Cable news hosts, podcasters and social-media personalities want you to believe that every issue is polarized and highly partisan. Because the more emotional they can make the discussion, the longer they can hold your attention and the more money they can make from advertisers.
Sadly, too many public officials play along with these dishonest tactics. The result: Bad policy outcomes that swing from one extreme to the other, making impossible for businesses and working Americans to plan for the future with confidence.
However, at least when it comes to energy policy, there are new leaders in Washington, D.C., who are trying to break the cycle before it can do more damage to our nation’s security and the cost of living for American families. One of those leaders is Republican Congressman Gabe Evans of Colorado.
Evans, who serves on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, is leading the charge to reform a series of federal tax incentives so they benefit all sources of domestic energy. Some of these tax breaks have existed in one form or another for many years, while others were created during the Biden administration.
But repealing all of these energy tax breaks — as some voices on the political right are demanding — would be a massive mistake, creating uncertainty for the business community and jeopardizing hundreds of billions of dollars of job-creating projects.
Evans and 20 other Republican U.S. House members have publicly called for pragmatic reforms to these tax credits — which include incentives for carbon capture and storage from fossil fuels, energy sources like nuclear and geothermal, and the development of U.S. supply chains and manufacturing capacity for advanced energy technologies.
“Countless American companies are utilizing sector-wide energy tax credits — many of which have enjoyed broad support in Congress — to make major investments in domestic energy production and infrastructure for traditional and renewable energy sources alike,” the Republicans wrote in a March 9 letter to the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
“As energy demand continues to skyrocket, any modifications that inhibit our ability to deploy new energy production risk sparking an energy crisis in our country, resulting in drastically higher power bills for American families.”
Separately, Evans told the Washington, D.C.-based news outlet Politico: “Common sense tax credits that preserve all-of-the-above options for safe, reliable, and affordable energy are essential to American energy dominance.”
For Evans, “all of the above” isn’t just a slogan — it’s the reality of his district in Colorado, which runs from the northeast suburbs of Denver to the agricultural and energy stronghold of Greeley in Weld County.
Just a few days after his letter urging pragmatic reforms to energy tax breaks, Evans led a tour of major energy facilities in his district.
The first stop was an oil and gas production site located next door to the Greeley-Weld County airport. Operated by the energy firm Bayswater, the site is right in the heart of the Denver-Julesburg Basin — the epicenter of traditional energy production in Colorado.
According to November 2024 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Colorado is the fourth-largest oil-producing state and the eighth-largest producer of natural gas.
The next stop on the energy tour was just over 10 miles away in LaSalle, where solar energy is being produced right in the thick of the oil and gas-rich DJ Basin. The developer of this project, Pivot Energy, is an industry leader in building solar arrays that are compatible with both crops and livestock — maximizing income for farmers and ranchers while ensuring a stable power grid for consumers.
“In the next 10 years, this part of Weld County is going to need three times as much energy as is available on the grid today,” Evans said while touring the solar site.
The final stop on the tour was a wind turbine manufacturing facility in Brighton. Operated by Vestas, the facility employs 585 workers to build nacelles, which house the generator that converts the energy from a wind turbine’s spinning blades into electricity. About 45 minutes north in Windsor, Vestas operates a separate factory that builds the blades themselves. Vestas has invested over $1 billion in Colorado to create this world leading manufacturing footprint.
Just as businesses and working families in Colorado need a stable energy system, energy producers need stable public policy — and that includes the tax laws under which they operate. It’s just common sense. With leaders like Evans at the helm in Washington, D.C., hopefully common sense will prevail.
Greg Brophy is a farmer from Wray, Colo., and former state senator who served Weld County and northeast Colorado. He is currently the Colorado director of The Western Way.
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