In our second and final episode of Coal at Sunset: Still Burning, we talk with members of the close-knit community of Craig. While lawyers argue over Section 202(c) in Washington and Denver, the community is living with the uncertainty the federal order created while building toward a future beyond coal. From family entrepreneurs at a local farmers’ market or a power plant worker turned whiskey distiller to people who have no idea what comes next for them, this is a story about what transition actually looks like on the ground: nonlinear, messy, unfinished, and human.

This transcript is from the award-winning podcast, Laws of Notion, hosted by Kristan Uhlenbrock, Executive Director of the Institute for Science & Policy. For more information and resources from this episode, check out the episode summary page. Enjoy the transcript, and listen to the audio version at coalatsunset.org.

 

Episode Two| Nothing is Linear

Bad Alibi

KRISTAN UHLENBROCK: I want to tell you a story about a chance encounter this past summer. It's a beautiful 70-degree June evening, and I'm in Craig, Colorado. Downtown on Yampa Avenue, I drive by a new distillery, the town's first. It's called Bad Alibi. A welcome chalkboard sign draws me in.

There's a 500-gallon still inside, shelves of whiskey and gin, and beautiful watercolor paintings by a local artist, Israel Holloway. From there, I walk through a connecting door into a cocktail lounge called Dummy and Crane, named for characters from Northwest Colorado's outlaw past. The lounge is decorated with antlers and taxidermy, swanky seating, and good tunes. And that's where I meet Wade Gerber.

Wade is still in his Tri-State shirt. He just left work for the evening. He's been at the Craig Power Station for more than two decades, serving as a maintenance supervisor at the plant since 2004. As I pull up a seat, I quickly discover that he's now also the head distiller and owner of Bad Alibi. For the past few years, he's been flying back and forth from Colorado to Louisville, Kentucky, learning the art and science of making whiskey.

He's been taking advantage of the education and training support that came with the plant's planned retirement, the kind of program designed to help the employees land somewhere new. When I ask him how things were going, he gives me a number: 49. That's how many days he has left at Tri-State. I can hear the excitement mixed with the nervousness in his voice, a new chapter that he hopes will be successful.

I can also hear something underneath it, because Wade isn't just worried about himself and his family; he's worried about his coworkers at the plant, especially the younger ones in their 20s and 30s. He's been telling them, "Plan ahead, take some classes, use the support while it's there. Find what you're passionate about. Dream." And what he often hears back is one of two things: either, "This is what I want to do," or, "I don't know what I want to do."

Shortly into my conversation, I say to Wade, "I think I know one of your business partners in this endeavor, Kirstie McPherson." He smiles. I first met Kirstie back in 2021, a young Craig entrepreneur who was part of our first season of the podcast. She cares so deeply about her community that she now works for Colorado's Office of Just Transition, the first office of its kind in the US that is solely focused on helping communities like Craig find their footing after transitioning away from coal. Back then, she owned a local wine bar and told me how the idea of a new distillery was coming together.

KIRSTIE MCPHERSON [SEASON 1]: The goal of that is to grow on par with a lot of the other distilleries around the country and in this area, where we would be providing employment for some of these different individuals as well. And that correlates right back into engineering and transferable skills. And being able to also show that, because the two partners, one's at the power plant and one is within the coal mine, to show people what else they could potentially be doing.

KRISTAN: Kirstie closed her wine bar and now owns the cocktail lounge Dummy and Crane, connected to Wade's distillery Bad Alibi. Together, Wade and Kirstie are investing in their community. And like Wade, Kirstie's been nervous about what comes next for the people of Craig.

KIRSTIE [SEASON 1]: What we do know from transitioning economies is people will do one of three things. They'll stay here, and they'll take a smaller job because their family's here or they have something, but it's not going to be the exact job that they've already had, and it's likely a pay cut. The second is that they're going to move to find another job that is exactly like what they've already had, or the third is that they're going to create businesses. We were very fortunate to have decades doing what we did, but nothing lasts forever.

KRISTAN: Welcome back to Coal at Sunset, Still Burning. I'm Kristan Uhlenbrock, and this is the second and final episode of our return to Craig, Colorado, from our podcast Laws of Notion that encourages us to think critically about the world around us. This episode is about the community, the people living in the uncertainty and trying to build a future beyond coal.

