By Jacy Marmaduke, Fort Collins Coloradoan

FORT COLLINS — A king would be nothing without his crown. And in northern Colorado, King Coal’s crown is Rawhide Unit One, Larimer County’s lone coal power plant and biggest polluter.

But coal’s reign is poised to crumble.

Fort Collins’ electricity provider is considering shuttering Rawhide in 2030, 17 years ahead of schedule, in a pivot toward renewable sources and natural gas as the main power sources for northern Colorado’s largest cities.

Leaders of Platte River Power Authority — the power provider for Fort Collins, Loveland, Estes Park and Longmont — unveiled paths toward nearly 100 percent clean electricity for all four communities Thursday. The next steps will directly impact northern Colorado’s air, water and cost of living.

They also determined what will rule Fort Collins’ energy future in King Coal’s absence.

HOW WE GOT HERE

The train rattles into the station every three days, 11,000 tons of coal in tow.

Fresh off a tour of southeast Wyoming, 98 cars wait single-file at the Rawhide Energy Station north of Wellington. A rotary machine turns each car belly-up, dumping the coal in a cavernous pit.

Combined with some coal power from western Colorado, Rawhide’s coal plant is expected to generate 67 percent of the electricity used by Fort Collins and the other Platte River members in 2017. It’s cheap, reliable energy produced in a facility renowned for its efficiency and environmental controls — which is why you’ll never see a black cloud spilling from the concrete stack that towers over the plant.

Low-sulfur coal from eastern Wyoming’s Antelope Mine, operated by Cloud Peak Energy, burns “cleaner” than other types of coal, and machines called scrubbers lessen emissions of harmful gases.

But coal can only get so clean. In 2016, Rawhide Energy Station was the biggest polluter in Larimer County, with six times the greenhouse gas emissions of the second-largest polluter. Emissions from coal power made up about half of Fort Collins’ 2016 greenhouse gas emissions.

Fort Collins leaders have vowed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent of 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Shutting down coal units before then would be a huge stride toward those goals, and it could improve air quality and decrease electricity costs for residents in the long-term.

So when the Platte River board asked staff to figure out the cost of zero net-carbon energy — that means some fossil fuel power can be used as long as extra renewable energy is generated to balance out greenhouse gas emissions — coal had to go.

Modeling efforts assume Rawhide Unit One would close by 2030 and Platte River would get no power from two coal units it co-owns in Craig. The first round of modeling, which was presented to the board Thursday, included an array of options and costs for coal-free, renewable-dominated power.

“We’re not saying we’re moving away from all coal,” Platte River general manager Jason Frisbie said. “We’re just going to take coal out of the equation for modeling purposes and see what the economic impact of that is.”

Whether Platte River truly closes the door on coal will be up to the board, which includes Fort Collins Mayor Wade Troxell, Mayor Pro Tem Gerry Horak and two city leaders each from Loveland, Longmont and Estes Park.

Frisbie said the decision will be based on principles of environmental responsibility, reliability and economics — words that might sound like platitudes but are deeply significant for Fort Collins’ energy and climate future.

Pulling back from coal is environmentally responsible because it would stifle the No. 1 source of Larimer County greenhouse gas emissions, environmental advocates say.

But city leaders worry about the reliability of renewable staples like solar panels and wind turbines that generate power only when the sun shines and the wind blows. Renewable energy can’t yet be stored in quantities large enough to power a city, although many environmental advocates have faith that storage technology will get there eventually.

Then there’s the money question.

Rawhide “is our lowest-cost resource,” Frisbie said. “Nothing else is close.”

At roughly $12 a ton shipped from Wyoming’s Antelope Mine, coal has a tough price tag to beat. But coal has other associated costs that make it less financially appealing, said Patrick Cummins, senior policy adviser at Colorado State University’s Center for the New Energy Economy.

Coal plants across the West are getting old, and present-day environmental regulations have increased the costs of revamping a coal plant and building a new one, Cummins said. The current, let’s say, “delicate” position of the Clean Power Plan and American involvement in the Paris climate accord hasn’t removed those cost barriers, he added.

“I don’t think anyone believes the pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is going away,” he said. “It may go away for a little while, but you can’t, as a company, say, ‘Well, we don’t have to worry about that anymore.'”

The cost of required upgrades has already inspired Platte River and other co-owners to shut down a western Colorado coal plant, Craig Unit One, by 2026.

Rawhide Unit One meets current environmental standards and could continue operations through 2046, but new regulations could trigger costly upgrades. Meanwhile, coal must compete with plentiful natural gas and the rapidly diminishing prices of wind and solar power, Cummins said.

The price of renewable energy is changing all the time and depends on a lot of factors, but recent estimates found that solar and wind energy has reached comparable or lower prices than fossil fuel energy in some areas.

