Arizona’s Energy Future in the Spotlight December 1, 2025
Dear Arizona friends and colleagues,
While we are enjoying our time of respite from the seasonal Arizona heat and take a break from the outside world to be with friends and family this holiday season, let’s remember that we have many opportunities to make a difference and get involved with what will be challenges in the coming new year. The threats to the climate, the environment, and human health and stability are great, but PSR Arizona is proud to work with national PSR and like-minded organizations, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, Beyond Nuclear, PIRG Arizona, Nuclear Resisters, and the Sierra Club. Keep in touch with us through our newsletters that keep you informed about local Arizona issues and national concerns, and for ways to get involved. Many thanks to all of you for doing what you do to make this a better world. And I’d like to give many thanks to Karen Peterson for her tireless and professional contributions to these newsletters.
Barbara H Warren, MD, MPH
Director of National PSR’s long-standing Arizona Chapter
Special Report: Nuclear Power Is a Sex Symbol, According to Trump’s DOE
Could 2026 usher in the beginning of a new era of next-generation nuclear technology in Arizona, where the country’s largest nuclear power plant, the Palo Verde Generating Station, has powered the state and portions of Texas, California, and New Mexico for 40 years. Utah is amped up about it, with Gov. Spencer J. Cox joining President Trump and Sec. of Energy Chris Wright in an aggressive push for nuclear energy development and fast deadlines to market. Trump calls it the “nuclear renaissance.” Wright calls it “sexy.” We call it disturbing. PSR Arizona with Climate Tucson is keeping tabs on the new fascination with the nuclear option as the state faces the challenges of data centers, AI, and energy demand grows with the population.
State Energy Task Force to Plot the Future of Data Centers, Infrastructure, and ‘Next Gen’ Power Sources
Early next year, Arizona should have a blueprint for proceeding with an external challenge it faces now and into a long-range future: How to power up the population safely, humanely, and reliably at a time where the lack of housing and poverty are on the increase — and the very real threat to mortality exists as heat season temperatures continue to rise.
To date this year, 156 people have died from the heat, according to Arizona State Health and Human Services; 370 deaths are still under investigation.
Energy and an aged infrastructure powered by dirty fuel are national concerns. The influx of data centers in Arizona is making headlines and drawing dissent. To tackle the complicated issues of 21st century energy demands, Gov. Katie Hobbs convened a 30-member task force. She calls it “Energy Promise” and has given the team a deadline of March 1, 2026, to come up with three plans that together will help shape the state’s energy solvency:
1. A policy framework—or “how to”—for dealing with the onslaught of the data center “hyperscalers,” Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and META, and their impact on ratepayers.
2. An energy strategy that addresses the power sources now or soon to be available, “such as geothermal and advanced nuclear power.”
3. And a plan that will streamline infrastructure deployment “by cutting red tape related to the use of state lands.”
Administered by the governor’s Office of Resiliency, Maren Mahoney, OOR director, leads the task force and assures the public will have the opportunity to weigh in as the work continues into 2026.
ACC Believes Energy Efficiency Is a Thing of the Past
The opportunity to be engaged in anything to do with energy in Arizona begins and ends at the Arizona Corporation Commission level. Unfortunately, the board tends to follow the lead of the Trump administration: eliminate energy efficiency (EE) programs offered by utility companies APS, SRP, and TEP. So, think fait accompli, despite the multitude of pages of comments on the docket in favor of keeping EE alive.
Energy efficiency is the necessary component the world needs, no matter what source is being used. And the hard truth is that both fossil fuels and renewables “waste” energy from the point of origin and downstream.
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), more than 60% of the energy used for electricity generation is lost in the conversion process — raw to refined, captured, processed, and emitted. The Biden administration IRA grants pushed heavily on bolstering efficiency to help reduce carbon emissions.
On Tuesday Dec. 2, the ACC is tendering public hearings toward a final vote at the Thursday, Dec. 4, meeting on the staff-recommended suspension of the official Electric Energy Efficiency Mandate first adopted by the commission in 2010, when it was led by Attorney General Kris Mayes, then a Republican.
Mayes said in a statement earlier this fall, “If Arizona removes this key consumer protection and economic policy, electricity bills will go up and the power grid could become less reliable as a result.”
The benefits of EE include lower utility bills, reduced waste, and improved grid reliability and are critical for Arizona’s energy future. The recommendation to end EE comes on the heels of the proposal to repeal Renewable Energy Standards (REST), APS abandonment of clean energy goals, and requests for rate increases for both APS and TEP ratepayers.