Episode Two: Nothing is Linear.

Craig Farmers Market

On a windy Wednesday evening in June 2026, the Craig Chamber of Commerce held the first farmers market of the summer. There were booths with sourdough, dog treats, and lemonade, homemade crafts, and businesses getting their start by testing out ideas. And there was a new program called “kid-preneurs,” where kids build their own businesses and sell alongside the adults. 12-year-old Grayden had his own operation going.

GRAYDEN: I'm here to sell 3D-printed items. I've got a whole bunch of fidget items. I've got some useful items and just some decorations.

KRISTAN: What's a useful item?

GRAYDEN: Like something that could go into your garage and help store tools. We had a problem in our garage where we needed an organizer for our air tools. I used this program called Tinkercad, and I designed it myself.

KRISTAN: A couple of tables down, I met another kid-preneur.

KRISTAN: So, what's your name?

ELLIE: Ellie.

KRISTAN: And how old are you, Ellie?

ELLIE: I'm 11. We are selling candles, and I'm selling my 3D printing stuff.

KRISTAN: Ellie's mom, Megan, was letting her lead and telling me about the different types of products they make. Candles and concrete vessels they pour at home, wax melts, room sprays. Megan grew up in Craig. She's finishing a bachelor's degree, majoring in English, minoring in marketing, a self-described lifelong learner. And when I asked her what she loves about Craig, she didn't hesitate.

MEGAN: I love living in a small town. It's so nice to go to the grocery store, and everybody knows everybody, and you always find somebody to talk to or somebody you know. And I always feel like our neighbors are watching out for us. I feel very safe in our community, and I think that's important as a mom and entrepreneur. And yeah, we like living in Craig.

KRISTAN: And then in the very next breath, the thing that's underneath almost every conversation in this town.

MEGAN: It's really hard because we are in a lot of uncertainty with the coal mines closing, and it actually hits close to home for us because my husband works at the Hayden Power Plant.

KRISTAN: The Hayden Station sits about half an hour east of Craig, up the Yampa River, a different coal plant owned by a different utility, on its own countdown to retirement. Same valley, same story.

MEGAN: Imminently, it's going to be closing in 2028, and we don't necessarily have a plan, but that's why we started our business. And so, we wanted to kind of be proactive about what we're doing. And with something like this, we can take it with us if Craig isn't our forever home. It's kind of a sad feeling that this could not be our home forever. But, yeah, lots of uncertainty in our community.

KRISTAN: I kept asking people the same simple question: What do you love about Craig? And I kept getting versions of the same answer:

CRAIG RESIDENT 1: Everywhere you go, you see somebody you know that you want to stop and visit with. So it's nice.

CRAIG RESIDENT 2: I've lived here 23 years, and I love basically the same thing that she said, that you can walk anywhere and know everyone, and if you're ever in need, they'll stop and they'll help you, or you can call them and be like, "Hey, I need this," and they'll be there in five minutes, no matter what.

KRISTAN: And then there was Norma. She sells aprons, casserole carriers, and other quilted goods. She moved to Craig three years ago to care for her 93-year-old mother. When our conversation turned to the power plant, her feelings were clear.

NORMA: Don't think they should shut the power plants down. I really don't. This would be a bad mistake, I think. Electricity's going to go up. Power's going to go up big time, I think. I hope coal stays here to keep the city alive. They keep saying this AI is what's going to cover it, but I don't think so. And I don't know what else is out there that could do it, you know? I mean, we need our coal.

I don't know. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think it's getting rid of coal. I don't think it's getting rid of coal.

KRISTAN: That's the thing about a significant change related to a town's economy. Everyone goes through it together, and no two people will experience it the same way

The Community's Future

JENNIFER HOLLOWAY: Come on in! How's it going?

KRISTAN: Jennifer Holloway runs the Craig Chamber of Commerce. She was part of our first season back in 2021. I wanted to talk with her again. So the morning after the farmers market, I found myself taking a wide flight of wooden stairs inside a 105-year-old former school building to get to her office. Tall ceilings and windows look out onto a tree-lined street as the morning sunlight filters on plants tucked into a corner.

