Colorado Coalition for a Livable Climate

Advocating strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to a level supportive of a livable climate.

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Colorado Candidate Questionnaire on Climate, Clean Air and Clean Energy 2026

By

On October 3, 2026

In News Wire

Posted on October 3rd, 2026

The CCLC recently invited all Colorado General Assembly candidates who will be competing in the general election this November to respond to our questionnaire on climate, clean air and clean energy. A total of 52 candidates have responded. We’ve posted the results, and hope they will be helpful as people make up their minds who to support in the general election.

Click here to view and download a PDF file containing candidate responses. You will likely need to “zoom in” to make the responses legible. Click here for a link that will download an Excel version of the same file to your device. A link to find your Colorado House and Senate District is provided at the top of each file.

Here are the questions. Candidates were asked to respond by selecting “Strongly Agree,” “Somewhat Agree,” “Neutral,” “Somewhat Disagree,” or “Strongly Disagree” for each.

  1. Climate Change Priority: Addressing the climate crisis is one of my top priorities.
  2. Data Centers: A moratorium should be placed on the future development of hyperscale data centers (HSDs), defined as data centers placing a demand of 20 MW or more on the grid, until a strong guardrails policy can be put in place to protect the climate, our supply of water, and ratepayers.
  3. Oil and Gas: Oil & gas fracking is a leading source of climate pollution and severe ground-level ozone pollution in Colorado. We should phase out new fracking permits by 2030 (with existing permits continuing to produce) and foster a just and swift transition to renewable energy.
  4. Polluters Pay: Industries that pollute Colorado’s air and water and drive climate change create tremendous costs for individuals and communities, and they should pay to help address those costs.
  5. Nuclear: Nuclear fission power plants are too slow, too costly, too dangerous and too inflexible to pair well with Colorado’s abundant wind and solar resources which are best paired with flexible “fast on-fast off” resources like batteries.
  6. Methane Use: The production of methane (aka “natural gas”) causes significant air pollution, is a potent greenhouse gas, and using methane in the home creates serious indoor air pollution. Therefore, I am not in support of a “right” to use methane.
  7. Competition in the Electric Sector: Communities around Colorado that have been able to “go shopping” for their electric supplier have gotten better deals and better service, but communities that are retail customers of the two Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs), Xcel and Black Hills, do not have the freedom to go shopping. I support giving the freedom to all Colorado communities to “go to market” for their electric provider.
  8. Microgrids and Distributed Energy Sources: In this 21st century the old “Big Grid” model will be subject to threats ranging from extreme climate events to terrorist attacks. For a more reliable and resilient 21st century electric system we should start building a system that reduces our reliance on poles and wires and instead is built on localized “Distributed Energy Resources” including solar and storage to reduce the risk of outages from extreme weather events and other threats.
  9. Please provide any optional additional comments in a text box.

Should Oil and Gas Corporations have the Right to Pollute in Colorado?

By

On October 2, 2026

In Climate Change, News Wire, Pollution from fossil fuels

Sandra Duggan, Denver Post, October 1st, 2026

Amendment 82 would enshrine the right to buy and sell methane gas in Colorado’s constitution and has the potential to weaken existing environmental protections in state or local laws. These are protections that Coloradans depend on to limit unnecessary water pollution and fracking operations across the state. The measure could, for example, overturn local rules that prohibit the use of fracked gas-fired appliances in new construction. It could also serve as a justification to continue the expansion of fracking into the population centers in the Front Range.

The intentionally misleading amendment is being proposed by the right-wing advocacy group Advance Colorado. This dark money group, which doesn’t disclose its donors, is seeking a permanent constitutional change, the likes of which doesn’t exist in any other state and would likely be irreversible. 

Our communities are increasingly experiencing the direct health, environmental, and economic impacts of a fossil-fueled climate crisis. Colorado just recorded its hottest summer in history. Worsening drought is impacting freshwater sources and the Colorado River, causing major lakes and reservoirs like Lake Mead and Lake Powell to hit new all-time record lows. Wildfires burned approximately 235,000 acres across the state during the 2026 fire season. Coloradans strongly support developing our state’s plentiful clean, affordable, renewable energy, including solar, wind and geothermal energy. Our state should focus on transitioning beyond fossil fuels, not locking in a permanent new right for corporate polluters into our constitution.

