CO Energy Code Board wants Xcel to run your appliances. A budget summary from 2005 forward.

Sep 03, 2025

Low energy, low carbon, and higher upfront cost energy codes are now complete

I have written in the past about our state's model energy code.** Per the quote (with link left intact) coming from the link at bottom:

"The Model Low Energy and Carbon Code, which is required by state law HB22-1362, becomes Colorado’s new minimum energy code on July 1, 2026. Any municipality or county that updates any of its building codes after that date must adopt the model code, or a code that will achieve greater energy efficiency and pollution reductions."

That second sentence there is the operant one. Get ready to have this code forced upon your locality as soon as they update their building codes post 7/1/2026.

I'll leave it to you to read through the entirety of the press release, but there are some things I thought worth special note.

The press release is, as are the other associated press material (and likely as will be many thoughtless press updates will be) chock full of sentences touting how this code saves money. That statement is correct, but with a caveat. They save operating costs and not purchase costs. That's the bargain with energy efficiency upgrades: if you have the money now to afford to installer higher efficiency, you will get lower monthly bills.

A natural follow up is to ask how long it takes for these higher efficiency items to pay for themselves. That varies and will, of course, not be something the media looks into.

To address affordability, the unelected board that chose the code built an interesting "sliding scale" into the code: the size of the house determines the code requirements. At the bottom of the scale (5000 sq ft or smaller), homes just have to meet the baseline code, but any home 7500 sq ft or larger must be net zero on energy usage. This means you must either generate (or purchase) enough renewable energy to offset your total annual use.

Don't want to electrify your home? You can still use gas appliances (a blessing upon the code board for allowing us all that freedom), but you will have to buy your way to that by having to meet requirements those that electrify do not have to meet. The language in the press release made me chuckle. Note the stilted wording plus what's not stated out loud: "Both all electric and mixed fuel buildings will have viable pathways to code compliance."

I saved the best for last. Let me take one last quote, letting them speak for themselves.

"The code is one of the first in the nation to require heating, cooling, water heating, and lighting systems to be demand response capable, which means they must be capable of automatically responding to a utility signal to reduce electricity consumption during periods of high demand. This will help utilities avoid large investments in meeting peak demand, reducing costs that would otherwise be passed on to utility ratepayers."

Put aside the laughable statement at the end--who in their right mind believes this will prevent a utility like, say, Xcel from raising rates and charging you more?--and focus on the first part.

You didn't misread. The code requires, at least in some cases, that appliances which your electric utility can turn on and off from afar, and without your permission, be installed. Is now a good time to remind you that the people who decided this cannot be fired by you, their not being elected and all.

**If you need a refresher or haven't heard, an energy code is the part of the building code that deals with energy use. For example, it might specify the minimum amount of insulation needed for a wall. It might also specify minimum efficiency for, say, a water heater.

https://view.energy.state.co.us/?qs=3ae67669f11a81d62e98ad86ef72be673c94df34ce464393d71111ae9f110d1c1a2e94bb36809e6114b073ca0e1acb50074fc567e11b7480c23e02391d1c476f907d1b151c05aec04d3b9ad75f0740db

Not too long after the bill that enabled the energy code covered above was passed, I was trying to get an effort going to somehow get Logan County exempted.

Fruitless and pointless it turned out. Voters cannot pursue local ballot issues at the county level. You can at the city level, just not the county.

This has been the case for a while, recently affirmed by another appellate court ruling.

https://www.coloradopolitics.com/2025/08/29/county-voters-cannot-pursue-referendum-on-land-use-change-appeals-court-says/

A budget summary from 2005 forward

I had a reader suggest a look at the budget from Fiscal Year (FY) 2005/2006 forward. I thought a look might indeed be in order. I also wanted to share the resources I used so you can look around and check on things too if you've a mind.

The first link below comes from the Joint Budget Committee staff. It's a spreadsheet breakdown of our state's budget from FY starting 2005 forward. Feel free to save yourself a copy.

The spreadsheet will give you all kinds of budgetary information stretching back. Screenshot 1 is from this spreadsheet and shows the block for FY starting 2005.

Totals are along the bottom in bold. The state departments are along the leftmost column. GF is general fund (income and sales taxes), CF is cash funds (fees, enterprises), RF is reappropriated funds (intra-governmental transfers), FF are federal funds paid to our state, FTE are full time equivalents (how many state employees we have). There are a couple more columns, but I didn't really find them useful so I won't discuss here.

I took summary data from this source spreadsheet and made a new spreadsheet which I link to second below. It's also public and you're welcome to make your own copy.

I took the totals from FY starting 2005 up to 2024 (the 2025 data still being finalized in addition to changes from the special session). That's what you see on the first sheet in the spreadsheet. The second sheet is the year vs. FTE numbers. I went to the state demographer's website and got estimated state total population so I could compare FTE's to population.

Let's look at a few patterns.

Screenshot 2 is a bar graph showing the sources of revenues for the state vs. year. The various colors (see the legend across the top) give the various sources.

It's clear from the graph, and shouldn't be a surprise, that our state loves to raise revenue via fees. The bars for that category are relatively small in 2005 and then explode. The reverse could be said for reappropriated funds. Not a lot of intragovernmental transfers are going on.

There is another "reciprocal" trend going on here, albeit nowhere near as striking as the above. The total revenue coming from the general fund has fallen over time while the contributions from fees and from the Feds have gone up.

Compare this table to table 2b (from the third link below). The bar graph starts to show a decided change in revenue sources beginning around FY starting 2008 or 2009. Do you notice what happens in our state government from that time in terms of party control of the governor, house, and senate.

Screenshot 3 is a comparison of FTE (state employees) vs. year.

It is reasonable to figure that the size of our government ought to scale with our population. I know it's not how it feels, but if we have more people needing driver's licenses, we need more DMV clerks.

In order to correct for this, I took the number of FTEs and made that relative to the state's population for any given year. I scaled it to FTE's per 1000 population to make the numbers a little friendlier.

You can clearly see that, even adjusting for population, our government is growing: even corrected for population growth we are adding state employees, a bloat in state employees we have to pay for.

This dynamic really takes flight starting in 2019 and forward. Not surprisingly, this date also corresponds to the beginning of the Polis/progessive complete takeover (see again screenshot 2b).

The last screenshot, screenshot 4, shows percent increases for a variety of quantities going from 2005 to 2024 and then 2019 to 2024.

This table comes with a caveat. None of these numbers were corrected for inflation. I would therefore say that you should take the 2005 to 2024 percent jumps with a lot of salt and the 2019 to 2024 with some salt (but not as much). The exception here is with the FTE. Those are just people.

Referring solely to the 2019 to 2024 comparison because of the above, I want you to note that our state (as in the earlier figures) has grown its government faster than the population. That's not all, however. While they've done this with with various funding sources--there has been an increase in general fund (income and sales tax) and federal dollars--the biggest jump has been an increase in fee dollars, cash funds.

Our state budget is complex, but it is not unknowable. Information from reliable, ACTUAL nonpartisan sources is out there. It might take a minute to reduce it, but this is the best way to answer your questions and be relatively certain that no one is leading you around by the nose.

If you find some other patterns here worth sharing, please feel free to share.

If you have a question or topic you want to explore and wonder about how to do it, please feel free to ask. We'll put our heads together.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tFhuGUvzdTekJHwAFKbZtNktkz6BB1Y9/view?ts=68af76a1

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WHNnt3xhSFq9mBDHNzg5iHyQWGHuZSGk/view?ts=68af76b5

https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_Colorado_state_government