Xcel and Residential Electrification
Canary Media: “Xcel Colorado’s new clean heat plan is a big deal. Here’s why.” In 2021, as an important test case resulted from a law spurring ‘the state’s largest investor-owned utility to produce a plan that could transition a lot of homes to clean heating — and fast.’ Xcel Energy’s revised Clean Heat Plan was approved this May. “It directs more than $440 Mover the next three years mainly to electrification and energy efficiency measures that are meant to reduce reliance on the gas system and cut annual emissions by 725,000 tons.” The gas + electric utility had initially filed a plan ‘that included proposals to spend heavily on hydrogen blending, biomethane, and certified natural gas.’ But following a ‘motion filed by the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and others last November, Xcel amended its original plan filed with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.’ Utility incentives ‘can be combined with federal electrification tax credits and extend to all-electric new construction as well.’ Now the utility ‘forecasts gas sales to decline by 14 percent between this year and 2028, the Colorado Sun reports.’ “Following Colorado’s 2021 law, in 2023 Vermont passed the Affordable Heat Act to reduce emissions from home heating, and Massachusetts drafted similar legislation. This year, Illinois and New Jersey have both introduced bills with clean heating and decarbonization standards.” Colorado’s plan “is a very good example of needing to pursue both sides of the equation at the same time — decarbonization, electrification — but at the same time ensuring that we’re starting to shrink and eliminate unnecessary investments in the gas system,” said Alejandra Mejia Cunningham, senior manager of state buildings policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The decline of thermal coal is dramatic, but next methane + propane gas have targets on them.
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