Governor Jared Polis signed legislation today directing $15 million to the state Office of Just Transition to try to improve some of the economic and social impacts of the premature closure of coal power plants and mines across Colorado. He needs to meet his 100% carbon-free energy goal by 2040.

In a joint press release by Colorado House and Senate Democrats, Majority Leader Daneya Esgar, D-Pueblo said, “No community, no worker should be left behind in Colorado’s transition away from a coal-based economy.”

According to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, the Office of Just Transition’s purpose is to support communities, employers and coal workers during closings of coal-fired power plants, which they have depended for more than 160 years.

The state’s 2020 Just Transition Action Plan says it could cost $100 million or more to fully implement the plan. But neither HB19-1314, which created the OJT, nor HB22-1394, just signed by Polis, mention the ultimate costs of the program or how the program is expected to be funded in the future.

“Coal communities have powered the state of Colorado for generations,” said Routt County Commissioner Beth Melton in the press release. “As we transition to other sources of energy, we have a moral obligation to ensure that coal workers and communities are not left behind.”

Colorado Senator Dennis Hisey, R-Colorado Springs, said in an interview with The Denver Gazette, “Largely because of government action in this state, we have good paying jobs and industries going away that small towns, particularly in western, but not exclusively Western Colorado, relied on to keep their town healthy.”

Hisey says the population shift from the plant and mine closures will be significant.

“You’re just not going to retrain coal miners and people in other good-paying jobs to work in the tourism industry,” Hisey said. “It’s going to be a shift at the municipal level where the small towns reinvent who they are and there will be people moving out, and hopefully new people moving back in.”

Hisey doesn’t think the OJT effort is nearly enough to prevent economic disaster in rural Colorado, nor does he think that the predicted $100 million will ever materialize.

“While I’m pleased that we’re trying to help, it’s not going to be enough,” Hisey said. “And it really is government action that has caused a lot of those problems. So, too little, too late is my thinking, but I’m glad we’re trying.”

The $15 million is to be divided, with $5 million going to the OJT for its program expenses and the remaining $10 million “to directly assist coal transition workers, their family members, and other household members, including coal transition workers, their family members, and their household members who are members of a disproportionately impacted community with tuition assistance and apprenticeships; expanded child care assistance; career planning services; financial counseling; and housing assistance…”

Hisey says the coal power plants that are scheduled for closure create a perfect opportunity to save many of the jobs and the investment in infrastructure and power lines by removing the coal burning equipment and replacing them with small modular nuclear reactors.

“Green energy’s not going to get us there a hundred percent,” said Hisey. “Everybody agrees with that. Somehow, you’ve got to have on-demand, dispatchable energy and small nuclear reactors absolutely fit that niche.”

Hisey said that installing SNRs at the existing plants would “replace good paying jobs with good paying jobs”

“We already have the electrical infrastructure in place, so we could remove the coal-fired generating plants, scrap ’em out, and put the nuclear reactor right there in that same location and hook up the wires that are already in existence, that feed out to the grid, he said.”

Trying to retrain coal miners, who will likely move out of state in search of jobs in the coal mining industry in places like Wyoming anyway, says Hisey, isn’t a wise use of $100 million.