XCEL: Colorado’s Power Pathway in El Paso and Elbert Counties

December 2, 2025

To Colorado’s Legislators, Public Utilities Commissioners (PUC), and Decision-Makers:

There is a major problem with Xcel Energy’s “Colorado’s Power Pathway” project and the attendant proliferation of thousands of industrial wind turbines and many square miles of solar arrays to slather Colorado’s 40% landmass east of the Front Range: No business analysis was done to determine the best solution to the state’s need to power metropolitan Denver.

Look at the table below and tell me, if you owned a company responsible for adding to Denver’s power supply, which solution would you choose?

Attributes	Industrial Wind Turbines (IWTs) and Colorado’s Power Pathway	Nuclear Power Plant
Cost	$2 billion just for 600 miles of transmission lines; does not include solar arrays and IWTs.	$2 billion with 50-50 federal program cost-share
Useful life	IWT: 15 – 30 years; Solar: ~ 20 yrs; Lines: 50 – 80 years with parts replaced or refurbished	50 – 80 years
Disposal	IWT: no predefined plans; no known recycling; underground foundations remain. No replacement plans	Established nuclear disposal protocols
Footprint	A spread of installations across 41,000 square miles; 20,000 – 22,500 square miles within the 600-mile Power Pathways loop.	44 acres with 16 acres for the nuclear island (based on size of TerraPower’s Natrium nuclear power plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming)

On March 31, 2025, Governor Polis signed into Colorado law HB25-1040 titled “Adding Nuclear Energy as a Clean Energy Resource”. The term “clean energy” allows city and county clean energy project financing. This means that energy resources provided by a qualifying retail utility can be used to meet the 2050 clean energy target.

A nuclear power plant to provide electricity for Denver would be measured in double digits of acres rather than five digits of square miles. It would cost the same as just Xcel Energy’s 600 miles of very high voltage transmission lines (estimated $2 billion), alone, not including the huge expense of thousands of industrial wind turbines and huge solar arrays.

Basic Business Analysis

The process of determining the best power solution for the Denver metropolitan area should have included complete analysis of multiple options. This is basic Business Analysis 101, and includes the following sequence:

• Define the problem
• List requirements for a solution
• Research and identify potential solutions
• Analyze benefits and risks, as well as costs (financial, human, and environmental) and expected lifetime, decommissioning effort and cost, and recycling potential, of each proposed solution
• Select the option that best meets the requirements while maximizing benefits and minimizing risks
• Implement the solution
• Analyze degree of success and failure over the lifetime of the implementation, and tweak as necessary

Why has Colorado chosen the option that makes no sense – in all its attributes – and disrupts the lives, human and wild, of 40% of the state?

The truth appears to be that Xcel Energy, Next Era, and other power companies came to Colorado to collect federal subsidies for so-called “green” installations, reportedly threatening to sue local governments who opposed their power- and land-grab. Local residents across rural Colorado vociferously oppose being steamrolled.

It’s About the Subsidies

“…the pursuit of wind and solar across rural America is not about climate change. Instead, it’s about money and the no-holds-barred pursuit of tax credits. Indeed, the push for renewables across the country has become… an attack on rural America. And that attack is being fueled by dumb incentives.”

Forbes Article – June 17, 2022

From Forbes.com article Invenergy Sues An Iowa County, Uses ‘Nefarious Tactics’ To Push More Wind Turbines by Robert Bryce, June 17, 2022, speaking in regard to the production tax credits (PTC) available at the time:

In March, I estimated that if MidAmerican Energy goes forward with building 30 more wind turbines in Madison County, it will collect about $81 million in PTC. According to Berkshire Hathaway’s latest 10-k filing, Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE) has collected about $2.7 billion in tax credits over the past three years. A note to the financial statement says that the $2.7 billion “includes significant production tax credits from wind-powered electricity generation.” In 2021, BHE’s pre-tax earnings totaled $3.18 billion. But thanks to $1.17 billion in tax credits, the company’s after tax-profit totaled $4.35 billion, an increase of about 37% over what it would have been without the PTC….

Back in 2014, Warren Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway famously said the “only reason” to build wind projects is to collect the PTC. “They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” Charlie Munger, the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has also coined another famous line: “show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcome.” In another version, which is available on YouTube, Munger says “You get what you reward for. So if you have a dumb incentive system, you get dumb outcomes.”

The PTC is a dumb incentive. And because of that incentive, MidAmerican sued Madison County and Invenergy sued Worth County. Furthermore, their litigation tactics show that the pursuit of wind and solar across rural America is not about climate change. Instead, it’s about money and the no-holds-barred pursuit of tax credits. Indeed, the push for renewables across the country has become — as Darlene Park told me five years ago – an attack on rural America. And that attack is being fueled by dumb incentives.

