A bipartisan bill to facilitate new nuclear energy development in Colorado narrowly won approval from a House committee Thursday, as the General Assembly enters the final two weeks of its 2026 legislative session.

House Bill 26-1337, advanced by the House Energy and Environment Committee on a 7-6 vote, would direct the Colorado Energy Office to help streamline development of nuclear energy projects, in coordination with private electric utilities with more than half a million customers — criteria that would apply only to Xcel Energy, which supports the bill.

“This bill only allows the one utility that can do this, to look and see if it would work for us,” said state Representative Alex Valdez, a Democrat from Denver and sponsor of the bill. “Whether it’s going to be viable or not will be decided by that study. Then the (Public Utilities Commission) will decide whether or not to proceed from there.”

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Six Democrats voted against the bill, but three others — Valdez and Representatives Manny Rutinel of Commerce City and Amy Paschal of Colorado Springs — joined the committee’s four Republicans to secure its passage. It heads next to the House Appropriations Committee. Republican Representative Ty Winter of Las Animas County is the bill’s other House sponsor, but it does not yet have a sponsor in the Senate.

Thursday’s vote followed hours of committee testimony, during which most of Colorado’s leading environmental groups urged lawmakers to reject the bill, dismissing nuclear power as a risky and costly gambit and objecting to HB-1337’s cost-recovery mechanisms, which would allow Xcel to shift onto customers the cost of up to $20 million in spending on studies relating to nuclear power development.

“The onus of exploring nuclear energy project development, which remains one of the most expensive energy technologies, should be borne by developers and utilities, not shifted to ratepayers,” said Megan Kemp, a state policy representative for environmental group Earthjustice.

HB-1337 would establish a state goal of identifying at least one site for a nuclear energy project by 2035, and beginning construction by 2040. Patrick Murphy, regulatory policy manager for Xcel Energy, said that any cost recovery would be subject to PUC review — as would other decisions about the project, including siting.

“Anything that we brought forward would be fully litigated before the (PUC),” Murphy said. “There would be not only the commissioners themselves providing regulatory guardrails, but also intervening parties, from a wide array of groups and communities throughout our service territory, that would provide input.”

Water needs

Though a total of 54 nuclear power plants remain in operation in the United States, only three are located in Western states — and only one, Arizona’s Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, operates without a large river or ocean nearby, to supply a plant’s considerable water needs for cooling and steam generation.

The only nuclear power plant to have been built in Colorado, the Fort St. Vrain plant near Platteville, used an experimental helium-cooled reactor design, and was plagued by operational problems after opening in 1979. It was decommissioned after just a decade and converted into a natural-gas-powered facility.

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Much of the renewed interest in nuclear power has centered on a technology known as small modular reactors, or SMRs, which promise to overcome the high costs, construction delays and massive water needs that have previously been considered barriers to new nuclear development. Critics of HB-1337 argued that SMRs are still an unproven technology.

“There are zero operational SMRs in the United States to date,” Clare Valentine, a senior policy advisor with Western Resource Advocates, told the committee. “To decarbonize our power sector most effectively, we should be evaluating a variety of emissions-free resources, not setting technology-specific targets — particularly for emerging technologies, given that conventional (reactor) designs are virtually unworkable for drought-stricken Colorado.”

Valdez told his fellow lawmakers that nuclear energy is necessary to provide “baseline” power and a “bridge” to a clean energy future, especially given projected increases in electricity demand caused by data center development. Xcel told the PUC last year that it expects electricity demand to increase by nearly 20% between 2024 and 2031, with two-thirds of the new demand coming from data centers.

Valdez and Winter were previously the sponsors of legislation designating nuclear energy as a “clean energy resource” under state law. Governor Jared Polis signed that bill into law last year. Colorado has set a goal of achieving 100% clean energy by 2050.

“We heard a lot about SMRs today, but what we mainly heard, in terms of hesitancy or pushback against it, is that it’s not ready. It’s years out,” said Valdez. “We heard environmental groups concerned about costs — I understand that. (But) we didn’t hear much about the environment, because it’s clean. It doesn’t emit carbon.”