When the governor signed a controversial bill in June imposing a 20 percent renewable energy standard on rural Colorado, he admitted the measure was “imperfect.” So he appointed an advisory committee to come up with ideas to improve the law for the 2014 legislative session.

That committee has failed. When it issues its report next month — a report that is nearly finished — it will not include a single consensus recommendation to amend the law.

But why should we be surprised? The time to seek consensus on divisive public policy is when all parties have an incentive to compromise — in other words, while legislation is still being written.

Once a bill is law, those happy with it will dig in their heels.

Here’s what Gov. John Hickenlooper said in June: “Some of the concerns raised during the legislative process were not given due consideration. Top among these concerns are the feasibility of the implementation timetable and consumer protections. The advisory committee will work to fully address these concerns, culminating in proposals for the 2014 legislative session.”

Sorry, no proposals. The committee, with members representing environmental, agriculture, rural electric, renewable energy and other interests, discussed a lot of ideas and even recorded votes on them. But its goal of unanimous recommendations was a formula for failure, as anyone surveying its membership could have foreseen.

To be sure, Hickenlooper also enlisted the committee to advise him on “the feasibility of achieving the 20 percent renewable energy standard” by 2020 and to offer its opinion of the 2 percent rate cap. But he may want to avert his eyes from at least one of its conclusions. The committee did indeed agree the 2020 mandate is feasible, but only by assuming the purchase of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs).

In other words, the standard will be met at least in part not by investment in those job-creating projects that the governor extolled in his signing statement but by an accounting mechanism in which certificates are transferred from existing green energy providers.

For the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, the state’s largest electric cooperative, buying RECs is the only way to meet the renewable mandate. It is a wholesale power purchaser and it is tied to long-term contracts that will not meet the mandate.

“It isn’t that we’re in love with RECs, but we have zero alternatives,” Mike Kopp, IREA’s manager of corporate affairs, told me. And he’s worried that as demand for RECs rises, so will their price, to the detriment of the co-op’s customers.

Assuming the governor is still interested in fixing Senate Bill 252, he should forget consensus and consider the ideas endorsed by a majority of his committee. As for my own suggestions:

1. Exempt IREA. Of the state’s 22 electric co-ops, it may be in a uniquely helpless position. The others are either tied to a wholesale supplier that must meet the 20 percent mandate (Tri-State) or are already exempt because of their smaller size.

2. Push the deadline from 2020 to at least 2022. The governor claimed that 2022 was briefly agreed to during negotiations in the spring. Why not resurrect it and thus boost the incentive to pursue renewable projects, as opposed to RECs?

3. Increase the size of new hydropower eligible under the renewable standard — and meet environmentalists halfway by allowing such additional hydropower only on existing dams.

Finally, next time fix the flaws in a bill before it is signed.

E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.