DENVER–The Colorado Senate on Friday easily approved a bill adding nuclear power to the state’s statutory definition of a “clean energy” source. House Bill 25-1040 now goes to Governor Polis, who has indicated he will sign off on the effort.

As previously reported by Complete Colorado, the state’s seal of approval is important as those forms of energy officially classified as clean energy are the only types eligible for what the bill summary refers to as “clean energy project financing” at the county and city level.

It also determines which energy resources may be used by a qualifying retail utility to meet Colorado’s ambitious and ever-increasingly expensive goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2040.

Two previous attempts by Republicans to include nuclear as a state-sanctioned energy source failed in the Democrat-dominated legislature.  This time around, however, the effort picked up bipartisan support, sponsored in the House by Denver Democrat Alex Valdez and Pueblo Republican Ty Winter and in the Senate by Frisco Democrat Dylan Roberts and Colorado Springs Republican Larry Liston.

The bill enjoyed mostly smooth sailing through the legislative process, clearing the House 43-18 and passing out of the Senate on a 29-5 vote.

“This has been a goal of ours for over a decade,” said Jon Caldara, president of the Denver-based Independence Institute,* a free market think tank which has long advocated for nuclear power as part of an “all-of-the-above” energy portfolio for Colorado.

“Thanks to the tireless work of Amy Cooke and our Energy and Environmental Center and the well-choreographed, well-targeted education and advocacy they did, they took what was an outrageous, undoable idea (welcoming nuclear energy to this hard-blue state) and over time made it not just possible, but inevitable.”

* Independence Institute is the non-profit publisher of Complete Colorado.