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.