And because of strides in energy efficiency, electricity demand isn’t growing nearly as fast as population, city and utility leaders said. The same thing is happening across the West, making the electricity equation essentially a zero-sum game.

Put that all together, and you get a 27 percent decrease in electricity generation from coal between 2008 and 2016 on the Western grid, Cummins said. That grid includes Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Montana and every contiguous state to the west. As of 2016, Western utilities planned to retire half of existing coal plants by 2030.

Renewable energy is “what customers want,” Cummins said. That’s certainly the case for some of Fort Collins’ biggest electricity users, including Colorado State University and Anheuser-Busch, both of which recently set goals for 100 percent renewable energy.

“We’re very receptive to major customers,” Horak said. “These entities are encouraging us to (pursue renewable energy), and if we don’t — given how the energy markets are, they’ll get renewables from somebody else.”

But Platte River needs more renewables to give.

HURDLES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Platte River has been steadily increasing its renewable energy options, but getting to zero-net carbon would be a big leap.

About 32 percent of Platte River’s 2017 electricity deliveries will be from renewable sources, or 12 percent for those who contest hydropower as a renewable energy source because of its impacts to rivers and wildlife.

With few opportunities and significant public opposition to electricity-generating dams, Platte River probably won’t pursue more hydropower. That leaves two obvious renewable options: wind and solar energy.

Platte River already put out a request for proposals to add 50 megawatts of wind power to its system, which would boost wind power capacity by two-thirds. There are more regional opportunities for wind turbines, which are relatively cheap and take up much less space than solar panels.

Solar power is affordable, too, and panels can be installed right in town as well as regionally. Some renewable energy advocates, including Community for Sustainable Energy Director Fred Kirsch, think Fort Collins Utilities should rent out rooftop and parking lot space to produce solar power in-city.

Kirsch’s back-of-the-napkin calculations found that Fort Collins has at least double the amount of rooftop space needed to support the city’s peak electricity demand with solar power.

“What we don’t want to see is putting solar panels on top of open spaces and natural areas when we already have so much paved surface,” Kirsch said.

The land-use question is an important one for solar power because solar panels can take up a lot of space for not much energy potential. Take Rawhide Flats, the solar project at Rawhide Energy Station — about 185 acres of panels account for 30 MW of capacity, or about 2 percent of Platte River’s electricity output if all its resources were producing electricity at the same time.

If Platte River expands its solar and wind sources, it’ll be through a purchase-power agreement, Frisbie said. That means a business eligible for solar and wind tax credits build the facility and Platte River signs on to buy the power for a certain number of years. It’s the same scenario that brought Rawhide Flats to fruition.

Purchase power agreements mean Platte River won’t need bonds or other financing to build renewable power sources. But the electricity has to get from the source to the user via transmission lines, which can be expensive and fraught with red tape.

Platte River owns a transmission system that serves Fort Collins, Loveland and Longmont and uses Western Area Power Administration transmission to deliver electricity to Estes Park, spokesman Steve Roalstad said. It’s “too early to say” whether the provider will have to add more transmission lines to bring power to the communities.

The current system isn’t good at integrating wind power because Platte River doesn’t own the transmission lines that carry electricity from Wyoming and eastern Colorado, Platte River Chief Operating Officer Andy Butcher said. Instead, Platte River has to pay extra to use transmission lines it doesn’t own.

“The single biggest constraint for getting renewables to us is transmission capacity,” said Horak, who fears installing thousands of solar panels in the city would be too expensive despite the advantage of lower transmission costs.

“Folks haven’t looked at transmission lines as a positive in general, but there’s no way we’re gonna have major wind or solar in Fort Collins,” he added. “We have to get it from somewhere else.”

Joining a regional transmission organization might help. RTOs allow utilities to share transmission lines over large areas and add renewable sources to their systems more easily. Platte River is part of the Mountain West Transmission Group, a group of 10 electricity providers across Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico that is looking to join a southwestern regional transmission organization.

The last big possibility is natural gas. This one inspires a lot of debate.

Natural gas electricity generation produces about half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal. Troxell and many others have branded it a “transition fuel” that can solve for the comings and goings of solar and wind power.

Half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal is still a lot of emissions, though. Natural gas recovery, processing and delivery also release significant amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide. Drilling wells near homes, schools and other spaces also poses safety and public health risks, illustrated by a recent Firestone home explosion that killed two people and injured a third.

The Fort Collins Sustainability Group, which has long pushed Fort Collins leaders to pursue renewable energy, is “adamantly opposed” to the construction of new natural gas infrastructure, founding member Kevin Cross said. He noted that natural gas leakage of more than 3 percent during the extraction and transportation processes makes natural gas worse for the climate than coal.

