Rapid growth across parts of Northern Colorado is colliding with a growing challenge — being able to access enough electricity to support new homes and businesses.

Local leaders in Greeley say demand for power has increased significantly in recent decades. This is as technology becomes more integrated into everyday life, and it creates pressure on an electric grid that is struggling to keep pace with population growth and development.

“We are growing pretty rapidly,” said Don Threewitt, interim community and economic developer for the city of Greeley.

Threewitt said the state’s electric demand has shifted dramatically in the last decade, as residents rely more heavily on technology. From smartphones and electric vehicles to increasingly connected homes and workplaces, the demand for electricity is rising faster than Colorado’s ability to generate and deliver power.

“I don’t think the average Coloradan realizes how much more power is needed to accommodate the lifestyle, the work life and sort of how we live today,” Threewitt told CBS Colorado.

Greeley officials say the city has many of the ingredients needed to continue attracting growth, including available land, water resources and a stable workforce. However, Threewitt said access to electricity has emerged as one of the biggest obstacles to accommodating more growth.

Meanwhile, Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans said the issue extends beyond Greeley and is affecting communities throughout Colorado.

“We don’t have enough power,” Evans told CBS Colorado.

Evans said power limitations are already influencing economic development decisions.

“I know of hundreds of jobs that Colorado has lost because a company that wanted to locate here couldn’t get the power,” Evans said.

Without additional electrical capacity, Evans warned that growth could slow substantially.

“(Without more power export) we can’t attract businesses; we can’t build new houses,” Evans said. “Really, growth comes to a screeching halt.”

Evans said he is working on legislation aimed at streamlining the process of generating and distributing power throughout the state, primarily through easing the process to receiving permits. Still, local leaders say addressing the challenge will require coordination among local governments, utilities, state officials and federal policymakers.

“It takes time, and it takes deliberate effort on a large group of people,” Threewitt said. “Let’s identify the need, provide the resources, and then get out of the way so it can get done.”

The challenge is particularly pressing in Greeley, where city officials say the population is growing between 1.5% and 3% annually. At the same time, planning and constructing the power lines needed to expand the electric grid can take between five and eight years.

Even those infrastructure projects depend on utilities having enough power available to distribute to customers.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Xcel Energy said the company is investing heavily to meet Colorado’s growing energy needs. The utility plans to invest $17.6 billion in Colorado through 2030 to modernize and expand the electric grid and add new energy resources.

The spokesperson said Xcel’s “Colorado Distribution System Plan” includes new substations, transformers and feeder projects in the Greeley area. The company is also adding 400 megawatts of dispatchable power at Fort St. Vrain and another 100 megawatts at Fort Lupton, both of which serve Greeley and Weld County.

According to the statement, Xcel has identified resource adequacy as a growing concern for several years and has proposed multiple solutions, including a near-term procurement plan designed to add 3,800 megawatts of new generation capacity. The company said the plan could save customers nearly $3 billion by utilizing expiring tax credits.

Xcel also plans to file additional proposals addressing both short-term and long-term power needs. The utility company said it remains committed to working with regulators, local communities and policymakers to ensure reliable electric service while supporting economic growth across Colorado.

DENVER (AP) — Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by President Donald Trump, was released from prison Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado’s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.

Peters’ release was confirmed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. The state agency said it would have no more information about the 70-year-old inmate. Her sentence was shortened by Gov. Jared Polis last month after Trump waged a lengthy pressure campaign against the governor and his state.

Peters served less than a quarter of her nine-year sentence.

Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching security after the 2020 election. She snuck in an outside computer expert affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell — who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020 — and the person copied the county’s Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it was updated in 2021.

Peters then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof that the election was rigged. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move stoked false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.

WATCH: Trump’s attempt to pardon Tina Peters runs into constitutional limits

Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump. An appeals court upheld her conviction in April, but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.

Trump had championed Peters’ case, but because she was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, lambasting him on social media and disinviting him to a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.

Polis commuted Peters’ sentence on May 15. In a letter, he wrote that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison, the sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for a first-time non-violent offender.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, on Monday released a statement warning that the release will “embolden the election denier movement” and adding that, since the clemency announcement, Peters “has continued to spread election falsehoods and conspiracies.”