U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans and other Colorado Republicans have set their sights on reducing environmental regulations in an effort to increase oil and gas production and revive nuclear power in Weld County.
Evans and State Reps. Carlos Barron and Scott Slaugh, who was recently appointed to District 64 after Ryan Armagost resigned, visited Aims Community College on Monday for a workforce roundtable. Evans’ message to the students and faculty who attended was clear: if we don’t improve our energy production, then Colorado will suffer.
Evans discussed China and its innovations in artificial intelligence and drone technology. For every 100,000 drones made in the U.S., China makes a million, he said. Evans praised AI for lessening workloads and promoting more “long-term strategic planning,” but the technology requires a lot of energy, he noted.
“Energy security is national security,” Evans said. “Energy security fuels our economy, which fuels our ability to manufacture and make things. That fuels our position as the global leader in a lot of these technologies and a lot of other technologies that require energy.”
Colorado remains the fourth-largest oil-producing state, accounting for 4% of the U.S. total crude oil output, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Weld County is responsible for 80% of the state’s production.
In 2024, Colorado produced five times as much oil as it did 10 years earlier. Between 2024 and 2025, the total number of permits in effect in Weld County increased by 42%, resulting in the construction of 3,124 oil and gas wells within the county.
Evans believes the state needs to continue invest in oil and gas to better support the country’s energy security. At the roundtable, he blamed Colorado lawmakers for working against federal interests and implementing further regulations that support renewable energy while restricting oil and gas.
If the regulatory burden were reduced by consolidating the various regulatory forms required by the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act into a single regulation, Evans said, the permitting process could be sped up by several years. Evans said this would lead to a boost in the local economy, creating more jobs for people across the state as more oil and gas wells could be constructed.
“The problem that I’ve seen in the workforce, in both private and public, is people worrying about the stability of their job with respect to the decisions from the people above them,” said Thomas Hall, a student from Aims and a former intern at the Greeley Water Department. “It can be scary when there are doubts about whether or not their job will be funded this year. This is a trend that I’ve seen at every place that I’ve worked for.”
State lawmakers have cited environmental concerns such as air quality and safety as they’ve continued to push for regulations on the energy industry.
As of Monday, Weld County approved its own regulations on oil and gas, adding stricter regulations regarding pipeline placement. These regulations also emphasized the need for more in-depth emergency action plans to ensure that accidents are properly addressed and that the sites are safer for workers and residents, according to Weld County Oil and Gas Director Brett Cavanaugh.
Weld County Air Policy Analyst Annareli Morales said though more oil and gas wells would result in more air pollution, they would not necessarily be enough to cause problems with air quality. The effect of additional wells depends on how many more there are and where they are located, she said.
“Logically speaking, if you had more wells, you would have more emissions, even if they are cleaner,” Morales said. “But it’s the context of, relatively speaking, how much more is emitted with these additional permits compared to what vehicles emit during rush hour per day? Is it comparable? Is it less?”
According to a state report from October 2024, 60% of Colorado’s air pollution originates from the oil and gas industry, with 45% of that coming from Weld County alone.
Evans dismissed the concern, saying that 70% of the detected emissions in Weld County originate from outside Colorado, specifically Canada and China. Though Morales was hesitant to confirm this percentage, she did say more than half of ozone pollution is attributed to the base quality of the atmosphere as a whole.
“The latest data we have, which is very old, tells us that a significant amount of the total ozone is out of our local control,” Morales said. “There’s a very small portion that is human-caused. And then within that, there is an even smaller portion that the state actually has jurisdiction over to do something about.”
According to Morales, however, the current regulations in place, even if they are lessened to streamline the permitting process, would still be more stringent than those in other states. She backs Evans’ claim that unless Colorado reduces its regulations surrounding oil and gas, developers will go elsewhere, where they don’t have to deal with the regulatory burden.
“If we can’t build it here, China will happily build it for us, and we can lose our position of global leadership,” Evans said. “If we don’t do it, China’s going to do it, and if you think the world is a scary place now, wait until China’s the global leader on AI. That’s a scary world.”
Also at the roundtable, Barron shared his desire to encourage the revival of nuclear energy in Weld County at the Colorado House of Representatives this fall, now that nuclear energy was deemed a clean energy source by Colorado lawmakers. In March, Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill into law reclassifying clean energy as energy with little to no carbon emissions.
“It is the cleanest, safest, most reliable form of energy produced. Period,” said Weld County Commissioner Scott James, a proponent of “everything and anything energy related.”
“Now, granted, there is nuclear waste, but under the newer forms of reactors, they can take that spent fuel and get even more fuel out of it. The technology has so dramatically increased around nuclear power generation that the amount of radioactive material has dramatically decreased.”
Its this jump in technology surrounding nuclear energy over the past 40 years that Evans says will be critical to bringing nuclear power back to Colorado. In the effort to promote reusability, Barron suggested that Fort St. Vrain, an old nuclear plant in Platteville that was shut down in 1989, could be converted into a modular nuclear plant — a smaller-than-average plant with a reduced environmental footprint —and utilize the used fuel that is still stored there.
“It’s laughable that we are a growing economy that has a massive demand for electricity as we move from an agricultural to an industrial economy, as we transition from an industrial economy to a data economy,” James said. “We have to have that conversation about nuclear power. I think we’re foolish for not doing so.”
Despite the strong push for more oil and gas production and the revival of nuclear energy in the county, Evans did not want to give the impression that he’s against wind or solar energy. Barron, who works in the oil and gas industry, added that since oil drilling sites are often in remote locations, oil and gas companies often must use solar energy to power their equipment.
As the roundtable came to a close, Evans and his Republican colleagues reiterated their commitment to increasing jobs and ensuring Weld County remained a top energy producer in the state. Both he and Barron promised to continue pushing for further deregulation this year on both the state and federal levels.