“An attack on rural America.” Let that sink in. An attack on rural residents, pursuit of agriculture as a livelihood, wildlife, and the natural environment. How does this happen? Rural residents lack the power and funding and numbers of voters held by corporate and metropolitan America. Yet, we feed the nation. Rural America provides the food, the nourishment, for those whose appreciation is to attack, time after time.

Power companies jumped on a prematurely touted “green” energy bandwagon when the government announced subsidies. Who decided that wind and solar rather than nuclear power deserved to be promoted and subsidized? Decades of history demonstrate the safety of nuclear power in the US.

Now, there’s a new generation of nuclear power plants, with Bechtel having begun construction on one in June 2024 near Kemmerer, Wyoming. Bechtel is the engineering, procurement, and construction partner of Terra Power for the Natrium Advanced Reactor Demonstration Project, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. This first-of-its-kind reactor will use sodium-technology liquid coolant rather than water. This eliminates the need to place nuclear power plants along a river, lake, or other body of surface water. From the Terra Power website, “Wyoming Nuclear Energy Milestones” page:

The Natrium plant is being developed through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy and its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.

The plant will provide power to support PacifiCorp’s Rocky Mountain Power customers in Wyoming and throughout the region.

PacifiCorp is adding a significant number of renewable power sources and energy storage units to its regional grid. The Natrium technology is specifically designed to integrate into a grid with high levels of renewables and is a great match for meeting the state and region’s future power needs with reliable and flexible generation. (https://www.terrapower.com/wyoming/)

More on the nuclear option later (below).

The rest of the story

Xcel’s Power Pathway is dependent on power generated to feed it. Understanding that Colorado’s Power Pathway extends beyond just the 600 miles of transmission lines, concerns have been raised about the vast installations of industrial wind turbines to provide the power to those lines. It would be remiss not to mention a summary of concerns with both wind turbines and solar arrays.

The lifetime of a new-generation nuclear power plant is estimated at 40 – 50 years, with potential for upgrades to extend the lifetime to 80 years – significantly greater than the 20 – 30 years for industrial wind turbines, many of which have fallen short at 12 – 15 years. Wind turbines pose the additional problem of disposal after decommissioning, as there currently is no standard for removal or recycling; much of the tower foundation is left in place, adversely affecting repurposing of the area after decommissioning.

A follow-on question for industrial wind turbines is: what comes next after breakdown and decommissioning of the current generation? With some installations lasting only 15 – 20 years, a “wait-and-see” attitude is bound to pose unresolved problems. What is the disposal process for the decommissioned towers and blades? What will replace them to provide future generations of power, and where will the replacements be located?

There are problems in addition to wind turbine syndrome, cardiovascular health degradation, or other health issues:

• inadequate setbacks
• allowing turbines to disrupt neighbors’ lives without just compensation
• lack of understanding of adverse effects on groundwater and residential wells by construction of tower foundations
• absence of detailed accounting – including production of waste, heat, carbon dioxide, and other problematic byproducts – released into the environment in all phases of material gathering, construction, transportation, installation, and maintenance of the turbines
• increasing instances reported of surrounding land becoming unusable for any form of agriculture, including grazing, due to shards of fiberglass and other blade materials eroded by the elements and scattered by wind across the landscape
• failure to account for the negative environmental impacts, including pollution, of mining natural resources, minerals, heavy metals, and of other factors that enter into construction of both wind tower components and solar arrays
• absence of regulations regarding decommissioning and disposal of wind turbines. Reportedly the property owner is usually held responsible for removing them after being decommissioned, at a cost of $2 million per tower as of a couple years ago. Even if a savvy property owner gets a contract specifying the installer is responsible for the removal, what happens when the original installer sells an installation to another company, or when the installer or current owning company goes bankrupt? This seems to be a common practice for companies to avoid responsibility for failing wind tower installations.

What about injuries and damage due to ice throw, broken blades, motor fires, oil leaks, and fallen towers? How are those handled to justly reimburse the landowner for injury and damages?

Documenting shadow flicker, noise, vibration, infrasound, and physics of the wave patterns and all these effects on people, pets, livestock, fish, and wildlife is a significant task and a vital one. We know about bird and bat kills by the blades, because we can see it. The blades, the birds, the bats all are physical entities. Noise, vibrations, waveforms, harmonics, headaches, nausea, sleeplessness, heart arrhythmias, adverse cardiovascular effects, other health problems – all these are not so obvious. The direct cause and effects are not as evident as an eagle lying on the ground beside a tower. Understanding requires sifting through the chaff of both denial and hysteria.

