Bless you, Colorado, in both the philosophical sense and in the hyper-local meaning of gesundheit when an April zephyr drives cherry blossom pollen straight up your nose. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to wash my hands during one school lunch sandwich construction when a sneezing fit hits during the mayo course.
Take heart that April’s climate transitions also bring the transformation of two great sports seasons from the mundane regular schedule slog to the intensity of the playoffs. The Avalanche and the Nuggets will begin what we hope to be deep playoff runs later this week. With your Rockies still on pace for 133 losses this season, let’s focus on the positive!
In the meantime, carbon never sleeps, and we’ve got lots of news for you on the environment side of The Temperature this week. Scan the quick hits below, and then join us at coloradosun.com or on your mobile app for all the important state news.
Game-ending threes and overtime goals — let’s goooooooooo!
Michael Booth
Reporter
TEMP CHECK
CLIMATE
Tesla sales skid in Colorado, but overall clean cars keep pace despite cuts in subsidies
A row of Tesla charging stations in the southeast parking lot at Colorado Mills shopping mall in April 2021 in Lakewood. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)38.4%
Combined market share of electric, hybrid and plug-in electric hybrid cars so far in 2025
Colorado experienced a dip in clean car sales in the first three months of 2025, with anti-Tesla sentiment and a scheduled cut in the state EV subsidy eroding a bit of the booming market share clean cars had racked up in the last part of 2024.
But the state’s auto dealers actually thought it could have been a worse start to 2025 for clean cars, with hits from the state subsidy, expiration of an Xcel subsidy, and all the talk of expensive tariffs, said Matthew Groves, executive director of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, which reports quarterly new car registrations for the state. Combined, fully electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle sales made up 26% of the Colorado market in January through March, down moderately from the 31.3% share they enjoyed in the last quarter of 2024.
“It’s actually less of a drop than I expected,” Groves said. “I think we may have been bolstered a bit by an outstanding weekend to close the quarter at the end of March, when we expected tariffs to set in on April 2. I think a lot of people tried to ‘buzzer beat’ the tariffs and get their new car at the end of the quarter.”
Sales of hybrids, which do not plug in but use a regenerative battery combined with gasoline to get high road mileage, actually rose a bit to 12.4% of the market starting 2025, up from 10.5%. Car dealers and efficiency advocates lump all three categories into an “alternative drive train” market, and that group took 38.4% of Colorado new car sales so far in 2025. That compares with a 41.8% share in the last three months of 2024.
Tesla sales were down 2% in the first quarter, though they still — along with a reinvigorated Nissan — dominate fully electric car sales in Colorado and across the country.
It’s not just that Tesla chief and MAGA cheerleader Elon Musk is getting blasted by bad publicity from Democrats, some of whom have vowed to never consider a Tesla while he’s involved with the company. Tesla’s older models are getting stale on the sales floor compared with a host of new EV models arriving regularly from the traditional car makers, Grove noted.
Hesitance among new EV buyers seems inevitable for the rest of 2025. Tariff threats are on again, off again. Colorado’s taken-at-the-register tax credit dropped to $3,500 from $5,000 on Jan. 1. The Trump administration wants to boost oil production and make gasoline cheaper. And there are MAGA supporters who would like to end the $7,500 federal EV subsidy that was a key part of Biden administration renewable energy support.
“Yes, they’ve been threatening cancellation since November, maybe before,” Groves said. “But, until we see it on paper, we are going to encourage people to keep taking advantage of it.”
Read more about Colorado’s quarterly car report, always a fascinating reflection of business, cultural and political trends in the state, later this week at coloradosun.com.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
CLIMATE
State is admitting big failures, big challenges in ozone control
Wildfire smoke, ozone and other Front Range smog combine over Denver International Airport on July 25. (Michael Booth, The Colorado Sun)Latest step “in no way reduces our sense of urgency.”
— David Sabados, Regional Air Quality Council
Colorado is giving up on meeting mandates for controlling toxic ozone in the next few years, while doubling down on plans that recently passed rules will start to make an impact by 2030.
