Keep your heat.Keep your stove.Keep your choice.
Seven in ten Colorado homes run on natural gas. State regulators have set a course to phase it out of every one of them by 2050 — and hand the bill to you. Amendment 82 puts that decision back where it belongs: with the family that pays for it.
This is how it reads on your ballot.
Amendment 82 sits in the statewide section of the November ballot, below the candidate races.
It amends the constitution, so it needs 55% to pass.
To vote, completely fill in the oval to the left of your choice. Use black or blue ink.
Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado Constitution creating new law granting the right for consumers to purchase natural gas for cooking or heating in homes or businesses, and for distributors and utilities to sell natural gas to consumers?
Coloradans whose homes are heated by natural gas — roughly 70% of the state.
Extra energy costs per year for the average all-electric Colorado home.
Colorado businesses that heat their buildings and facilities with natural gas.
Emissions cut the PUC is pushing by 2050 — the end of gas service in Colorado homes.
Colorado gas is among the cleanest energy on earth.
This is not a choice between the environment and your furnace. Colorado already made that trade — and won it.
Natural gas is the cleanest-burning hydrocarbon there is. It releases less carbon dioxide than coal, diesel, heating oil, gasoline or propane, and it spares the air the sulfur, mercury and particulates that come with heavier fuels. Replacing coal with gas is the single largest reason American power sector emissions have fallen.
Colorado's gas is cleaner still. The Piceance Basin produces some of the cleanest gas in the United States, and the Denver-Julesburg Basin has some of the lowest methane leakage rates in the country — below the climate break-even threshold. The Environmental Defense Fund, no friend of the industry, found that Colorado's methane emissions from oil and gas fell nearly 70% between 2010 and 2017 even as production rose. Since 2014's air quality rules, Colorado operators capture 95% of volatile organic compound and methane emissions.
Here is the part the electrification push leaves out. Colorado's grid still burns gas — the power sector accounted for 33% of the state's gas demand in 2024, and gas generation has risen three years running. So when a family switches to a heat pump, a third of that "clean" electricity is gas anyway, minus the losses from generating it, moving it across the state and stepping it down into the house.
Run the numbers and the math flips. Burning gas directly in an appliance is about 2.5 times more efficient than delivered electricity. A Colorado home with natural gas produces roughly 31% less carbon dioxide each year than the same home running all-electric. A new gas home emits about 36% less than a new all-electric one.
Amendment 82 does not roll back a single air quality rule. Colorado's methane regulations, its emissions targets and its wind and solar buildout all stay exactly where they are.
A forced switch costs more than most families have.
Ripping out a working furnace is not a rebate away. Here is what it actually takes to convert a typical 2,000-square-foot Colorado home from gas to all-electric.
Even the bare minimum — swap the furnace for a heat pump, upgrade the panel so it can carry the load, replace the water heater — runs about $26,000 before you touch the kitchen. For most Colorado households that is not a home improvement project. It is a second mortgage.
And the bills do not get better afterward. An all-electric home in Colorado costs roughly $1,365 more per year to run. In Salida, Buena Vista, Gunnison, Steamboat Springs and Craig, gas saves homeowners an average of $1,500 a year. In Greeley, Cañon City, Durango, Cortez and Lamar, about $1,100. The federal Department of Energy puts natural gas at 3.5 times more affordable than electricity, and projects it will stay 30 to 50 percent below other fuels through 2050.
This lands hardest on the people with the least room to absorb it. About 23% of Colorado households already qualify for utility bill assistance, and one in five Colorado families spends 7% or more of their income just on energy. Xcel's own Clean Heat Plan concedes the electrification costs pushed onto customers could run into "additional billions of dollars, even after rebates."
Higher costs do not stop at the utility bill, either. Building a new home to "electric ready" codes adds $11,430 to $15,100 to construction — and every $1,000 added to the price of a home prices roughly 1,700 Coloradans out of buying one.
When the power goes out, the gas keeps flowing.
Colorado's gas system runs underground, on its own network, independent of the poles and wires overhead. That separation is not a technical footnote. In a February blizzard, it is the difference between a warm house and a dangerous one.
Grid down
All-electric home
- Furnace: Dead. The heat pump relies on the grid to run.
- Stove: Dead. No hot food, no boiled water.
- Hot water: Gone once the tank runs cold.
Grid down
Natural gas home
- Gas line: Buried and pressurized, unaffected by downed lines.
- Stove & fireplace: Light with a match. Hot meals, warm room.
- Furnace: Keeps heating on a small battery backup or generator — no grid required for the fuel.
Texas learned this the hard way. When Winter Storm Uri knocked out the ERCOT grid in February 2021, more than four million customers lost power for days in sub-freezing cold. State health officials confirmed 246 storm-related deaths, and the single largest cause was hypothermia — people who froze in their own living rooms. Texas homes lean heavily on electric heat. When the wires went down, the heat went with them.
Colorado's exposure is different, and it is different on purpose. Roughly 1.9 million of us heat with gas delivered through a separate underground system. A blizzard that snaps a power line does not touch it.
The same holds for the grid itself. Natural gas is the largest single source of electricity in the country precisely because it can ramp up on demand, at 3:00 in the morning, in a whiteout. During the January 2026 winter storms, gas carried the load while wind and solar output collapsed. Xcel Energy says it plainly: delivering reliable power on peak days means burning more gas, and retiring that capacity risks blackouts when demand spikes.
Amendment 82 does not stop Colorado from building wind or solar. It stops the state from taking away the backup that keeps people alive when those sources go quiet.
Thirty-three words. That's the whole amendment.
No mandates. No new agency. No tax. Just a right that cannot be regulated away.
"Consumers have the right to purchase natural gas for cooking or heating in homes or businesses throughout the state. Distributors and utilities have the right to sell natural gas for homes or businesses."
Full text of Amendment 82 (Initiative 177), Colorado Secretary of StateWhat Amendment 82 does
- Protects your right to keep the furnace, water heater and stove you already own.
- Protects your right to choose gas in a new home or a remodel.
- Keeps utilities free to connect and serve customers who want gas.
- Puts the protection in the constitution, out of reach of a three-member commission.
What it does not do
- Does not require anyone to use natural gas, ever.
- Does not repeal a single air quality or methane rule.
- Does not block wind, solar, heat pumps or induction stoves.
- Does not raise taxes or spend public money.
Why now
On December 1, 2025, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission — three commissioners, appointed, not elected — made a ruling requiring utilities to cut system emissions 41% by 2035. The next push is a 100% reduction by 2050. In practice, that is the end of natural gas service to Colorado homes within 25 years.
The legislature never voted for that. Senate Bill 21-264 set a 22% cut by 2030. The Commission went well past what is written in statute. Meanwhile bills that would have protected consumer energy choice — HB21-1034, HB23-1127, HB26-1129 — were all blocked.
When the agencies will not stop and the legislature will not act, the ballot is what's left.
Your home. Your bill. Your choice.
Amendment 82 needs 55% to pass. That happens one conversation and one ballot at a time — starting with yours.