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Colorado’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Roadmap

Colorado GHG Roadmap Scenarios

Colorado Ski Country USA (CSCUSA) is a membership trade association made up of 22 ski areas across Colorado that works on behalf of its membership in the areas of communications, marketing and public policy.

Climate change and its impacts to the industry are a major policy focus of the organization at the state and federal level and CSCUSA’s policy team is active at the state Capitol and state regulatory agencies on climate legislation. CSCUSA has been working on the Colorado Greenhous Gas Pollution Roadmap for many years and was pleased to see its release earlier this year.

During the 2019 session, CSCUSA, on behalf of our members and the ski industry’s goal of addressing climate change, supported HB19-1261. This bill put Colorado on a path to significantly reduce carbon emissions in the coming decades. The legislation calls for a 26 percent reduction below 2005 emissions levels by 2025, 50 percent reduction by 2030 and 90 percent reduction by 2050. After passing at the legislature and being signed by Gov. Jared Polis, the Air Quality Control Commission (AQCC) and Colorado Energy Office spearheaded the drafting and finalization of a Roadmap to meet these bold carbon reduction goals.

CSCUSA provided comments on the draft and final Roadmap focused on the expansion of renewable energy, reducing emissions from the transportation sector and incentives and programs to help businesses like ski areas meet their own carbon reduction goals.

Specifically, the industry outlined many areas for the Roadmap to address, including expanding large- and small-scale renewable energy projects, expansion of utility programs like Xcel Energy’s Renewable*Connect program allowing businesses to procure renewable energy, incentives for expanding electric vehicle charging infrastructure and support for developing technology like electrifying snowcats and other equipment used by ski areas.

While the Roadmap has been released, there will be ongoing work at the state legislature, the AQCC and other regulatory bodies in the years and decades ahead to make these goals a reality.

You can find more details on the entire Roadmap here.