On May 18, I stood outside the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) with small business owners, parents, faith leaders, veterans and everyday Arizonans who had one unified message for our state’s utility regulators: Enough. Only a single speaker that day supported Arizona Public Service’s (APS) proposed rate hike, a hike that could raise electricity bills by[...]

You’d be hard-pressed to find a political race with a more clear, direct impact on Arizonans’ finances than the Arizona Corporation Commission — yet most residents don’t seem to have any clue about it. It all starts with the name. “It’s not necessarily very clear what the Corporation Commission does,” Clara Pratte, a Democrat running[...]

“No rate hikes! No rate hikes! No rate hikes!” Before packing two Arizona Corporation Commission hearing rooms for nearly four hours of public testimony, local advocacy groups and utility ratepayers gathered outside of the commission’s downtown Phoenix building on May 18 to protest Arizona Public Service’s proposed 14% rate increase. APS is the state’s largest electricity[...]

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes spoke to around 200 APS customers Tuesday night at a town hall in north Phoenix centered around the proposed APS utility rate increase. The proposed rate would increase APS total revenue by nearly $580 million or 14% overall. Under the new rate structure, homeowners could pay 16% more, depending on[...]

In Arizona, one of the nation’s data center capitals, neighborhoods have started pushing back against data center projects to little avail. Why it matters: Neighbors say the giant technology centers diminish their quality of life and waste their water, but they face an army of lawyers and lobbyists working to push the projects through anyway.[...]

The American Lung Association released its 27th State of the Air Report on April 22 which coincided with Earth Day. In past years, it has shown that more than 80% of people in Arizona live in a county with at least one failing score. Bad air leads to health complications for many people. Maricopa County[...]

Wind and solar now generate about half of New Mexico’s electricity, roughly 40% in Colorado and about a third in Nevada. In Wyoming, they account for around 30%, while Idaho gets about a quarter. In Arizona and Utah, wind and solar produce about 20% of electricity. A big reason: falling costs.

Vianey Olivarría doesn’t think of herself as outdoorsy. She’ll camp now and then, but only if there are showers nearby. She loves a breezy stroll along a promenade but doesn’t mess around with hiking Camelback. And she’s too much of a foodie to consider dehydrated meals. For a long time, these were some of the[...]

Diane Brown has spent the past four decades advocating for consumers with the Public Interest Research Group. Twenty of those years have been spent in the Grand Canyon state, where she serves as the executive director of the Arizona Public Interest Research Group. Brown sat down with the Arizona Capitol Times to chat about her[...]

The Arizona Corporation Commission is holding a special workshop on the impact of data centers and other “large-load facilities” on electric bills. The hearing, held April 16, comes two weeks after a governor’s task force warned that Arizona needs a “full suite” of policies that “accommodate economic growth without compromising grid reliability or unfairly increasing[...]