Industry Groups Touted Gas as a “Constitutional Right.” These Voters Weren’t Having It.

When Coloradans voted last week to reject an amendment that would have enshrined a right to natural gas in their state constitution, they also rebuffed a legal maneuver by a dark money group to keep Colorado reliant on deceptively dirty natural gas. 

Amendment 82, a ballot initiative sponsored by one such group, would have codified the right of consumers to purchase natural gas and for utilities and distributors to sell it, a first-of-its-kind protection for the fossil fuel industry. But voters smacked it down by a margin of more than 7 points. 

The measure’s defeat was a setback for an industry that is championed by the Trump administration but increasingly at odds with state and local efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption. Over the last few years, Colorado has committed to zeroing out net greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, invested in renewable energy, and rolled out roadmaps to slash emissions from buildings and utilities. Amendment 82 would have given gas companies a new legal tool to challenge those policies. 

“There are pretty dangerous implications for writing a fossil fuel into your constitution at a time with unprecedented climate-exacerbated disasters.”

At the center of the campaign was Advance Colorado, a conservative advocacy group led by Michael Fields, former director of the Koch-affiliated Americans for Prosperity. 

“It is a little unclear who exactly Advance Colorado is,” said Keriann Conroy, an analyst with the Energy and Policy Institute research group. As a nonprofit, the group isn’t required to disclose its funders to the public—or even whether they are from Colorado. “Ballot measures are really relied upon by these dark money networks because they can get signatures and then get something on the ballot immediately without ever having to disclose their main funders,” Conroy said. 

Advance Colorado has claimed that natural gas is “one of the cleanest energy sources available today” and that efforts to transition away from it have saddled Coloradans with rising costs. Arguing that people should remain free to choose how they heat and cook their homes, it frames the “right to natural gas” as a matter of consumer choice.

“Most people, when they think of a right to gas, they’re thinking about the stove or the dryer in their home,” Conroy said. “But there’s also these really large industry groups that use gas—data centers being probably the most concerning for voters right now.” 

Fossil fuel industry groups have known for decades that natural gas is detrimental to the environment and public health. It is largely composed of methane, a heat-trapping pollutant 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the short term—scientists and policy experts say reducing methane emissions could help pull “the emergency brake” on climate change. Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment cautions that gas-fueled household appliances such as stoves and fireplaces release harmful byproducts, including nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and benzene (a known human carcinogen) that can harm people’s health and worsen problems such as asthma. Regardless, fossil fuel executives and industry lobbyists have consistently promoted the fuel as “green.”

Colorado passed a law last year requiring gas-stove manufacturers to affix labels to their products—a bit like the ones on cigarette packs—warning of the risks these appliances bring into people’s homes. Industry groups sued (though many of the companies they represent have such warnings on their websites). As that lawsuit plays out, the industry is testing a new strategy: gas as a constitutional right. 

“We usually think of natural rights as being for people and not resources,” said Garrett Royer, political director for the Sierra Club’s Colorado chapter. Coloradans already have access to gas—which is used to heat about 70 percent of the state’s buildings and residencies. “This resource is already protected,” Royer went on. “It’s not something that is currently being jeopardized.” But Advance Colorado claimed “natural gas in Colorado is under attack” due to the state’s pro-electrification policies.

“We usually think of natural rights as being for people and not resources.”

“It seemed to be an attempt to lock in a fuel of the past and the profits that go with it,” said Kelly Nordini, CEO of Conservation Colorado, an environmental nonprofit that fought the measure. “Given that we don’t even have a right to healthy air and water in the constitution, it seems very odd to [include] one particular product.” And according to Colorado’s ballot guide, the amendment would have also limited “the ability for state or local governments to enforce existing or future regulations related to natural gas.”

Amendment 82 aligns with a nationwide industry effort. The American Gas Association, a lobbying and trade group, notes that 26 states have passed “fuel choice” legislation. Many of the laws explicitly prohibit banning gas appliances and utility hookups in new construction. 

