Issue Position: Conservation

Issue Position

CONSERVATION -- Our Colorado way of life includes spending time outside and not having to worry about clean air and safe water.

Below are bills I've sponsored and supported to try to keep it that way.

Energy Efficiency Options for New Residential Construction (HB20-1155) -- Energy efficient, low carbon options like solar PV, solar hot water, and heat pumps are increasingly available and affordable for new homes, but is more difficult and expensive to retrofit these options after a home is built. I sponsored this bill so that builders will offer energy efficiency options at the time of purchase, giving buyers the option to save money and energy over the lifetime of owning a home. Buyers can decline anything they don't want, and builders can continue to employ contractors of their choosing. STATUS: signed into law.

Fairness in Charges Paid by Rural Electric Associations (HB20-1225) -- REAs (a.k.a. rural electric cooperatives) provide power to hundreds of thousands of Coloradans (including in Arapahoe County) and must do so at the lowest rates consistent with reliable power supply. Sometimes however other coops from which REAs obtain their power at wholesale impose high or at least questionable costs. I sponsored this bill to affirm that the Colorado Public Utilities Commission may hear complaints about these costs to protect ratepayers. STATUS: signed into law.

Optional electric vehicle charging in new residential construction (HB18-1107) -- This bill asked home builders to offer pre-wiring suitable for electric vehicle charging to buyers of new single family dwellings. I sponsored this bill because it costs a few hundred dollars to get the wiring in place at the time of construction, compared to potentially thousands of dollars later. With big changes coming to our vehicle fleet in the next several years, this bill aimed to save home buyers money. STATUS: killed on a party-line vote in GOP state senate.

I've also supported conservation legislation to:

create a climate action plan to reduce pollution that causes climate change (HB19-1261 -- signed into law);
collect better data on climate change emissions (SB19- 096 -- signed into law);
grant more local control over oil and gas operations while prioritizing community health and safety in state permitting (SB19-181 -- signed into law);
expand community solar gardens to generate clean energy and create jobs that can't be outsourced (HB19-1003 -- signed into law); and
fund wildfire mitigation in forest-urban interface areas (HB19-1006 -- signed into law).

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