As for solar, the proposed Prairie Ridge Solar Project (El Paso county), alone, would cover 4,000 acres, which could hold nearly 100 nuclear power plants. Its promoters, 174 Power Global, tell us the project holds benefits for us rural residents of the county; beyond the temporary jobs during construction, it does not. The power would go to metro Denver. Xcel’s Power Pathway lines may connect to the larger country’s grid system, but it does not connect to our local grid – it does not beef up our local power or make it more reliable. The county may benefit from increased property tax revenue (if it doesn’t provide tax breaks, which it may) from wind turbines, solar arrays, and transmission lines, but that doesn’t mean the county’s rural residents will benefit.

Necessary legislation

There must be legislation to:

• prevent existing practices that exploit lease landowner properties for purposes not expressly disallowed by the lease terms; rather, expressly define what is allowed by lease terms and disallow anything not thus specified
• define safe setback distances based on studies of noise, vibration, and infrasound. Ideally these would be 10 miles from a residence; at an absolute minimum should be 2 miles distant
• protect neighbors from loss of property value
• protect and compensate neighbors who experience health issues in themselves, pets, and livestock
• deal with issues whereby a PUC is allowed to overturn a “no” by local county commissioners
• stop the practice whereby energy companies sue governments for denying their applications for proposed installations/projects (I was told by a resident who actively opposed the El Paso County Calhan wind farm that went live in 2015, that the county’s Planning Commission said ‘No’ to the proposed installation of industrial wind turbines but was overridden by the Board of County Commissioners when Next Era threatened to sue El Paso County if turned down.)

Where does population density offer the least disruption to residents? A population density analysis of rural El Paso county vs rural Lincoln county based on the 2010 Census showed a population density of 74.74 people per square mile in rural El Paso county and 1.41 people per square mile in rural Lincoln county. Based on this analysis, along with the indication that most eastern Colorado commuters to Colorado Springs live within an hour’s drive (which closely aligns with the El Paso – Lincoln county line) I suggested to Xcel that their lines be located in much less densely-populated Lincoln county rather than in El Paso county. Additionally, eastern El Paso county sees more transition from ranchland to residential property, while property size in Lincoln county still tends to be larger and more agricultural. Although part of Segment 5 lies just east of the county line in Lincoln county, north of Highway 94 the current Segment 5 route swings westward into El Paso County and northward into Elbert county.

Going green. It suddenly became ‘de rigueur’ to “go green” when governments started offering subsidies. Then, companies jumped on the bandwagon in a rush to cash in on those subsidies. Insufficient objective scientific and medical studies have been done to understand the physics of how turbines affect their environment, and their effects on humans and other animals. Some people have said that their earthworms disappeared. Bees have disappeared. Airflows can affect air movement for tens of miles downwind. Some suspect that they reduce rainfall; it’s known that they produce their own climates, and some have been shown to actually heat up their environment. Reportedly, wind turbines adversely affect flight-for-life helicopters attempting to pick up patients requiring urgent hospital care.

Look into all aspects of wind tower and solar array construction: mining of materials to build wind and solar equipment; manufacturing of towers, blades, and so on; water usage to make the concrete to set the tower foundations (reportedly drying up some wells in the Calhan area and contaminating others, causing water to come out black); transport of materials; maintenance; disposal and potential for recycling. If all of these aspects and more were considered, how “green” is an industrial wind turbine, really? Or a solar array? Or 600 miles of very high voltage power transmission lines?

Local residents must be heard: If this mistake is allowed to continue, listen to the residents’ concerns regarding siting; signal interference for cellular phone signals and internet access, particularly for first-responders; and issues with heavy construction traffic on the County’s dirt roads. Some vocal residents, both current and former, have valuable lessons learned from the 2015 Calhan industrial wind turbine installation.

Follow the basic tenets of business analysis to find a sensible solution to a well-defined problem and thoroughly-analyzed potential solution options. In this case, why disrupt the 40% of Colorado lying east of the Front Range to provide power to metropolitan Denver? Simply build a new-generation nuclear power plant beside Denver.

