On September 25, Great Plains Institute (GPI) released the Colorado Decision Support Tool. This geospatial tool includes three interactive maps with social and environmental data, which allow users to review a carbon management project’s potential social and environmental impacts. With this information, users can help identify locations where a project would generate the fewest negative impacts and most positive outcomes. The tool’s objective is to provide all individuals—whether they are project developers, policy makers, environmental justice advocates, or community members—with equal access to data.
While the Decision Support Tool does not grant approval for projects, it allows for meaningful discussions to occur before project siting so projects can be thoughtfully located and guided by direct community input.
Why Colorado?
After the successful launch of the Louisiana Decision Support Tool last year, GPI began developing a version for Colorado. With the passage of recent legislation to facilitate the responsible deployment and regulation of carbon management, Colorado is positioning itself to be a competitive location for carbon management projects that support its emissions reduction goals.
As the markets and infrastructure for carbon management advance and projects are proposed in communities, Coloradans will benefit from the data and information provided by the Colorado Decision Support Tool. In the coming weeks, the Carbon Action Alliance (CAA) will host demonstrations and instructional webinars to ensure communities can access and navigate the tool. Keep an eye on CAA’s events page for more information on these events.
The role of stakeholder engagement in building the Colorado Decision Support Tool
Stakeholder engagement was a critical component in developing the Louisiana Decision Support Tool, and it played an equally important role in developing the Colorado tool.
For the tool to be useful for communities and responsive to their concerns, GPI used public feedback on the data included in the tool and its functionality.
Here are the high-level key takeaways from our stakeholder roundtables in Colorado, which are described in more detail later in the blog:
- Coloradans recognize the need to build toward a clean energy future that creates high-quality jobs across the state.
- They have a genuine interest in carbon management, with views ranging from highly supportive to skeptical.
- They expressed excitement about how their communities could use the tool for carbon management projects and other clean energy projects.
- They were enthusiastic about the tool’s potential to foster transparency and equitable access to data.
- They strongly encouraged GPI to work with local communities to market and disseminate the tool to fully realize its functionality.
- They believe the social factors measured in the tool (proximity to environmental hazards, demographics, health, exposure to climate changes, and public service gaps) are all equally important to consider in project siting decisions.
What did the roundtables look like?
In collaboration with our partners at the Keystone Policy Center and SWCA, GPI held five in-person community roundtables across Colorado on May 7–14, 2024.
The roundtable locations were chosen based on a combination of factors, including geographic diversity, demographic diversity, ties to/history with industry, the location’s expected future engagement with carbon management projects, and environmental justice concerns.
The following Colorado cities participated in the roundtables:
- Pueblo
- Durango
- Grand Junction
- Greeley
- Commerce City
Keystone Policy Center facilitated the meetings. They used their deep roots in Colorado to conduct tailored, direct outreach to include participants representing a wide range of sectors and interests, including the following:
- Environmental justice advocates
- Community members
- Tribal representatives
- Workforce and labor representatives
- Environmental nonprofit representatives
- Academics and scientists
- Local government leaders
- Industry representatives
- Business owners
The roundtables ranged from 7 to 13 participants, with just over 50 individuals participating across all the roundtables. All attendees were offered compensation, a meal, and childcare.
Keystone endeavored to include as much diversity of perspectives as possible, and the following chart highlights the primary affiliation of the attendees across the five roundtables:
Figure 1. Roundtable attendee breakdown
Key takeaways from the roundtables
Several themes emerged during the roundtables. First, all participants recognized the need to move toward a more resilient, clean, and sustainable economy that prioritizes high-quality jobs and strong workforces across Colorado.
Additionally, participants across the roundtables showed genuine interest and curiosity in carbon management technologies, with views ranging from highly supportive to more skeptical. Even the most skeptical participants recognized the need for carbon management in industrial processes, even if they were unsure of its uses related to energy production.
Similarly, many participants expressed excitement about the tool’s possible uses for both siting carbon management projects and other types of clean energy projects that involve a surface disturbance. Overall, participants were enthusiastic about the tool’s potential to foster transparency and equitable access to data.
The final overarching theme that emerged was the need for GPI to adequately market and disseminate the tool upon its completion. The participants expressed that it would be critical for GPI to partner with communities to get the word out about the tool.
Beyond general themes, participants provided tailored feedback about the tool based on their community’s unique needs and experiences. For example, participants provided feedback on specific layers or datasets they’d like to see included in the tool.
These layers include fractions for addresses (commonly used in Grand Junction), heat index or local warming data instead of just heat days, wildlife biodiversity values like migration corridors and high-priority habitats, and census tracts in addition to blocks.
Weighing social factors in the Colorado Decision Support Tool
To conclude the roundtables, Keystone asked participants to consider how the social factors used in the tool (proximity to environmental hazards, demographics, health, exposure to climate changes, and public service gaps) should be weighed and explained that each factor was currently weighed equally.
Because the factor weights will impact how the tool calculates the social factor and comprehensive scores of a given geographic area, GPI wanted to ensure that this tool feature accurately reflected community sentiments and priorities.
Participants pushed back on the idea that they could assign weight to these factors in a way that would be representative of every community in Colorado.
For example, in rural communities, public service gaps might be considered the highest priority, whereas an urban community near long-standing industrial facilities may be most concerned about health impacts. Therefore, participants at all five roundtables encouraged GPI and SWCA to continue weighing these factors equally in the tool.
How stakeholder feedback was incorporated into the Colorado Decision Support Tool
SWCA and GPI took the feedback from the roundtables and integrated it into the tool over the next several months.
Along with including additional data layers, the team included updated text about data interpretation to make the tool easier to understand for all users and added information about how the Decision Support Tool differs from similar tools like Colorado EnviroScreen.
SWCA also developed a Community Discussion Guide to help facilitate community meetings and guides that outline real-world use cases to demonstrate how and when the tool can be utilized.
Looking ahead
On September 30, the Colorado Decision Support Tool will be demonstrated to attendees at CO2NNECT 2024 in Keystone, Colorado.
CAA will also hold several free instructional webinars to help users successfully navigate the tool and highlight how communities can use it to advocate for themselves during the development of carbon management projects. Keep an eye on CAA’s events page for forthcoming details on these webinars.
View the Colorado Decision Support Tool. If you have feedback about the tool, you can send it to us using this form.
To learn more about GPI’s carbon management work, visit the Carbon Capture Ready website.