By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
From the Paris Climate Accords, to the Green New Deal (in the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,”) the global “Net Zero” agenda has been steaming ahead at full speed. And it hasn’t been just in the form of government mandates. Across the world, electric utilities have been making their own Net Zero Commitments – whether it is in response to government regulations against fossil fuels, or subsidies from the government for unreliable power, explicit mandates, or from the influence of investors like Blackrock. No, it’s not just in Germany, and it isn’t just in California, either. The Net Zero agenda, unfortunately, is alive and well here in Arizona too.
We always knew it would be costly, and experience has proven that true. But now, in a newly released report published by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and the AZ Liberty Network, the cost for Arizona’s largest utility to go “Net Zero” was found to be even more expensive than expected coming with a massive price tag of at least $42.7 billion by 2038.
History of the Green New Deal in Arizona
The “green” agenda is not new to Arizona. In 2006, then Chairman of the Corporation Commission Kris Mayes pushed through the first mandates in Arizona, requiring our utilities to get 15% of their energy generation from “renewables” by 2025. Those rules alone have already cost ratepayers $2.3 billion. In 2018, an out-of-state billionaire funded a proposition on the ballot that would have required utilities to obtain 50% renewable generation by 2035. That measure went down in flames, being rejected by a 2-1 vote.
Then in 2020, the Arizona Corporation Commission began pursuing another mandate – this time to require 100% renewable energy by 2050, also known as going “Net Zero” by 2050. The mandates almost passed without the Commission ever conducting an analysis to find out what it would cost ratepayers. Once an analysis was finally done, it was projected that the mandates would cost ratepayers $6 billion, leading to the proposal being rejected by the Commission.
But then, Arizona’s utilities, who opposed the 2018 initiative, announced publicly that they were voluntarily going “Net Zero” – mandate or no mandate. Or, for APS, Net Zero doesn’t even go far enough, and they have pledged to be 100% “carbon free” by 2050.
And these aren’t just public statements. The utilities have committed to going “Net Zero” in SEC filings to their shareholders, and they even compensate their top executives (page 68) based on how much “clean” energy they build in our state. Unsurprisingly, these commitments completely shape their resource plans…