The EE rules required utilities to “achieve 22% cumulative energy savings” by 2020. As a result, the utilities offered customers programs and services to help reduce usage at homes and businesses. That included deals on buying energy-efficient appliances, including popular heat pumps.
The rules worked. The utilities did meet the standards set in 2010. But there is no guarantee that the utilities, without ACC’s rule-making incentives, will continue to offer these cost- and energy-reduction services to the public.
On the details of how to participate in the proceedings, visit Third Act
More Information
If you can attend in person or by phone, your participation is of immense help in pushing back on what appears be the ACC prioritizing utility profit at the risk of reduced grid reliability, higher energy costs for families, and lost jobs for Arizonans, who are already struggling with high costs of living.
Deadline for public comments is before 9 a.m. on December 4.
Link for Thursday’s meeting and vote: Join here
Project Blue & TEP Head to the ACC
December 3, 2025, 9:00 AM
In Person: ACC, 1300 W. Washington St, Phoenix, Hearing Room 1
Telephonic: 1 (877) 309-3457 Passcode 801972877##
To watch online by live stream video: http://www.azcc.gov/live. Please note
there may be a 30 second delay v. real time.
Even though Project Blue received a resounding “no” from the mayor and city council and hundreds of Tucson residents, it’s still haunting us. The 290-acre property was sold by Pima County to the Beale Infrastructure Group for $21 million.
But a major sticking point of the sale is water, which is one of the reasons Tucson residents and council objected to the project as a whole. After it nixed Project Blue in August this year, the Tucson council passed an ordinance regulating large water users such as data centers, which would force Project Blue to rethink its water delivery system and sources.
Pima County Supervisor Andrés Cano said in a social media post that TEP’s application “amounts to corporate collusion between our region’s main energy utility and an out-of-state shell company seeking to deplete our energy and water in Southern Arizona.”
“Make no mistake: this filing is designed to bypass our community’s will and lock in power for a project that has already been rejected at the local level,” Cano told the Arizona Star. Cano voted against the property sale.
“Now that Tucson’s Mayor & Council has rejected Project Blue, Beale and TEP are asking state regulators to do what local leaders and residents refused to endorse,” he said.
In its request, TEP is asking the ACC for approval to provide 285 megawatt of capacity by 2028. Project Blue has set a 2027 operation start with construction beginning in 2026.
To watch the Dec. 3 meeting by live stream video: http://www.azcc.gov/live. It is the last item on the agenda.
City of Tucson Asks ACC to Open a New Project Blue Hearing
The City of Tucson isn’t finished with the determined folks behind Project Blue. Not only is the project still alive and trying to garner more support, TEP is taking the issue to the ACC, as mentioned above, to get advance approval for providing energy to the people behind the project and the occupant, rumored to be Amazon’s AWS, the world’s leading data center provider.
Last week before we all disappeared for turkey and such, Tucson Assistant City Attorney Bradford A. Borman filed a request with the ACC to officially open a new case, or proceeding, that would grant the City permission to join as an active participant, or official intervenor.
In the request, Borman cites the city’s need, as one of TEP’s largest customers, to know more about the project’s energy load. The City of Tucson currently counts nearly 2,400 electric meters within its corporate jurisdiction and purchases close to 132 million kwh of electricity annually from TEP at a cost of approximately $19 million, according to Borman’s filing, which notes that the cost of power “is funded by general fund revenues and ultimately by the citizens of City.”
He argues that without a proceeding, “the public, including City and other customers, will have no way to evaluate the impact of the agreement on rates and reliability of service.” Stay tuned for more.
If You Made It This Far . . .
What do you get when you put 10 dendrochronologists in one book? Ten more reasons to hug a tree.
Just in time for the holidays and the tree-lovers among your friends and family, this delightful, insightful, and deeply informational book of essays by 10 of the world’s leading dendrochronologists will be a welcome treat.
The book is edited by Valerie Trouet, a dendrochronologists at the famed Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) on the University of Arizona campus.
“In the Circle of Ancient Trees: Our Oldest Trees and the Stories They Tell’
Edited by Valerie Trouet
Original woodcuts by Blaze Cyan
Greystone Books, 224 pages, $31 (eBook available)
Share:
Categories:
More Campaign Update
Staying Healthy, Despite the Odds from the Trump Administration
Trump Calls for Immediate Resumption of Nuclear Testing