Sandra Duggan

No Coal, No Gas in the Constitution

By

On October 2, 2026

In Climate Change, News Wire, Pollution from fossil fuels

Bob Walker, Denver Post, October 1st, 2026

We live in a remodeled 100-year-old house that has a basement coal chute. Early cities once choked on the smoke from burning coal for heat. Early residents could also burn trash in their yards. Thankfully, our ancestors had the foresight not to put the right to burn coal in our homes or trash in our yards in our state Constitution. 

Amendment 82 wants to lock the right to purchase or sell natural gas into Colorado’s Constitution. It is written in a deceptively simplistic and vague language. If passed, this bill will cause years of expensive lawsuits in Colorado. The amendment is unnecessary since it is already legal to buy and sell natural gas in the state. Amendment 82 is brought to you by a dark money group composed of very wealthy individuals possibly wishing to extend their fossil fuels profits.

Solar, wind and batteries get cheaper and more efficient every year. Gas does not. Nationwide electric heat pumps now outsell gas furnaces. As more people electrify their lives the costs of maintaining or adding new unnecessary gas infrastructure will fall on fewer people. They will see their monthly gas bills continue to rise. 

A dark money group wants to lock their favorite fuel into our Constitution. This is unnecessary and potentially very expensive as we move into the future. Please vote no on Constitutional Amendment 82.

Bob Walker

CCLC Statement Opposing Amendment 82

By

On September 30, 2026

In Climate Change, News Wire, Pollution from fossil fuels

Posted on September 30th, 2026

Amendment 82 is unprecedented, unnecessary, dangerous, and guaranteed to increase natural gas-based energy costs.

The Colorado Coalition for a Livable Climate opposes Amendment 82. The Colorado constitution is the blueprint for governing and protection of individual rights. It is NOT the place to address industry competition. The constitution doesn’t pick winners and losers, and should never give one industry the permanent right to lock in profits over another, or the permanent right to lock in pollution.

Amendment 82 does just that. It gives oil and gas corporations the right to exist forever, have a permanent unfair advantage over renewable energy, and to pollute in Colorado.  

Amendment 82 would enshrine the right to buy and sell methane gas in Colorado’s constitution. The ability to buy and sell natural gas has never been an issue. Consumers can buy natural gas to heat and cool their homes, and distributors and utilities can sell natural gas. Amendment 82 doesn’t solve a problem; it creates one.

Amendment 82 insulates one particular corporate polluter from energy industry competition and has the potential to weaken existing and hard-fought state and local environmental laws and regulations. Coloradans depend on these environmental protections for clean water, clean air, clean soils, including safe playgrounds and school yards, and safe farms and ranches, and to rapidly reduce emissions from oil and gas operations to stabilize the climate. By creating a guaranteed market for natural gas, instead of lower prices, consumers will be faced with higher monopoly prices.

Guaranteeing a market means guaranteeing a supply chain. That will create a justification for continued expansion of fracking operations into residential neighborhoods, sensitive watersheds and wildlife habitat, and for natural gas distributors and electric utilities to pass on to consumers the investment costs to build out new infrastructure, including pipelines. This is a recipe for perpetuating more environmental injustice upon communities and fostering sacrifice zones across the State. The measure could also, for example, be used to thwart local government efforts to promote clean energy-based new construction.

Advance Colorado, is the dark money group behind this deceptive and intentionally misleading amendment. Amendment 82 is not the path to lower consumer costs that the proponent of the Amendment claims. It’s the exact opposite. It is a path to higher costs, more pollution, and aggravating the climate crisis.

The oil and gas industry already has out-sized influence and power. It is already propped up and subsidized by the government (translation, Colorado taxpayers) through low severance tax, inadequate financial assurance requirements to cover clean-up costs, and lax regulations and enforcement. Colorado further cemented the future of this industry by creating a credit trading system for the wastewater that is produces. And electric utilities already earn a guaranteed profit through a regulated rate of return, which determines what ratepayers pay for electricity. This legal and regulatory framework already secures their profitability.

The only thing Amendment 82 achieves is to disempower the hard-working people of Colorado of their power to stop corporate and governmental abuse.

Colorado does not need corporate polluters or cheaters in the constitution. This is the time to embrace clean energy competition and solutions that guarantee a healthy environment, not one industry’s corporate profits and tyranny.

For more information about the effort to defeat Amendment 82, and to take action and donate, visit this website.

