How Expensive is Lakewood Electrification?

Lakewood has a sustainability agenda to push electrification in order to decrease fossil fuel emissions. Electrification means changing your gas appliance to an electric one. Xcel is asking for an extra $5 billion to upgrade infrastructure that is needed for this change. Xcel will fund this by charging all customers more on top of an ever-increasing bill. A recent podcast from PowerGab called “Heat Pump Surprise”, pondered whether our elected officials know the total cost of their agenda. This was a good question so LakewoodInformer news asked Lakewood City Council if they knew the total cost for Lakewood residents. We got two responses and zero answers. All Lakewood residents are paying for electrification efforts through these additional fees. It’s not just the cost of a new appliance.

“Xcel Energy, seeking to meet an increasing demand for electric vehicles, rooftop solar arrays and heat pumps and general growth in electricity use, is proposing a $5 billion plan to improve the links between the grid and homes and businesses.” – Colorado Sun

The possible new fee is a result of the Fenberg Rider, passed by Colorado legislators in 2024.  This fee will improve only one leg of an overloaded distribution center. Electrification is one of, if not the most, expensive ways to decarbonize energy.

“Whether or not you actually convert to a heat pump you’re still gonna pay for this…. It’s even more perverse than that because what the PUC actually did was tack on a fee for existing natural gas customers to pay to subsidize folks to switch” – PowerGab

Does Lakewood know how much it will cost to switch to electric appliances?

Only two out of eleven Council Members responded to an emailed question. Neither answer included total costs. All Councilors affirmed their commitment to sustainability as a worthy goal. Sustainability, including any electrification, is a city priority.

Councilor Sophia Mayott-Guerrero provided a swift response, saying she previously worked in climate justice and clean energy policy. She points out the “current rate structures that Xcel uses is actually very beneficial to most customers as more electric appliances come online. As you know, heat pumps are most used in the night, and are also statistically more likely in homes where at least one person is home in the day, meaning continued use (on average) in the none-surge pricing hours. This all results in something often referred to as “flattening the curve”.

Flattening the curve does not stop the overall line increasing. The experts at PowerGab estimate (min 12) that the total necessary infrastructure upgrades total about to $695 billion for the necessary 82 gigawatts of power. The question remains, are climate justice warriors aware of the total cost?

Councilor Paula Nystrom says, “The concern is air quality, not just the cost… we [Lakewood] have deadlines to meet.” She says that it’s important to think of the global problem and how people suffer with air quality while trying to enjoy the summer outside. She did not know of any specific fees or sources of funding, but did say that there was enough tax credits and grants that residents wanting to switch to electric appliances could do so at about half the sticker cost.

Is $695 billion in new statewide spending possible? And is it worth it to achieve decarbonization goals?

Lakewood Council, Sustainability Committee and staff have been running a recurring false narrative that electrification is cheap because it uses “free money” like tax credits or subsidies when the reality is that everyone pays to make this money available. Lakewood will require that new buildings have electric heat pumps versus gas furnaces, relying on the fact that residents will believe the free money narrative over the total cost narrative. This change is likely to happen in spring of 2025.

Lakewood will also spend more on city buildings to meet these sustainability goals through increased taxpayer funding.

“This means you writing a check with a comma in it to pay your utility bill every single month. So $1,000 plus monthly utility bills.” – Amy Cooke, PowerGab

This informal survey of Lakewood City Council seems to prove PowerGab’s theory that legislators championing electrification have not added all these numbers up.

“This is a regressive tax. If you want to hurt poor people, you drive up the cost of keeping lights on… Affordable housing won’t matter. We are literally bankrupting the state.” Amy Cooke, PowerGab, min 7:30 mark)

“We need to account for the fact that increased load does have a cost,” Senate President Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat and cosponsor of the bill, told a Senate Finance Committee hearing. “There are investments that need to be made.” –  Colorado Sun

The Council responses also shows that only two out of eleven Councilors were willing to explain their beliefs in the face of a competing cost narrative. All beliefs are worth consideration, and their answers showed true respect for all their constituents. Thank you!

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIExE1OlL-4