Colorado Senate Passes Clean-air Bill Favoring Natural Gas

Good news for Colorado's air quality. The Colorado Senate passed a bill to retrofit existing coal-fired electricity plants to plants fired by natural gas. This will reduce the toxins and pollutants that significantly contribute to the Denver metro area's brown cloud in the winter and smog alerts in the summer. Using natural gas to fire electricity plants will also ease the transition to renewable energy supplies such as wind and solar because of the ability of natural gas to come online quicker than coal and meet the base load demand when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. Also in the bill is a provision that requires Xcel to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides by 70-80% by 2017. Natural gas will help to meet this requirement. Nice job Colorado legislature!