February 18, 2020
After rising dangerously for decades, Colorado’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions are finally on a slight downward trend. But meeting the state’s new science-based climate targets will require a steep decline, not just a slight dip, and a new analysis commissioned by a coalition of environmental groups raises major alarm bells about how much has to change to make that happen.
“Colorado set nation-leading, science-based goals to cut greenhouse gas pollution across our economy by mid-century,” Stacy Tellinghuisen, a climate policy analyst at Western Resource Advocates, says in a statement on the report released today, February 18, by WRA and the Environmental Defense Fund. “But this analysis shows that we can’t succeed if we just continue business as usual.”
The analysis, performed by energy consulting firm M.J. Bradley and Associates, finds that Colorado is nowhere near on track to meet the emissions goals outlined in its Climate Action Plan, which was passed by state lawmakers in 2019. The law sets a series of statewide greenhouse gas emissions targets, including a 50 percent cut by 2030, and directs the state’s Air Quality Control Commission to develop rules to enforce them.