about putting words in Trump's mouth AND which appeared prior to the election.

Something the Sun and CPR could shoot for I suppose. Gotta fill those seats!

https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/15/trump-might-reverse-drilling-energy-restrictions-colorado-public-lands/

https://coloradosun.com/2024/11/16/outdoors-industry-colorado-donald-trump-presidency/

https://coloradosun.com/2024/11/14/colorado-abortion-rights-donald-trump-presidency/

https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/yes-mr-hutchins-9news-does-synthesize?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web