May 02, 2025 10:10 AM UTC

Leading Conservative "Stink Tank" Hammered For Nonsense Study

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• by: Colorado Pols

If you’ve been following Colorado politics over the past few years, at one time or another you’ve probably run across information supplied by the conservative Common Sense Institute, an advocacy group with ties to Republican political strategist Josh Penry through his politically connected spouse Kristin Strohm known for pumping out lengthy “studies” invariably leading to the scholarly conclusion that Colorado Democrats suck.

But as the Colorado Sun’s Michael Booth reports, a new “study” from CSI claiming that environmental protections have cost Colorado some 31,000 oil and gas related jobs, be it job losses or jobs “foregone,” reducing the state’s economic output by billions of dollars, is drawing criticism and even some lampooning for being, to put it charitably, light on the facts:

More than 100 major environmental requirements have been added to state laws since 2009, the Common Sense Institute says, and those have shaved $32 billion from Colorado’s economic output. The conservative policy nonprofit, which has been critiqued for not disclosing donors or detailing the methodology of its high-profile economic studies, wants policymakers to make costs a bigger part of their deliberations…

The Colorado Energy Office and multiple environmental groups are dismissing the study as inaccurate at best and a misleading “op-ed” rather than a credible economic analysis. [Pols emphasis]

“There’s simply no evidence to support any of the claims that they make that environmental policies are costing Coloradans,” said Alex DeGolia, the Carbondale-based director of state legislative and regulatory affairs for the Environmental Defense Fund. Simply pointing out that some consumer prices have gone up, or that oil and gas employment varies, is not economic analysis, he said.

“Any freshman college student in Econometrics 101, probably the first day, the first thing they learn is that correlation does not equal causation,” DeGolia said.

For years, the fossil fuel industry has relied on inflated estimates of their economic impact to the state to argue against regulation to protect health and safety over fostering new oil and gas drilling. At the same time, the industry has exaggerated the impact of those regulations to suggest that their industry was on the verge of being “driven out of Colorado,” which of course never happened. Above all, the expansion of drilling (or not) continues to be based on the market price of oil and gas, not the policies of any one state.

This “study” was another attempt at the same self-serving doom and gloom, but so sloppy with the facts that it backfired:

The Colorado Energy Office called Common Sense Institute’s approach “simplistic” and at odds with rigorous economic analyses required when state regulators consider a new pollution-limiting rule…

On utility costs alone, [Parks Barroso of Western Resource Advocates] said, the Common Sense report includes “fundamental” misunderstandings of current policy and regulation.

The Common Sense assessment appears to blame Colorado policies requiring the replacement of coal-fired power plants with cleaner generating alternatives for higher utility prices than in neighboring states, the EDF noted. In reality, multiple rigorous studies show fossil fuel plants cost more to build and operate now than renewable plants, DeGolia said.

Although it’s not the first time the Common Sense Institute’s conclusions have been scrutinized and found wanting, this story indicates that both environmental advocates and nonpartisan state officials are tired of this “stink tank” nonprofit churning out rank misinformation that Republican lawmakers and the industries who fund CSI then use to sow doubt in essential environmental progress like the phasing out of coal plants. Just because their misinformation is published in glossy color and delivered at a civil volume doesn’t make it true.

As the old saying goes, don’t believe everything that you read. But in CSI’s case, don’t believe anything.