State health officials say they are asking the federal EPA to preemptively downgrade the Front Range ozone nonattainment zone to “severe” from the current “serious” violation standard, when judged by the 2015 ozone cap of 70 parts per billion. Recent updated computer modeling of Front Range air shows continuing violations closer to 80 parts per billion, according to Regional Air Quality Council Executive Director Mike Silverstein.
That means Colorado isn’t even that close to meeting the more lax 2008 standard of 75 parts per billion before 2030, Silverstein added. Yes, it’s confusing: The nine northern Front Range counties included in the nonattainment area are on parallel but different schedules to cut lung-damaging ozone, one schedule whose clock started with the 2008 regulations and another schedule launched with the tighter 2015 standards.
Bottom line is we are pretty awful on both tracks.
For the 2008 track, Colorado has submitted to the EPA for approval an improvement plan aimed at getting closer to the 75 ppb standard by 2027. The first year of monitoring actual ozone for that plan was 2024, “and we didn’t start off well in our first year,” Silverstein said.
“So we need to have much better summertime air quality these next two years,” he added. Is that likely?
No. New modeling run by the state “doesn’t predict we’re going to make it to 75” in 2025 or 2026, Silverstein said. “Our emission trends are flat,” he said.
The state asking for a “severe” reset on the 2015 track buys time moves the deadline for achieving 70 parts per billion to August, 2032.
Does Colorado have any chance of making big improvements in those outlying years? Turn to today’s coloradosun.com for a deeper discussion of what ozone-control laws Colorado has passed that state officials hope will turn things around from 2027 to 2032.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
CHART OF THE WEEK
President Trump’s orders to boost coal production in the U.S. bump up against a national trend steadily in the opposite direction, as coal-fired power plants close. (U.S. Energy Information Administration)It may take a lot more than political alignment and cheerleading to improve coal’s fortunes in Colorado and across the U.S.
President Trump last week issued an executive order meant to reverse closures of coal-fired power generation plants and increase production of coal on federal lands. In theory, easing federal regulations could help Arch Coal boost exports from the oft-litigated West Elk Mine on the Western Slope, a mine that employs hundreds of people and has an international market.
But most of Colorado’s remaining coal mines are specifically dedicated to serving a nearby coal-fired power plant, and with all of Colorado’s major coal plants scheduled to close by 2031, the local mines are fated to close as well.
Nationally the picture is similar, as the coal-production chart shows. Colorado may be out front, but most states are pushing coal plants to close, and utilities are not planning to build new coal-burning plants from scratch. New markets for an expanded coal industry would have to be overseas.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
HEAT MAP
MORE ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH NEWS
Craig coal power will still close despite Trump’s coal boost. The president’s efforts to revive the American coal industry, detailed above in the chart talk, are not going to save Tri-State Generation’s big Craig station, Mark Jaffe reports. The co-op transmission utility just filed its new resource plans for the coming years, and long-planned coal closures are still at the core of the renewable energy blueprint. Trump’s administration promised an attack on local green laws. Here it comes. Western slope oil and gas companies launched a first Colorado assault on state climate change laws that President Trump says go too far in restricting business. The oil company trade group sued to overturn new Colorado “midstream” emissions rules, meant to curb greenhouse emissions from pipelines and distribution centers. More battles over recently passed Colorado laws are likely, Michael Booth and Parker Yamasaki report. Colorado lawmakers try to RFK Jr.-proof state vaccine requirements. If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. weakens federal advice on school-based vaccines, John Ingold reports, Colorado lawmakers want to make sure state health officials don’t have to rely solely on federal input when they make vaccine schedules. Under a bill — which, update, Gov. Jared Polis signed into law last week — Colorado will add in vaccine advisories from physician groups and other respected research organizations.Thanks for hanging with us, and if you’d like to entertain and debate these topics and more in person with the crack reporting staff of The Sun, join us live at Colorado SunFest all day May 16. It’s a four-year college education at Policy University in one day, for the small price of a ticket.
— Michael & John
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