JENNIFER: This building is such a good example of what we can do as a community to keep history alive. You know, this building was decommissioned and empty. The city, the school district, the chamber, we all came together to figure out how we can keep this building alive. It would've been torn down most likely. And so, the city bought the building for $10 from the school district, and the chamber became the manager. We have a really good... I call it the tripod. We have government, we have nonprofit, and we have business in here.

KRISTAN: Inside the tripod is an arts council, a senior center that runs the Medicare help office, a community garden, the county visitor center, and a commercial kitchen that incubates small food businesses. Baby showers happen here, so do round tables with US senators. And the farmers market, that came from Jennifer listening.

JENNIFER: That was our first one last night. We're doing three this summer. We've had a lot of discussions with many people, community, small businesses, my board, about kind of the symbolism of community, and farmers markets are really a strong picture of that, and I feel like it can help localize, help people get back to their roots and mingle and show their goods and feel proud about what they're doing. And we also had several people on our recent survey say, "We want a farmers market."

KRISTAN: While these new events are meant to bring people together, create the connections of being in a community, there are challenges that not only Jennifer faces, but many of us are also experiencing.

JENNIFER: I can't say that really any of our in-person events have been as successful since COVID. I think it changed the way people live their daily lives; their dependency on technology and phone and social media increased, I believe, because of that time in isolation. We see it in some of our nonprofits maybe closing down because they don't have the participation that they used to have.

There is loneliness. Our mental health statistics are bleak here. I mean, it's sad. Our suicide rates and our depression rates, and I mean, it's hard to know many young kids that don't have some type of mental health issue. So, gosh, if we can't fix it here in a small town in a grassroots way, I feel like that's the way it can spread… and in the city, you have a little community that is your block or your religion or your activity you do, your sports, you know. Make that where you base it out, and then we start shifting the mentality of competition into cooperation, our world will change.

KRISTAN: When I first interviewed Jennifer in 2021, I asked her what success would look like.

JENNIFER [SEASON 1]: I say success is that we have created a new identity, and we have bound around that, and that our community feels like it has a positive future.

KRISTAN: Five years later, I asked her how it was going.

JENNIFER: Honestly, we're kind of in this holding pattern. Our president has kept our power plant open right now, but we've had a couple of our mines close. So we're kind of with one foot in each world, it feels like. So I think that's hard for people to completely go to the new identity when they still are having hope that the mine will come back on, and the power plant will stay open. And that mindset really shifted with administrations and how the tone is set, and so I think there's a lot of confusion and kind of just waiting to see, and where everyone's just holding their breath.

KRISTAN: When the emergency order came down last December, Jennifer wasn't surprised. She'd heard rumblings. Now, like others, she's trying to make sense of what this will mean, not only in the short term, but also further out.

JENNIFER: The general feeling is I feel like it's giving us hope where the long-term science isn't showing us that's the way.

My brother works at the power plant. I want him to keep his job. He has five little kids. So yeah, we want it. If there was a way for our town to say, please, can we just keep it open? Because that's a survival mode. That's fear, right? And we have to move past that. But it's really hard when there's a comfortable way, and you know it, and it's familiar, and the hard, scary way still hasn't happened yet.

So it feels like being in limbo quite a bit. And I've talked to the people running Tri-State. I understand the decisions they've made and the economics and the business model, and it doesn't point to leaving the power plant open. So, there's just a disconnect there that I don't know how you can reconcile that when it financially doesn't make sense.

KRISTAN: Tri-State says this plant is uneconomic. An independent grid analyst reached the same conclusion. And now here's the head of the local chamber of commerce, whose own brother's paycheck comes from that plant, holding multiple truths at the same time.

The decision to close the Craig Station has been on a timeline, a timeline that includes dedicated resources to support a workforce navigating the transition.

JENNIFER: I think the training opportunity is amazing for them, and I kind of am sad that more people haven't taken advantage of it. There are a lot of people that would love to have some education paid for. But I also understand when you have a skill, and you have had in your mind your career path, and you built your family around that and your home and finances and your mental health, it's scary.

