Opinion: Disruptive challenges for electric utilities and open space


A few months ago, I discussed “Disruptive Challenges,” a paper published by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), the research arm of a large group of investor-owned utilities. The paper accurately describes renewable energy as potentially disrupting the business model used by these utilities to extract high profits with little risk.
Disruption is now manifesting in Europe, where the growth of renewables has been extremely rapid. Apparently the initial subsidies led to lots of installations, which reduced overall costs, which then allowed subsidies to be reduced. According to a recent article in The Economist entitled “How to lose a half a trillion euros,” market valuation of European utilities has dropped by over half since 2008.
One major factor is the inability of their coal-powered generation plants to integrate with the variable output of renewables. Because the Europeans require utilities to accept all the renewable energy generated, these slow-ramping plants are becoming fossils well before their scheduled retirements. We already know wind costs are competitive with coal, and I recently saw solar costs down to $1.50/watt for industrial sized projects.
Boulder’s pursuit of a cheaper and greener community-based utility is also causing disruption in the for-profit utility business. Recently EEI put on a conference right here in Boulder, with a portion allegedly addressing the triple-barreled challenge that Boulder represents — more renewables, competitive rates, and loss of utilities’ territories. I say “allegedly” because although the conference was listed on the EEI web site at one point, it was not a public event.
Boulder’s open space program faces its own disruptive challenges of an entirely different sort. Aside from the $17-plus million of flood damage, there is a push on to expand the types of uses allowed on open space. Under the City Charter, as approved by Boulder voters, the only allowed human activities are agriculture and “passive recreation,” which includes activities like hiking, bird watching, photography, and climbing — people have been climbing the Flatirons for a century, and are expected to continue doing so into the indefinite future.
The current discussion is around the use of electric powered bikes to commute on paved trails that are on open space. A legal scheme has emerged to defend this activity by calling it “passive recreation,” the perfect slippery slope. What’s next? Go-carts? Motorized rickshaws? If paved paths are going to become transportation corridors, it would be far better to simply “dispose” of the land, bought with open space money and therefore subject to these charter-based use restrictions, by transferring it to the Transportation department, which maintains the paths anyway.
Such “disposal” would trigger another Charter process, requiring approval of the Open Space Board of Trustees (OSBT) and a 60-day waiting period for citizens to possibly dispute the action. To get around this, another legal theory is being pushed suggesting that transfers of open space land to another city department do not require OSBT approval and the waiting period. But this kind of end-run would allow any land under open space protection to be moved at whim to another department, and then used for its needs or sold off to a third party developer, completely bypassing the open space protections that Boulder citizens voted into place.
This maneuvering is made doubly dangerous because of the current push by some council members to escape from the Comprehensive Plan. The plan is an agreement with the county commissioners that requires county approval before land, other than a few nearby parcels, is annexed and developed, but the plan has no independent legal authority. Once it is gone, a future council could transfer, then sell, then annex, and then zone open space land for development.
Worse, questionable legal interpretations were used last year to effectively eliminate the strict charter limitations on use of emergency ordinances so that the (poorly written) Pro Cycling Challenge contract could be approved. This interpretation would allow such annexations to occur without the citizens being able to challenge them, because emergency ordinances go into effect immediately, so referendums are impossible.
The City Council and the OSBT each have independent authority and different responsibilities. So when there is potential for disagreement, the city attorney has a prima fascia conflict of interest in trying to serve these two clients. The council needs to take a hard look at this situation and take seriously the voter-approved open space charter protections, before the citizens have to resolve these issues on their own.


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