A spate of bills making their way through the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature — some on a fast track — could undercut the 100 percent clean energy targets the state’s utility regulators are soon expected to finalize.
The four bills come just as the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) has reached the final stretch of a years-long process to develop rules that would hold the state’s largest utilities to a carbon-free electricity mandate by 2050. Regulators voted in November to move forward with the rules, though the commission is required to vote again in the next few months for them to be finalized.
If approved, the regulations would require Arizona’s investor-owned utilities to entirely excise fossil fuels from their portfolios by midcentury while meeting interim targets in the meantime. The state would join numerous peers, including neighboring California and Nevada, working to meet all of their electricity needs with clean resources in the coming decades. Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility, has already established a voluntary commitment to the carbon-free target.