$22.3 million to manufacture aluminum with 70 percent less air pollution in Fort Lupton. $50 million to build electric vehicle batteries and provide student internships in Thornton. $1.1 billion to help three Colorado rural electric co-operative utilities replace dirty coal-fired power with cheap renewable energy.

The common thread between these projects is federal investment from legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that became law during the Biden administration.

Pro-climate federal policies like these and ambitious climate policy from the Polis administration have supercharged a clean economic boom that’s creating local jobs, generating tax revenue for our communities, cutting consumer costs, and cleaning our air.

But a looming threat could grind this economic growth to a halt: Project 2025, a 900-page manifesto from the fossil fuel-funded Heritage Foundation, written as a policy playbook for a future Republican administration.

Colorado’s Clean Energy Manufacturing Renaissance

After decades of decline, America’s enjoying a manufacturing renaissance, spurred by policies enacted in the past four years. Nationwide, policies like these could create 3.8 million new manufacturing jobs within the next decade – Colorado’s seeing those effects with 4% statewide unemployment, one of our lowest rates in decades.

The IRA will keep our economy growing through 2030, when it’s projected to create 23,000 new jobs, add $2.1 billion to GDP, and cut household energy bills $70 annually in Colorado. We’re already banking a down payment on that economic potential – nearly $1.7 billion in new private clean energy investment and more than 4,900 new jobs have been announced since the IRA’s passage in August 2022.

But Project 2025 is stuffed with regressive plans to roll back the IRA and federal climate policies, among other ideas like stripping the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect clean air and water.

Project 2025’s Massive Economic And Climate Threat

Nonpartisan analysis from Energy Innovation finds that Project 2025’s energy provisions would start costing Colorado jobs next year and would continue cutting employment through at least the next decade.

Compared to a future where the IRA keeps our economy growing, under Project 2025 we’d lose nearly 140,000 job years between 2025-2035 – that’s like laying off 20% of Denver’s population – peaking at 24,600 lost jobs in 2035.

Project 2025’s energy provisions would also cut $34 billion from state GDP and burden Colorado’s families with $6.5 billion in higher energy bills between 2025-2035–even if it increases domestic oil and gas production.

For context, that’s $280 per year in higher electricity bills and gasoline costs for the average household in 2030 and $470 in 2035, or about 1 percent of our total state GDP in 2030 and 2 percent in 2035.

That’s not to mention Project 2025’s climate impact – more than 8 million metric tons of new greenhouse gas emissions in 2030, the same as adding two new coal-fired power plants to our state, or nearly 10 percent of forecast total statewide emissions that year.

That massive increase would hit the same year Colorado has said it would halve the statewide greenhouse gas emissions accelerating climate change. Why would we increase climate pollution when we’re already sweltering under 90° weather in October and choking on wildfire smoke all summer and fall?

But back to economics. Fracking often dominates statewide energy conversations, and subsidizing fossil fuel production is a core element of Project 2025, but federal data shows jobs in Colorado’s oil and gas sector have fallen short of projections, only contributing 20,000 jobs statewide. Meanwhile the coal industry employs less than 3,000 Coloradans.

By comparison, more than 85,000 people work in the clean energy industry statewide. That number’s growing thanks to $1 billion in federal funds allocated for clean energy from IRA provisions since 2023.

We Can’t Afford To Go Back On Climate Policy

Project 2025 would eviscerate federal policies that have positioned America and Colorado to profit from a 21^st century clean energy economy worth $1.8 trillion globally. The rest of the world is already investing in this future, and if we don’t get in the race, other countries will capture that growth.

America’s clean economic boom is fighting climate change, creating good jobs in Colorado, and revitalizing manufacturing. Unwinding this progress, as detailed in Project 2025, would drag us backward by increasing energy bills and sending jobs overseas.

Clean air, cheaper energy bills, and good jobs are making our state stronger. Our lungs and our pocketbooks can’t afford to go back to a fossil fueled past.