Colorado Democrats intend to introduce a bill in the waning days of the legislative session that would blunt the potential impact of a conservative ballot initiative to enshrine a right to buy natural gas in the state constitution.

The bill would define what a “right” to natural gas would look like and seek to enact guardrails in order to protect public health and safety should the initiative pass.

“We are working with public partners, with local government and with utilities, to talk about how we can craft the right framework to ensure that, should this ballot measure pass, we don’t see natural gas stands popping up on the side of the road where people — because they have a right to natural gas — can start putting up a shingle and selling it,” House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat, told reporters Friday.

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Initiative 177 is backed by the right-leaning organization Advance Colorado. It is a proposed, two-sentence constitutional amendment that would give consumers the right to buy natural gas for cooking and heating, as well as producers the right to sell it. Backers have until the end of June to gather enough signatures to get it on the November ballot.

“Our concern is that the measure is poorly drafted,” House Assistant Majority Leader Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat, said. “It doesn’t contain definitions, and the ambiguity can potentially lead to a lack of safety.”

The use of natural gas as a fuel for appliances in homes and businesses accounts for roughly 15% of Colorado’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. State policymakers have targeted net-zero emissions by 2050, largely through incentives and investments encouraging a transition to electric appliances. Advance Colorado, a so-called dark money organization that does not disclose its donors, calls state policies “limiting the use of natural gas … economically incompatible with citizens’ energy needs.”

Lawmakers were still drafting the bill as of Friday afternoon. They said it would include a legislative declaration, the part of a bill that outlines the intent and context of a policy, about the Legislature’s commitment to public safety, public health and utility affordability.

The forthcoming bill will be sponsored by McCluskie, Bacon, a Denver Democrat, Senator Lisa Cutter of Jefferson County and Senator Dylan Roberts of Frisco, all Democrats. Governor Jared Polis has also been part of the conversation and is supportive of the bill, they said. Sponsors worry the initiative does not lay out the “responsibility” that would come with the right to natural gas. The right to natural gas does not include the right, for example, to also use related equipment or skirt local regulations, they contend.

“Providing a constitutional right comes with a heavy and weighted responsibility. Look at the right to bear arms. We have created the regulation and the framework around that to provide public safety,” McCluskie said. “We’re talking about an explosive material — if everybody has a right to natural gas, does that mean they can walk around with it in a container out on the streets?”

A broken truce?

Two years ago, oil and gas groups backed a measure similar to Initiative 177, which would have established constitutional protections for “energy choice,” barring state and local governments from restricting natural gas use in homes and businesses.

That measure and another industry-backed initiative were withdrawn as part of a deal brokered by Polis in 2024, under which environmental groups withdrew two ballot initiatives of their own, and Democratic lawmakers backed off a plan to more strictly regulate air pollution from oil and gas wells. It was the third time in a decade, following similar negotiations in 2014 and 2020, that a bargain struck between the two sides had averted a showdown at the ballot box over competing initiatives.

The latest truce was supposed to last until 2028, but Advance Colorado says it wasn’t a party to that agreement.

“Advance Colorado may not have been part of the original negotiations, but certainly when you get such a broad group of stakeholders from all sides of an issue together, working in good faith to create sound policy, to have someone put an ill-conceived ballot measure … just seems like a bad-faith effort,” Cutter said.

In response to Initiative 177, environmental groups, who say the 2024 truce has been broken, have revived multiple ballot measures of their own, which aim to target the oil and gas industry over the liabilities and costs of natural gas infrastructure. Those measures are pending appeal before the state Supreme Court.

The legislative session ends next Wednesday. It takes a minimum of three days for a bill to pass through both chambers of the Legislature.