KRISTAN: Tri-State and Colorado's Office of Just Transition are offering education, training support, and other resources to plant and mine workers. This is what Wade Gerber used to become a distiller.

JENNIFER: And Wade - I am so proud of him and his wife and Kirstie and the whole team down there at Bad Alibi. They are really, really being brave because they had to invest a lot of money.

And like I said before, our demographics - do we have enough people to support these businesses? Are we going to keep them? How many people are going to move when the mine closes? Because a lot of people are just waiting it out. They're waiting it out. They're going to see what their retirement and if they get severance, if they get unemployment, they're going to see what happens, and they're going to sell their houses and go somewhere else for a similar job.

KRISTAN: Waiting it out. It's a phrase I've heard again and again, and it kind of makes sense to me. How many of us struggle to plan for our own future? Like, what kind of job or career we want versus what we can get? And then what if we have a good job and it becomes part of our identities or our main way to support our families? And then we're told it's going away, but not today. How would we even think about changing, especially if it isn't our choice? The plant has a closing deadline, but the federal emergency order keeps getting renewed. Uncertainty doesn't just delay decisions. It can be paralyzing.

In the previous episode, you heard Duane Highley, the CEO of Tri-State, describe what he calls the pen risk, the way a single signature from a regulator or a politician or a judge can change your world overnight. I asked Jennifer what a pen risk feels like from her perspective.

JENNIFER: If it's the wrong way, it's devastating. And that's happened on several areas here, not only at the mine, but with the way federal grants were being delivered when we switched administrations. That's one of the other reasons the chamber is in a position where we're vulnerable, because there were a lot of federal grants available to help with infrastructure on BLM land, to help with economic development, and doing some projects like the river park.

Our new courthouse, that was federal money. And so when that pen starts cutting off that money, we feel it. We're feeling it in our hospital. We're feeling it in our Medicaid and our Medicare, and our vulnerable population here, which in a small town like this is almost everyone. And that's rural for you.

And yet, I wish I had a magic wand, and my own pen. [laughs]

KRISTAN: Whatever you make of the shifts happening, from loss of funding to emergency orders, the one thing about Craig is that it's under strain. And last November, Craig felt that even more when a ballot initiative failed. For 10 years, a small tax on hotel rooms, paid almost entirely by visitors, had helped fund the visitor center, local events, and economic development. The tax had a sunset, so it went back to voters for renewal in 2025.

JENNIFER: We went to the ballot this last November, and the chamber led the initiative to get it renewed. We lost by less than 500 votes. And you know, I just really think people are just done with paying taxes. They are saying no to all the taxes, and I don't think people understood a lot of the way that this was a tax that visitors came in and paid at a hotel. Local people don't usually rent hotels here, so it was kind of a really good revenue stream for us. Not kind of. It really was. And so very disappointing that it didn't pass. It's going to affect a lot of our events. It'll for sure affect the chamber, and we're looking at what we can do to replace those tax funds.

KRISTAN: Jennifer's and the chamber's future is tenuous. The chamber was dependent on those funds, along with major businesses that are now on the road to going away.

JENNIFER: I mean, the coal mines were our best supporter over the last 50 years. They sponsored all of our events. They were the highest-paying members. All of our businesses are suffering, so we have seen a small decline in membership. I feel like that trend will probably continue if we're losing businesses and people are moving, and we're not seeing the growth or the new businesses coming in or the new action. And that would be a reflection of what we're going through in the economy. It would be part of this coal transition that our chamber may have to look different. It may have to become something smaller and more localized and potentially redesign what services we can do on a much smaller level.

KRISTAN: Are you concerned about your job?

JENNIFER: Yeah. Absolutely.

KRISTAN: When I got quiet, she waved it off.

JENNIFER: I'm sorry. Don't be sad. Don't be sad. It's all good.

KRISTAN: The thing about Jennifer that I've learned over the years is I would consider her to be a resilient person. Not only can she acknowledge a headwind, but she can then pivot a conversation to focus on solutions or what she's building. I asked her about the future.

JENNIFER: I think what is practical and what we have actually set in motion are a few key things that could be huge. One of them is our regional transit authority that we just put in place with Steamboat, Oak Creek, Hayden, the whole Yampa Valley. And that could create a lot more transit between towns. So that's a bus system. And then this passenger rail is a huge thing as well.