‘No’ on Amendment 82

By

On September 26, 2026

In Climate Change, News Wire, Pollution from fossil fuels

Kate Christensen, Boulder Daily Camera, September 25th, 2026

I’m grateful that Colorado voters in the 1850s were not convinced by the whale oil industry to put a “right to whale oil” in the state Constitution. One can imagine the tragic boondoggle that would have been. Yet, it is what the oil and gas industry wants us to do this year with Amendment 82, “right to natural gas.” For years, the oil and gas industry has dumped millions and millions of dollars into advertising to convince us that natural gas is clean and safe. The Denver Post reported that in 2017 alone the oil and gas industry spent more than $80 million to shape public opinion in Colorado. It hasn’t stopped. The problem is that natural gas is methane. And methane is 80 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is in the first 20 years that it is in the atmosphere. Anyone who has gone outside this summer can feel that climate chaos is here. The only way to shift course is to transition away from natural gas and all other fossil fuels as quickly as possible. Don’t vote for the right to whale oil. This November, vote “no” on Amendment 82.

— Kate Christensen, Lafayette

We Can’t Build our Way Out of this “Drought”

By

On September 18, 2026

In Climate Change, News Wire

Allen Best, Denver Post, September 13th, 2026

No place in Colorado that I have visited offers such blunt testimony to the warming, drying climate than Green Mountain Reservoir. It also poses a question to those politicians whose answer to non-winters and ever-hotter summers is more dams and reservoirs.

The reservoir between Silverthorne and Kremmling was 14% full during Labor Day weekend, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the operator. Put another way, it was 86% empty.

That’s worse even than the roughly 78% empty at Lake Powell, the reservoir located roughly 700 river miles downstream from Green Mountain.

Green Mountain was part of Colorado’s mission begun in the 19th century to put water to “beneficial use,” a central axiom of state water law. Pioneer settlers did an admirable job of this, in the beginning using nothing more than horses, oxen and human labor.

In 1902, the federal government became a partner, creating the Bureau of Reclamation. Over the next roughly 90 years, the federal treasury was visited repeatedly to prevent “waste” of any portion of the Colorado River flowing into the Pacific Ocean.

Construction of Green Mountain Dam was part of that work. During the hot, dry 1930s, farmers in the Fort Collins-Longmont-Greeley area wanted to import water from the Colorado River headwaters near Grand Lake. Western Slope irrigators objected. Farms in the Grand Junction area would lose late-season water needed to get their crops and orchards across the finish line.

Green Mountain was the compromise. And it has worked out well. A pool of 66,000 acre-feet of water was reserved for down-stream irrigators in the Grand Junction area. Deliveries in this canal usually continue through October, sometimes later.

This year was different. For the first time in 110-plus years, deliveries ended in late August.

In April, the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District issued a warning. Green Mountain was the lowest it had been since filling during World War II. This jeopardized the late-summer flows to irrigators who took delivery of water from the Government Highline Canal. The canal diverts water from the Colorado River at the Roller Dam, a short distance upstream from Palisade. It then distributes water to farms and orchards for 55 miles, nearly to the Utah border.

This year, in a testament to cooperation, the Colorado River District and Colorado Water Conservation Board ponied up more than $1 million to buy use of water. Water was tapped from headwaters reservoirs, most notably Wolford and Williams Fork, near Kremmling, and Ruedi, near Basalt. Others, including Front Range diverters, helped.

Irrigators got only 50% of their normal water. In response, many switched crops to varieties of plants that could survive with less water.

Even so, by late August, the water was running out. The Grand Valley Water Users Association, operator of the canal, stopped deliveries on September 3. Maybe monsoon rains will deliver water to resume operations, but that’s the story for now.

Once again, the idea that we just need to store more is entirely too simplistic. Yes, saving for a rainy day is always good, but this idea that we can build our way to more water defies ample evidence about the warming, drying climate.

We can have droughts, yes. They come and go. But the science clearly shows that these hot, dry years of the 21st century will not be ephemeral. They have been driven by a warming climate caused by accumulating greenhouse gas emissions.

In the 20th century, the Colorado River delivered about 15.2 million acre-feet. In this century, the annual flows have declined to 12.2 million acre-feet. Since 2020, average flows have declined even more, to 10 million acre-feet. And this recent span included a very, very big snow year, in 2022-23, a three-wire winter like those of old. But the spring was like those of the 21st century, early and uncommonly warm.

