Dive Brief:
- Boulder, CO is spending $3 million per year and will have spent $13 million by the end of 2014 in its drive to take its electric utility away from Xcel Energy, which lost municipalization ballot measures in 2011 and 2013 despite enormous campaign expenditures.
- Xcel, which provides electricity in seven other states and is the biggest U.S. wind-producing utility, got 56% of its power from coal in 2013, 21.6% from natural gas, and 20.4% from renewables. It is on track to meet Colorado’s 30% renewables by 2020 mandate and says it can work with Boulder.
- Boulder's ambition inspired Santa Fe, NM to study municipalization and produced inquiries from “quite a few small to mid-sized communities” despite the fact that, according to the American Public Power Association, 13 of the 17 public power utilities formed in the last decade to get more reliability or lower rates have already been sold.
Dive Insight:
The drive for municipalization in Boulder, a university community with a population of 100,000 and a self-imposed carbon tax, began in 2010 when Xcel’s 20-year agreement with the city expired.
The 2013 ballot measure approving municipalization capped the budget for the transition at $214 million.
The Boulder City Council voted unanimously in May to form its own utility, leading Xcel to sue the city on a technical issue.
Boulder’s utility manager says the city has done its homework on how to run a utility and insists Xcel was not cooperative about the transition, though the utility says it has made several offers to meet Boulder’s demands.