KRISTAN: There's a rail line into Craig which has carried coal for half a century. In 2024, the state passed a law creating tax credits worth up to 75% of shipping costs for businesses that move freight on that line. The idea is that if you can keep the tracks busy after coal, the region can stay vibrant, and it's also seen as a step towards the state's larger vision of creating passenger rail from Denver through the mountains all the way to Craig.

JENNIFER: I believe we can entice people from Denver to come here easier if they could be on a train. I also think people in Craig would go more to the city and back and have cultural experiences and create an avenue of rural-urban connection, which I think is so important to our future and how we can develop economy and community as well as protect our land and our open spaces together. If we could get just a few key businesses using it, a few products or merchandise going in and out, it could be a game changer for our town because we're small, so we don't need 1,000 jobs, right? If we could get a 50 at a time, that’s great for us.

KRISTAN: Transit, housing, healthcare, new businesses, a pipeline of people who are trained are all critical elements that determine whether a community thrives or falters.

Craig is not unique. This is a challenge that many communities across the country have always faced. I know this story too well because I'm from one. My hometown, a small rural town of 4,000 people in southern Indiana, has a poverty rate of about 20% and is dealing with a drug epidemic because of the loss of manufacturing and businesses over the years, among other issues. And not much new has come in to help the community recover. Some folks have lost their sense of purpose. When I asked Jennifer about whether part of Craig's next identity is still energy or something else, she answered carefully.

JENNIFER: We're trying to shift it from coal to energy, right? Which makes sense. We have the infrastructure. We have the transmission lines. We did have some solar projects come in. We've also seen some solar projects rejected. So I still think we're kind of... there's a lot of emotion connected to the coal and fossil industry. But just hanging on to the identity of energy because we had coal does not make sense to me.

You can't change and stay the same. You have to let go of the old to bring in new. It's just how we grow and learn and how our communities can get better. We need them to get better, and I think that starts with understanding that we have to let go of what we were and have faith in what we can be.

The Bumpy Road Ahead

KRISTAN: Sitting up on a hill on the west end of town, next to the hospital, is the Colorado Northwestern Community College. A red banner outside the main entrance reads, "I will not quit in the midst of struggle," a motto that feels appropriate for the community of Craig. The college has always been an important part of the town as both a place to gather and learn.

So when Mayor Chris Nichols agreed to an interview, I asked him to meet me at the community college. When I talked to him in June, Mayor Nichols had about a year and four months left before term limits would send him back to retirement.

MAYOR CHRIS NICHOLS: We moved to Craig in 1984. I took over a local restaurant chain at that time. We retired in '17. We sold all the restaurants and our employee housing. Once we retired, then I felt like the transition we were going through, I wanted to be a part of it. The coal jobs, closing the mine, closing the power plant, and what we're going to try to do to diversify our economy.

KRISTAN: Mayor Nichols has served as an elected official for 10 years now, including previously as city council, meaning he's deeply embedded in the discussion around the closure of the coal plant, and now the emergency order.

MAYOR NICHOLS: We had an ex-county commissioner, John Kincaid, who has been communicating with the city. I've received emails over a long period of time that he was advocating to the Department of Energy to keep Craig Station open. I didn't think he had much of a chance for success, but it came down to the wire, and the DOE issued the emergency order.

And as far as the workforce in Craig, it's good. I assume it's good. It just adds to the uncertainty of when the final curtain falls for them and their jobs. It keeps them in the community. It keeps a paycheck, so in that regard it's good. Long term, who knows? Now, would this be extended down the road for the other units? Who knows? So definitely it adds to the uncertainty.

KRISTAN: The mayor, like many, remains hopeful that the workers will take advantage of the training that's being offered by Tri-State and the Colorado Office of Just Transition.

MAYOR NICHOLS: The only drawback is a lot of jobs they'll have to leave the area for that they're being cross-trained in. So not everybody's going to be able to open their own business, but the resources are potentially there for them to do that with training. I know Northwest Colorado Innovation Center has a revolving loan fund that's just starting up. So there are resources out there to help some of the transitioning workers.

