The transition to renewable energy is a major focus of the state of Colorado and a number of states across the country, but as Tommy Beaudreau explained to a full classroom at the University of Colorado Law School and around 150 online attendees, the work to complete it isn’t completely straightforward.
Beaudreau, a partner at WilmerHale and former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, was the Getches-Wilkinson Center and Center of the American West’s special guest for its 16th annual Schultz lecture in energy.
His lecture came at a consequential time for energy policy in the country and for the future of the Colorado River, which was also a focus of his lecture. President Donald Trump’s administration has different priorities than its predecessor, with a renewed focus on expanding fossil fuel production. It also comes as Colorado River negotiators face a deadline, now six months away, to determine the post-2026 appropriation of the Colorado River.
“The pithiest summary of our challenges that I ever heard was from the head of the Nevada State Water Authority, who said, ‘The fundamental challenge with the Colorado River system is that we have 19th century law, 20th century infrastructure and 21st century climate,’” Beaudreau said.
He noted that many of the laws in the books that are now affecting the energy transition were written in a much different time, when the U.S. government was encouraging westward expansion through homesteading, railroad grants and mining laws.
But now, Beaudreau said that those laws can frustrate policy efforts in the 21st century that are aimed at solving unsustainable consumption and degradation of Western ecosystems and efforts to address climate change.
One specific focus of the lecture was public lands policy, which Beaudreau noted were often at the center of public debate around energy.
“Based on my experience in government, public lands are useful political proxies for a lot of this debate,” Beaudreau said. “The unprecedented domestic energy production, the fossil fuel production… that is largely driven, however, by the shale revolution that is outside of public lands. It’s on state and private lands, including in the southwest and North Dakota. And yet, we still talk about public lands as if, on both sides of that [political] ledger, they are the make or break on energy transition.”
One question around the use of public lands that Beaudreau thinks policy makers in Washington, D.C. don’t fully understand is how intertwined fossil fuel development is with government and public service funding.
“It is a hard proposition to go out to the American West and Alaska and say, ‘We’re going to do an energy transition,’ and not have an answer for that question of, ‘Okay, how is our state budget going to fund itself, and how are we going to fund conservation programs like the Land and Water Conservation Fund?’ And, until we have the ability to provide an answer for that, politics are never going to yield to the energy transition,” Beaudreau said.
He said that he views that permeation and embedment of fossil fuel funding into government policies and public funds as the top barrier from moving away from fossil fuel use in the U.S.
But it’s not just fossil fuels that are found on public lands. A number of critical minerals are necessary for a transition to renewable energy, and there is a law on the books that is over a century and a half old, the Mining Act of 1872, that Beaudreau said is causing issues.
A 2023 testimony from Steve Feldgus, a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Interior, to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, echoes Beaudreau. Feldgus testified that an intergovernmental working group concluded that a fundamental reform was needed for the law to achieve best outcomes for communities, the mining industry and for the previous administration’s climate and manufacturing goals.