Counties play growing role in fight to lower utility costs for residents

Key Takeaways

As new demands meet a fluctuating supply, energy costs have become increasingly difficult for households, businesses and governments to predict and budget for.

County governments rarely have a direct role in the energy market. That’s usually left to state regulators and utility boards. But a new NACo report, “Electricity Cost Trends and Projected Growth” on electricity cost trends finds that counties can often be most effective as advocates, helping lower residents’ utility costs by leveraging state programs, local partnerships and proactive outreach.

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Understanding Electricity Costs and Projected Growth

Kelly Flenniken, recently named president of the Colorado Forum, spent three years as executive director of Colorado Counties, Inc., after a career with Xcel Energy. She drew on her experience in both energy and local government advocacy to offer insight into the relationship between counties and utilities. County News asked Flenniken how counties can best represent their residents’ interests with utilities and state regulators.

How can counties facilitate relationships between communities and utilities?

Not directly from a rate cost perspective, but I’ve definitely seen communities partner with utilities to mitigate impacts from production and transmission infrastructure. It means talking about community benefits and helping the utility to secure a spot as a good corporate partner and a good neighbor. 

What are some hallmarks of good collaboration that you’ve seen? 

It boils down to being honest about impact. From the utility perspective, it’s easy for them to say the community impact is not really that big of a deal, but the local government has to be honest about what the impact is and what could help offset that impact. And that looks different in different communities. I’ve seen communities where that impact is offset by the purchase of a school bus, or park benches or an ongoing sponsorship of the county fair. 

What are some of those impacts, those negative externalities?

Some of the biggest challenges are interruptions to the viewshed and land use. It’s hard to hide wind turbines or large solar fields, especially on the great plains like in eastern Colorado. I think the concern there … at least what’s happening in Colorado, [is] where there is sort of ongoing tension between development and agriculture. 

And I think you have a lot of farming communities that maybe aren’t farming to the level that they did before, and they really worry that they will never get there if that land is not preserved. 

And not every type of agrivoltaic (collocated energy and agriculture) project makes sense everywhere. 

There’s tension in come rural communities about energy generation taking away from farmland only to be used in urban areas. Has anybody cracked the code on how to how to get along in that situation, or is that pretty much like dogs and cats fighting forever? 

I think people would like to believe that it’s dogs and cats forever, but I think what’s really important is that when you do come to the table with a willingness to actually collaborate, I do think that that can be resolved. 

When I worked for a utility, and we needed to permit just an unbelievable amount of transmission infrastructure, we recognized how challenging that was and how much words really mattered. In those communities, it wasn’t very effective to tell them that they were part of the clean energy transition or the green economy — that didn’t move any hearts or minds. But when we reframed that to talk about how, with the addition of wind turbines, you can have a second harvest. This may actually be the way that you can keep your family farm, and we can sort of augment on your down seasons. That changed the conversation quite a bit. 

We started to equate the idea of farming to utility production, and it was like in some ways, you’re now not farming potatoes. You’re farming electrons. 

I think semantics and words really matter in this conversation. 

What should county leaders keep in mind when navigating energy projects?

At least in Colorado, Xcel Energy is one of the top five property taxpayers. And so I think that that’s another really important part of the conversation is that  counties are so dependent on property tax. That’s a double-edged sword for these rural counties where they need the revenue. It’s important to remember that infrastructure is more than infrastructure, has it also provides property tax revenue to support government services. In a lot of cases, that’s a big payer. And it’s a payer that’s not going to go anywhere because it’s in the ground. Before A-B-C company might go out of business, but the utility is not going to.