The Nuclear Power Option

Reflecting on the significance of the new-generation nuclear power project, Craig Albert, Bechtel President and COO, said: “The Natrium reactor’s innovative design will launch a new approach to nuclear plant construction that is designed to be safer, cleaner, faster, and more efficient than many energy source alternatives.” Here’s a link to Bechtel’s ground-breaking announcement: https://www.bechtel.com/newsroom/press-releases/americas-next-nuclear-power-plant-begins-construction/

Regarding cost, the Terra Power project in Kemmerer splits the $4 billion total cost with the US government, the other half being covered by the builders. Such a project could be workable near Denver. For $2 billion, a similar project could provide a base 350 megawatts of clean power, capable of flexing up to 500 megawatts – enough to power 400,000 homes. Such a project could be located nearby the intended destination – the Denver metro area – rather than requiring 600 miles of very high-voltage transmission lines, also at a cost of $2 billion. That’s just for the transmission lines, and doesn’t include the cost of thousands of industrial wind turbines and hundreds of square miles of solar installations.

The 2018 Rush Creek Wind Project, alone, takes up 95,000 acres of farmland across Lincoln, Kit Carson, Cheyenne, and Elbert counties for 300 wind turbines as of 2022, each producing 2 megawatts of power. It takes 95,000 acres of industrial wind turbines across four counties to produce 600 megawatts of power. That doesn’t include the hundred miles of transmission lines to get it to Denver. In comparison, the Terra Power nuclear plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming will use 16 acres for the nuclear “island” that houses the reactor on the 44-acre facility producing 350 – 500 megawatts of power. Even scaled up for additional power, a nuclear plant would occupy only a tiny fraction of the space required for even a single solar array or handful of wind turbines.

Reported by The Colorado Sun in Mark Jaffe’s June 19, 2022 article titled “It’s our new cash crop”: A land rush for renewable energy is transforming the Eastern Plains”:

Xcel Energy wants to add 2,300 MW of solar generation, 1,600 MW of new wind farms and 400 MW of storage — much of it through independent wind and solar developers selling electricity to the utility.

There is a catch. Usually, generation projects are built first and then transmission is added to link the plant to the grid, but Xcel Energy is seeking to develop so many new projects and at such a quick tempo, in an effort to capture expiring federal tax credits, that without assured transmission it won’t get done.

At stake is as much as $850 million in tax credits, provided projects are up and running by the end of 2025. Whatever part of the cost isn’t covered by the credits may have to be paid by Xcel Energy customers.

(https://coloradosun.com/2022/06/19/eastern-plains-renewable-energy-xcel-power-pathway/)

The article stated that the US Energy Information Administration reported 2,200 wind turbines in 38 wind farms across 11 counties in Colorado. Additional industrial wind turbines have been rapidly constructed in the intervening three years.

Summary

I’m here as a voice to represent the citizens of eastern Colorado’s prairie who cherish the landscape in which we live. We enjoy a life in harmony with nature, providing sanctuary from the noise of city life. Many of us grow or produce the food for residents across the state and elsewhere.

We moved to eastern Colorado for peace and quiet, unobstructed views of the landscape and natural world, the ability to pursue an agricultural livelihood, the soul-enhancing experience of a life lived in concert with nature.

The shortgrass prairie of eastern Colorado is about 40% of the state’s landmass. Its downfall is that all of rural Colorado, both east and west of the continental divide, is represented politically by only about 20% of the state’s population, while occupying approximately 83% of its area. Meanwhile, 17% of the state’s area is home to about 80% of the state’s population, many of whom disrespect and/or abuse the rural and backcountry of 83% of the state and its residents – wild, domesticated, and human. Lack of familiarity with a region, its wildlife, its plant life, and its human stewards does not justify dismissing it wholesale as expendable. If you’re elected to represent it, then not representing it wholeheartedly is shirking your elected duty.

As far as the public is aware, no analysis has been done of methods best suited to provide Denver with non-fossil fuel power. If there had been, a much better solution than plastering 40% of the state’s land area in industrial wind turbines, solar installations, and very high voltage power transmission lines would be to build a nuclear power plant near the Denver metro area. The total cost would be much lower, at about the same as the $2 billion for just Xcel’s transmission lines. The life expectancy would be doubled or tripled. The footprint would be one power plant, a substation, and several miles of transmission line rather than a disruption to Colorado’s eastern plains.  Expand the existing Harvest Mile, Pawnee, or Fort St. Vrain substation, or build a new one, which undoubtedly would require less than 50 miles of power line versus the 600 miles underway to completely encircle eastern Colorado’s agricultural and natural grassland. Where are the benefit/cost analysis, risk assessment, and environmental impact reports?

The common-sense solution clearly would be a much smaller footprint adjacent to Denver: a new-generation nuclear power plant.

Sincerely,

Paula Reinbold

Administrator of the Community Action Coalition of Colorado

Rush, Colorado