The pitiful storage in Green Mountain, whose shoreline is seen in the above photograph I took on Aug. 17, testifies to this warming, drying climate. So does the canal near Grand Junction where deliveries were cut off last week for the first time in 110 years. And then we have near doubling of 95 degree-plus days in Denver during last 30 years as compared to the three decades before as reported by KUSA.

Might we figure out better infrastructure? Maybe. The idea of storing water underground, as Greeley began doing several years ago, intrigues. It requires more energy but greatly reduces evaporative loss.

The federal government in its documents has excised climate change. So have many politicians in Colorado speaking on the stump, hewing to the recent version of political correctness.

If there are ideas for storing water that don’t assume a return to the climate of the 20th century, I’m all for hearing them. But to think this is just another drought defies tons of evidence.

Allen Best is a Colorado-based journalist who publishes an e-magazine called Big Pivots.

Protect our Lands from Literal and Figurative Arsonists

By

On August 22, 2026

In News Wire

Kevin Cross, Denver Post, August 19th, 2026

Since last year, the Trump Administration has cut 5,800 Forest Service jobs, making it harder to prepare for and respond to this year’s intense wildfire season. While we don’t yet know what the toll will be in lives lost, homes and businesses destroyed, and forests turned into moonscapes, we should be asking elected federal officials and candidates for federal office now what they will do to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Federal job cuts, the rollback of programs addressing the climate crisis, and the continued expansion of the fossil fuel and artificial intelligence industries have all contributed to the devastation from fires we see and read about in the news every day. The people responsible have names like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Russell Vought, Chris Wright, Darren Woods, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman. We try, convict, fine, and imprison arsonists. We need to do the same with these arsonists of our public lands and communities.

Kevin Cross, Fort Collins

When the Playground Is Also an Oil Field

By

On August 21, 2026

In News Wire

Kate Christensen, ASHAWire, July 16th, 2026

Since 2007 I’ve worked as an early intervention speech-language pathologist on the eastern edge of Boulder County, Colorado, a borderland where the high plains meet the foothills. Boulder, home to the University of Colorado’s main campus, is consistently ranked among the healthiest places to live in the U.S. and is known as a pristine training ground for professional athletes (see sources).

The full article is available at this link.

CCLC Hyperscale Data Center Policy Goals

By

On July 18, 2026

In News Wire, Uncategorized

Posted on July 17th, 2026

The Colorado Coalition for a Livable Climate recently sent the following statement to the sponsor of HB26-102 laying out our hyperscale data center (HDC) policy goals for Colorado:

Colorado Coalition for a Livable Climate Hyperscale Data Center Policy Goals

Addressing SB26-102 as introduced,

and the proposed amended “strikebelow” version

Overview of Position

A statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers (HDCs) must be adopted to protect Colorado’s climate, health, environment, and democratic principles. Colorado should adopt a statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers (HDCs)[1] until a comprehensive, enforceable, science-based regulatory structure is established that protects:

  1. Colorado’s greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution reduction climate goals
  2. Public access to water supplies
  3. Water quality and quantity
  4. Regional and local air quality
  5. Public health (from air and water pollution, noise, and light)
  6. Wastewater management systems
  7. Solid waste management systems
  8. Community rights to modify, accept, deny or cease projects/operations
  9. Green spaces/ecosystems
  10. Public transparency and accountability

Until Colorado adopts a statewide moratorium, we encourage every local government to adopt their own HDC development moratorium or ban.

No state or local tax incentives should be provided for HDCs under current conditions.

No “Essential Infrastructure” status should be conferred on HDCs.

Conditions for Lifting the Moratorium

The requirements listed below must be enforced by appropriately-designated and adequately funded state and local agency approval, monitoring, and enforcement for the construction and operation of all HDCs.

Energy sources and impacts are regulated adequately: HDCs must either:

  1. Purchase their power from existing utilities, without
    1. compromising reliable and affordable access to service by other utility customers or
    1. impeding progress toward meeting Colorado’s greenhouse gas reduction goals of 80% reduction in GHG emissions from the electric generation sector by 2030.

OR

  • Build their own 100% renewable (fuel-free) energy sources. Regarding the strikebelow version of SB26-102, the term “clean” must be changed back to “renewable” as in the introduced version of the bill to indicate that no private nuclear, gas or other fossil fuel facilities may be operated by or for HDCs.