KRISTAN: Tri-State's employee assistance program places no restriction on the type of coursework or training someone can take, as long as it's from an accredited program. But when your work is a significant part of your identity, the idea of retraining for something new can be tough to navigate. Which brings us back to the same person this episode opened with.

MAYOR NICHOLS: I encourage some of the power plant workers and coal miners to do what Wade Gerber has done. Follow your passion and do something in the community as well.

KRISTAN: The workers are only one part of the equation. The power station and mines support a significant part of the county's tax base, upwards of 43% in 2023. When Tri-State settled its resource plan with the state in 2024, it included a financial commitment to Craig and Moffat County, a community transition deal that, at the time, was one of the first of its kind. The mayor was on the negotiating team.

MAYOR NICHOLS: Tri-State came to the table. They committed up to $70 million in community assessment and settlement funds.

KRISTAN: The deal outlined that Tri-State would pay $22 million to Craig and Moffat County to aid the community's energy transition from 2026 until 2029. Then they would be responsible for another $48 million over the next decade, unless Tri-State replaces it with a new tax base, like repurposing the plant or creating other investments for the county.

MAYOR NICHOLS: So far, Tri-State has built the actual basin solar field. Doesn't add a lot of jobs, but it adds valuation to the county, and they're planning a battery storage project. So all of that, again, not a lot of jobs in those two areas, but it's adding lost property tax dollars back to the county. What the city's interested in is good-paying jobs because that's what brings the people into the city.

KRISTAN: Notice the distinction he makes between valuation versus jobs. A solar field pays property taxes, which helps the county fund roads and schools, but it employs only a handful of people. Replacing coal's tax base and replacing coal's jobs are two different problems, and solving one doesn't necessarily solve the other.

MAYOR NICHOLS: Tri-State said they wanted to help the community and still partner with the community. They could have just said, “lock the doors,” and walked away from the community. So I think from that regard, it's fair. Now, does it replace the lost jobs and everything, the $70 million? No, it doesn't. There's no just transition for the community when you're talking about pulling out all the jobs and all the valuation of the coal-related jobs. But at least it's something to build on. All that money that we receive, that the city and the county receive from Tri-State, goes into our Moffat Economic Development Fund.

KRISTAN: In January 2026, Tri-State held up their agreement and paid $5.5 million to the fund.

MAYOR NICHOLS: That money is sitting, building interest. Once we get the second payment and the interest goes over a million dollars - and not touching the primary money, but the interest alone - then we're using that money for economic development projects based on what they bring in valuation and good paying jobs.

KRISTAN: They are effectively building an endowment, spending the interest, not the principal.

MAYOR NICHOLS: The fund should be there in two years. That's projected. It all depends what interest rates do and investments.

KRISTAN: Mayor Nichols is thinking about the long-term investment and strategy needed for the community, from housing to infrastructure to quality of life. The unglamorous scaffolding that needs to be built or sustained so that when opportunity shows up, it has somewhere to land.

MAYOR NICHOLS: I had a talk with a prospective business just Monday, and they said, “Well, workforce housing is important for me to bring this business to the community. My people need a place to live.” So, workforce housing has been an issue. We have also worked on the quality-of-life issues of living in Craig. We remodeled or refurbished two of our parks. We just opened our new whitewater park this last week. It's an amazing feature on the Yampa River that, quite honestly, in the past, the city has never utilized the Yampa River for much.

KRISTAN: A river park, an industrial park on the rail line with an innovation center, and a joint application for federal economic development money to build it. None of these projects are a silver bullet, but together, they're part of a broader effort to diversify opportunities and create a foundation for new businesses and jobs to take root and stick around. And what might the next big thing be? Mayor Nichols comes back to the site everyone in this story keeps circling: the plant itself.

MAYOR NICHOLS: I've always stated, why not repurpose the power plant? You have so many resources there that would be important for new industry to take over. I would love to see a small modular reactor, SMR, technology come to the area. So, what that would bring to the community would keep even higher-paying jobs, a higher education workforce, and stability again.