“Six of Colorado’s seven neighboring states,” the Common Sense Institute, a think tank directly funded by Advance Colorado, notes on its website, “have enacted laws limiting local governments’ ability to restrict natural-gas services.” Meanwhile, an Oregon state senator has introduced legislation to prohibit the state from restricting natural gas, and a ballot measure “pushed by builders” was introduced to thwart Washington’s shift away from natural gas. (It passed but was overturned by the state’s Supreme Court.) 

In Colorado, recent estimates suggest renewable energy sources now account for more than half of electricity generation. “Amendment 82, if it passed, would have been an existential threat, not just to the environmental movement in Colorado, but to our energy future as a state,” said Royer, “Locking in natural gas, something that we are already moving away from, would have been a relic of the past.” 

It would also, as EPI’s Conroy pointed out, have made Colorado the only state with a specific energy source codified in its constitution. “There are pretty dangerous implications for writing a fossil fuel into your constitution at a time with unprecedented climate-exacerbated disasters,” she said.  

Despite a 2024 state-brokered “truce” to end competing ballot measures between Colorado’s main oil and gas producers (Chevron and Occidental Petroleum) and environmental groups, the Amendment 82 campaign attracted substantial industry money from both in and out of state. Three “issue committees”—groups that take money to oppose or, in this case, support a ballot measure—accepted contributions from conservative groups including the Republican Party-affiliated GOPAC Election Fund, Common Sense for America (affiliated with Sen. John Kennedy [R-La.]), and Colorado Dawn. Firms with ties to Texas oil money and Koch Industries, also contributed. 

“If they were successful with this [amendment], they would have looked to export it to other states.”

According to state records, one issue committee, Energy Freedom Alliance of the Rockies, headed by Kit Pfeiffer, a senior VP for Texas oil company X2 Resources, received contributions from executives of at least three Colorado oil and gas companies. The group said on its website that Amendment 82 “limits what any government can do to take away your choice to heat and cook with natural gas.” Pfeiffer’s arguments for the measure, which he expressed on Advance Colorado’s podcast, include the odd assertion that burning gas is cleaner than “burning dung.” 

Not to be confused with Advance Colorado, Affordable Colorado, another issue committee backing Amendment 82, received several contributions from Independence Institute, a libertarian Denver-based think tank founded by former state senator and Nixon speechwriter John Andrews. According to DeSmog, Independence Institute received at least $141,000 in donations from Koch foundations between 2000 and 2006, and previously ran a summer fellowship program named after Charles Koch. 

Brighter Colorado got the most of the three issue committees, a whopping $6 million, which included contributions from Western Midstream (a Texas oil company with a large presence in the Permian Basin), the CEO of the Colorado oil and gas exploration company 1876 Resources, Rado Capital (an oil and gas investment firm), and Lincoln Energy Partners, based in Denver, which finances the development of natural gas, oil, and solar projects. 

Advance Colorado did not limit its work to protecting the fossil fuel industry. It is also connected to seven other ballot initiatives, including measures related to immigration enforcement, voter identification, and hunting and fishing rights. 

In Royer’s view, the group basically exists to enact conservative policy agendas in a state with a Democratic legislature. “There are really no serious Republican elected officials remaining [in Colorado],” he said. 

He also wonders if groups like Advance Colorado and their donors are using states like Colorado as a laboratory to see what initiatives they could pass in more reliably red states. After all, almost half of Coloradan voters—46 percent—said yes to a right to natural gas, though 55 percent would have been needed to pass a constitutional amendment. “They might look at other states now and say, well we can test in Nevada,” Royer said. 

While a constitutional right to gas would have been a first, Amendment 82 resembled a 2020 right to natural gas proposal and a 2024 “energy choice” initiative, neither of which made the ballot after Gov. Jared Polis orchestrated separate compromises between the Legislature, oil and gas companies, and environmental groups. 

It’s unclear what Advance Colorado intends to do next—the group did not respond to our outreach. “I have no doubt that if they were successful with this [amendment], they would have looked to export it to other states,” Conservation Colorado’s Nordini said. But “voters saw through it. People do not want this heavy industry near their homes and schools and businesses [or to be] subject to the whims of warlords.”