Leakage in the Denver-Julesburg basin that encompasses eastern Colorado was about 4 percent in 2011, according to a study led by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and University of Colorado Boulder researchers.

“Therefore, the notion that natural gas is a climate-friendly transition fuel is a myth, pure and simple,” Cross wrote in an email.

The “net” part of Platte River’s modeling effort means the provider could get some power from fossil fuels, including natural gas, and make up for the emissions by generating extra renewable energy. Platte River owns several natural gas units at Rawhide Energy Station, but they’re rarely used because they’re pricey to operate, plant manager Andy Cofas said.

If the Platte River board decides to add more natural gas to the mix, its members might have to sign off on building a new unit that could produce electricity for a lower price.

Troxell and Horak aren’t ruling out natural gas or coal. Platte River needs a baseload resource, they said — something that can produce power anytime. They pointed out that the natural gas industry has made progress in mitigating emissions.

“It’s an ‘and,’ not an ‘or,'” Troxell said, adding that incorporating renewable energy isn’t “at the exclusion of other things, and there’s a transition. You have to make reasonable fiduciary decisions the whole way.”

Platte River is preparing for the possibility of continued coal or natural gas power. The provider is a participant in the Windy Gap Firming Project, a contested plan to draw water from the Colorado River for storage in a proposed reservoir southwest of Loveland. The water could be used to cool coal units or natural gas units, and participation “gives us flexibility and ensures a water supply if we need it,” Roalstad said.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR RATES

You can’t make big mistakes in the electricity industry.

“Utilities that are in financial trouble spend a lot of money, and then all of the sudden something changes,” Frisbie said. “Maybe they invested half a billion dollars in a resource that never even produced one megawatt-hour of electricity. That’s like buying a new home, losing your job and still having to pay the mortgage.”

Ratepayers pay for those missteps, Frisbie said. That’s why leaders of Platte River, a nonprofit that has one of the lowest wholesale electricity rates in the state, take spending money “very seriously” and would rather diversify than invest in one big thing, Frisbie said.

He said Platte River’s “conservative” approach to renewable sources has helped keep prices down because, as the board watched and waited, the cost of renewables slipped ever downward.

Still, wholesale rates — what Platte River charges municipalities for electricity — have increased by more than 50 percent since Rawhide Energy Station began operations in 1984. Increases in wholesale rates have generally been passed on to electricity users.

Adding renewable sources will likely drive up utility rates, Troxell and Horak said. But, they added, rates will go up regardless. There’s inflation. The cost of new environmental technology. Even if Platte River stuck with coal, it would eventually need to build a new coal plant.

“I don’t see an alternative to drive rates down,” Troxell said.

City council member Ray Martinez, who has long advocated for a community-wide vote on the city’s climate action plan, called that notion “elitist.”

“It’s being a little pompous when you say, ‘Oh, well we’ve got the lowest rates in the community,'” he said. “That doesn’t mean we’re entitled to raise the rates sky-high. You can’t just say, ‘Oh well.'”

Environmental advocates argue renewables could drive rates down in the long-term. Renewable energy calls for a big up-front investment, but the resources themselves are free and unlimited.

“By the 2040s, we’ll be saving billions of dollars,” Cross said. “The challenge is how you bring those savings forward so people aren’t stuck with big bills in the beginning and promised, ‘Well, savings will be great in 20 years.’ That’s a difficult pill for most people to swallow.”

THE KING AND THE CASTLE

If King Coal’s crown falls, what happens to his castle — Cloud Peak Energy’s Antelope Mine?

The 26,000-acre mine beats in the heart of America’s largest coal supplier, the Powder River Basin. During a recent visit, a massive white shovel truck scooped coal from the innards of rolling plains. Three heaping scoops fill a truck with about 180 tons of coal. Employees fill trucks of coal to be hauled, crushed and shipped 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Platte River is a longtime Antelope Mine customer — the original customer, in fact. It’s on the small end of Antelope’s 30-plus customers, said Blake Jones, the mine’s technical services manager and lead engineer. But declining demand for coal has diminished the mine’s production about 20 percent in recent years, from 37.1 million tons in 2011 to 29.8 million tons in 2016.

“The economic cycle we’re facing is a substantial downturn from where we’ve been,” Jones said, although he added that Cloud Peak Energy coal still accounts for about 3 percent of American electricity generation.

The mine is projected to run out of coal by the early 2030s. Cloud Peak has other proposed mines in various states of the permitting process. New castles for King Coal.

We’ll have to wait and see if Fort Collins remains a part of the kingdom.

Information from: Fort Collins Coloradoan via AP Member Exchange