KRISTAN: The grid connection, the water rights, the switchyard, a high-skilled workforce. That's why retiring coal sites keep showing up on shortlists for advanced nuclear. But the mayor is careful not to oversell it. He says permitting alone could take a decade or more. The technology is still in the early stages, and he knows some of his neighbors want no part of it.

MAYOR NICHOLS: There's just a hysteria about nuclear. You know, I came from the generation where we used to do fallout drills in elementary schools where you crawled under your desk and cover your head, back in the early days of nuclear. And I don't know if nuclear, to be honest with you, is the right approach for us, but I'm willing to listen and learn. And that's what I'm asking the community and future leaders to do, is be open to all, and be educated.

KRISTAN: Whether it's the community staying and building something new or Tri-State finding ways to reinvest, there are some wheels in motion. And even under the uncertainty that's plaguing the plant and town, the mayor is hopeful that new opportunities will arise and agreements upheld.

MAYOR NICHOLS: I think as long as Tri-State's in business, they'll live up to their commitments to the community.

The Future for the Transition

KRISTAN: In our previous episode, you heard from Duane Highley, the CEO of Tri-State, the man whose New Year's Eve Eve got interrupted by a call from Washington. You heard him talk about his commitments to the community, and vice versa.

DUANE HIGHLEY: I can't say enough about how grateful we are for the partnership. Our board chairman and I were out in April to meet with leaders from the city and the county, and they couldn't be more gracious. I think they feel our pain to some extent. They understand the uncertainty, and we'd all just like to kind of have more clarity of where things are going.

KRISTAN: There's one element we didn't get to hear his take on yet: the potential plans for the site, which is where he sees opportunity.

DUANE: As we look at our next battery project, we anticipate it located very near the plant. And so those investments, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, help with the tax base and then the construction, obviously, workforce. And, not as large of a workforce as a coal plant would have, but still workers and employment that continues ongoing.

KRISTAN: Whether it is a battery project, renewables, or a potential gas plant, Tri-State is exploring options to leverage the Craig Station and workforce, both in the near term and further out.

DUANE: And what's great about Craig and Moffat County is, rather than you hear about NIMBYism or not in my backyard, I'd say this is one of the few locations in the state where they're very grateful for the investment, by and large. Now, maybe not everybody, but also would be very happy to help us support a future plant investment there.

KRISTAN: Creating a clean, sustainable baseload supply of energy is one of the trickiest parts of the transition. We're in an era where technology is advancing, and what is available today will look very different a decade or more down the line.

DUANE: I think nuclear is a continuing discussion that we keep having. And I don't want to frighten anybody in the county about nuclear. There won't be anything decided on that without lots of public input and discourse. But that's where a lot of utilities are looking. How do we have a carbon-free baseload power resource that we can count on to hold everything together as we look at an increasingly renewable-dominated grid? So that's going to be an important consideration.

There are quite a few different technologies being explored in the nuclear space. We don't want to be serial number one. We're not going to be. We might be happy to think about being serial number four or five of some technology out there that's somewhere out in the 2030s or even 2040s.

KRISTAN: But the thing that made Duane light up wasn't nuclear power. It was what's underneath the ground in this part of the world.

DUANE: We also sit right on top of something called the Rio Grande Rift Zone. It starts in Leadville and goes right through Colorado, right through the center of New Mexico. If you look at it, it lines up very well with our cooperative members' service territories all the way down to the Mexican border and into Mexico.

But that rift zone is where the geologic plates of North America are separating. So they're kind of moving away from each other as the crust of the Earth is getting thinner there. And that means it's easier to get to the hot stuff underground.

KRISTAN: Everywhere on Earth, it gets hotter as you drill down. But along a rift, where the continent's crust is slowly being stretched thin, the heat sits closer to the surface. Tap it, and you get steam. And the steam is what spins a turbine to generate electricity, just like a coal plant. Just a different source of heat.

DUANE: And what a great place for us to be. I mean, as we talk, there are initiatives now to get some money for additional studies to see where this resource is and to prove it, and to do some drilling and prove it's really there and it's just as hot as we think. And I visualize a day, and this is going to be a late 2030s or even 2040 kind of vision, but where we have a number of holes poked in that rift zone north to south right through our member service territory with many geothermal plants providing absolutely clean base load energy 24/7.