Consumer/ ratepayer protections: SB26-102 provisions should apply to HDCs. Large load tariff must require HDCs to cover full cost of service and grid infrastructure, without economic development rates from investor-owned utilities

Water supply and quality protections:

  1. In addition to SB26-102 strikebelow provisions, HDC sector-wide annual water-use limits must be established based on the available and predicted local supplies.
  2. Residences, community service providers, and essential businesses must be given priority for water access over HDCs.
  3. At minimum, monitoring and full disclosure of water pollutants and discharges must be required. Discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs) chemicals must be prohibited.
  4. Significant non-negotiable minimum violation penalties must apply in all circumstances.

Local Air Quality and Backup Generator restrictions:

  1. Adopt SB26-102 provisions for emergency-use only, testing limits, ozone day restriction, and preference for battery backup must apply to all residential areas, not just disproportionately impacted communities (DICs).
  2. Diesel backup generators prohibited in DICs.
  3. EPA Tier 4 pollution controls must be implemented statewide
  4. Mandate and adequately fund Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) enforcement of provisions, with non-negotiable fines sufficient to deter violations.
  5. Review and revise current Air Pollution Control Division (APCD) air quality permit pollution limits for industrial facilities to ensure that permitting for HDCs in Colorado does not adversely impact local air quality anywhere in the state.

Community engagement/public process

  1. Adopt SB26-102 provisions for public meetings before permit application with smaller threshold (≥15 MW); translated materials; 30-day notice should apply.
  2. A baseline community benefit agreement applies in all cases where local agreements are not secured.
  3. Frontline community organizations, including those representing local BIPOC communities, must be actively included in HDC decision-making.
  4. Community rights must be preserved to allow approval, demand for modifications, or rejection of HDC project plans.

Disproportionately impacted community protections:

  1. SB26-102 provisions for DICs for cumulative impacts analysis; third-party contractor selected by CDPHE; community benefit agreements; community benefit fund should apply.
  2. If follow-up impact analyses show harm or violations for more than 2 consecutive days, the HDC is required to cease operation until fixed.
  • Establish non-negotiable fines sufficient to deter future violations.

Local government authority:

  1. We support SB26-102 provisions for
    1. preserving local land use authority
    1. requiring public hearings regardless of zoning
    1. directing local governments to update codes
    1. local government application fees to cover cost of public hearings and soliciting and recording community input
  2. We support original SB26-102 provisions for the state to develop model codes to help smaller jurisdictions that won’t necessarily have the capacity to develop their own land use codes.
  3. No state-level pre-emption of local control over HDCs

Reporting and transparency:

Adopt SB26-102 provisions for annual energy and water reporting to the state; aggregated public report; legislative and PUC reporting; utility monthly interconnection reporting

Additionally the following must be required:

  1. Mandatory disclosure of clients leasing HDC capacity
  2. Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) prohibited
  3. Proof of adequate insurance that accounts for HDC exposure to climate risks, and climate risk analysis and mitigation plans for HDC developers
  4. Energy and water reporting quarterly in the first 2 years, then twice per year. We note that water use, electricity use and carbon emissions are tightly linked. Optimizing one often means worsening the other. Any changes to the technologies first adopted must be subject to review so that the overall regulations continue to be met.
  5. Reporting costs paid in full or reimbursed by the HDC

Labor standards:

  1. Adopt SB26-102 provisions for prevailing wages; registered apprenticeship participation; OSHA 10 training; no pattern of wage theft or misclassification

[1] Hyperscale data centers are defined here as any facility or site hosting data centers with a combined electricity demand of 20 megawatts or more.

The Exxon Summer is Hot, Dry and Burning

By

On July 15, 2026

In News Wire, Uncategorized

Chris Hoffman, Denver Post, July 15th, 2026

“Exxon Summer” is here. As forest fires, extreme heat, and health harms, it is here because climate pollution is overheating our planet. Climate change-driven droughts and extreme heat events increase the drying of organic matter in forests, the material that burns and spreads wildfire. The burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of climate change. Petroleum producers profit while we pay the costs. To protect the people, the communities, and the nature we love, we must smoothly accelerate the current move to cleaner, more affordable and more reliable energy solutions. The saying about planting trees applies to acting on climate change as well: The best time to do it was 20 years ago; the second-best time is now. Later is too late.

Chris Hoffman, Boulder

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