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Energy Summit 2025 addresses challenges for energy evolution on the Western Slope
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KREX) – The Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce hosted it's 2025 Energy Summit at the downtown Convention Center with an aim to, in the panelists' own words, bring together divergent views on energy production and industry without surrendering principles. Which is a fancy way of saying, can't we all just get along?
As panelists expressed at today's summit, it's almost never that easy or simple in this highly politicized area of state infrastructure. Summit speakers from Xcel Energy and West Slope Colorado Oil and Gas Association told the crowd about the many ways legislators, tasked to regulate energy, butt heads with the companies producing it.
'I see our regulators prioritizing energy, and environmental policy over the other things…development imperatives, balance, reliability, portability, etc.' says Robert S. Kenney, President of Xcel Energy Colorado, 'whenever you directly prioritize one set of policies over the other, you're not crafting good balance of public policy.'
These disagreements have, in recent months, recently culminated into a lawsuit against the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission, brought by West Slope Colorado Oil and Gas and the Board of Mesa County Commissioners.
The suit comes in response to recent enactments of new greenhouse gas rules, requiring a conversion to electric power for oil and gas companies operating pipelines, compressor stations, and other midstream facilities. Plaintiffs say, these conversions will drive out jobs and don't leave room for the 'all of the above approach' to energy use summit panelists championed.
WesternSlopeNow has reached out multiple times to the Air Quality Control Commission, who declined comment on pending litigation.
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