KRISTAN: But, Duane says, the vision comes with an asterisk. The resource has to be proven. Holes have to be drilled.

DUANE: There are a lot of promises being made. We just need to see the reality of it.

KRISTAN: Which might be the most honest summary of everything said about Craig. Solar, batteries, nuclear, data centers, geothermal, trains. Some of it will be realized, but not all of it. And nobody knows which is which yet. However, the emergency order is still active. And many wonder how it will impact Tri-State's energy transition plan that's been in the works for years now.

DUANE: This order really doesn't change anything about our commitment under the 2019 Responsible Energy Plan. This Craig thing really doesn't move the needle on that plan. It's maybe more of a distraction. We go back to our mission. So this is what drives us. Reliable, affordable, responsible. Those three keywords are our mission statement. Reliable, affordable, responsible.

KRISTAN: There is something Duane said to me back in season one that I really appreciated, partly because it speaks to many of us who like spending time in the mountains. I had asked him to describe what it was like working through an energy transition.

DUANE [SEASON 1]: So it's like climbing a mountain in my mind. And any of you that have hiked a 14er know it's a lot of work, and you kind of walk and walk and walk and walk and walk, and you drudge and you drudge, and it seems like you're not really getting anywhere, and you kind of see the peak and then you don't see the peak. But every once in a while you look over your shoulder and go, "Wow, look what we've done," because it doesn't feel like you're moving and it's kind of just slow. But you look back, and you say, yeah, we've really gotten up here. We can see a lot.

And so I think where we are is that there are maybe some false summits. We don't know the trail exactly. We're going to we know where the summit generally is. We know how we got to go up.

KRISTAN: When I read those words, his own words back to him five years later, he chuckled and said:

DUANE: I still believe that.

KRISTAN: Seven years into Tri-State's responsible energy plan, Duane says they've checked nearly every box and are on track for 70% renewable energy across the four states they operate in, and an 80% cut in carbon by the end of the decade.

DUANE: We'll be there, and we'll be there as reliable or more reliable than anybody else in our region because we proved it with math. We've done the modeling, and we've got greater reserve margins than others. We have the surplus capacity to prove it. And so we're going to get there.

KRISTAN: Yet the emergency order being used to keep the Craig Unit 1 available to operate is a reminder that mountains can be hard to climb and come with unpredictability.

DUANE: I think certainty is a myth. I think stability is a myth, and that's just my baseline. When we're sitting in a time when everything seems stable, our life's all just really predictable, we want to believe that's really how life is. That's really not normally how life is. But you can have that illusion of stability and enjoy it for times, but the reality of life is things change in unexpected ways that you never saw coming. And so that resilience and ability to swing with it is, I think, life.

Closing

KRISTAN: So where do things stand? As of this recording, Craig Unit 1 is not just open, it's running… occasionally. The regional grid operator, the Southwest Power Pool, asked Tri-State to run the station for two short periods in 2026 so far: once in April, then again for four days in early July. There are no public cost estimates yet for what this is costing Tri-State, but an independent group, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, released a report in June that says for all of these emergency orders issued across retiring coal plants in the US, it's having no significant influence on actually shoring up the coal industry.

Meanwhile, the legal fight is everywhere. Tri-State and co-owner Platte River Power Authority have formally asked the Department of Energy to reverse its order, arguing the order amounts to an unconstitutional taking of their property, and that there is no emergency. Colorado's attorney general has sued in federal court to have the order declared unlawful. Environmental groups have filed their own challenges. And nationally, the administration is doubling down, including hundreds of millions of dollars in new federal investment aimed at keeping coal alive.

Nothing about this is linear. Transitions never are. They lurch and stall and double back. A goodbye gets interrupted. The future arrives in pieces. And through all of it, people still have to decide where to live, what to do, what to keep, and what to let go of. The people of Craig don't get to know how the story ends before choosing how to live in it. None of us do.

Laws of Notion is a production of the Institute for Science & Policy at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. To learn more, visit lawsofnotion.org. I'm your host, Kristan Uhlenbrock. This episode was produced by me, Tricia Waddell, and Jordan Marks. Sound design by Seth Samuel.