Energy bills, solar power dominate Arizona Corporation Commission candidate debate

Fossil fuels, emissions, electricity rates and other energy topics headlined a debate among candidates seeking seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission. Six contenders are vying for three openings.

Six candidates vying for three open seats on Arizona’s utility-regulatory panel sparred on Sept. 26 over the state’s long-term energy policy, with the three Democrats urging a more rapid embrace of solar power and their three Republican counterparts stressing the need for a broader mix including natural gas to ensure reliability.

Democrats including Ylenia Aguilar attacked the current Republican-dominated Arizona Corporation Commission for allowing electricity bills to increase. One of the commission’s most visible actions earlier this year was approving a rate hike for Arizona Public Service that boosted electric bills for the utility’s residential customers by around 8% on average.

“People are suffering and can’t pay their bills,” Aguilar said.

But Republicans including Lea Marquez Peterson, the only commissioner seeking re-election in the Nov. 5 vote, said the commission sliced APS’ funding request by more than $200 million from what was requested. She also stressed the need for high energy reliability, along with the investments needed to ensure it.

Arizona can’t afford temporary power disruptions that, she said, have plagued neighboring California. “If we lost power in Arizona in the summer, it would be a life-or-death issue,” Peterson said.

Fellow Republican Rene Lopez endorsed an “all-of-the-above” approach. The energy-mix debate largely focused on natural gas plants that can run well into the evening, after the Sun sets. Aguilar complained about air pollution around metro Phoenix and said the natural-gas plants aren’t desirable near any neighborhoods. But Republican Rachel Walden noted that these generating stations can be turned on quickly, at any time of day or night.

Energy policies and APS’ rate hike dominated the debate, though the discussion also veered into water availability and the struggles facing many small water utilities in rural parts of Arizona that have been hiking rates yet, in many cases, have not made necessary infrastructure improvements. Democrat Joshua Polacheck said the dire conditions of many of these companies shows the need for “change, a different approach,” at the Commission.

Candidates from both political parties spoke out in favor of solar energy, but the enthusiasm from Republicans was more measured.

“Solar doesn’t work at night, and the wind doesn’t always blow,” Peterson said.

That drew a rebuke from Democrat Jonathan Hill, who advocates for storing solar energy during low-demand periods of the day in industrial-scale battery parks for release later, as APS, Salt River Project and other utilities are doing. “Of course we know the Sun goes down at night,” Hill remarked, sarcastically.

The hour-long program sponsored by Arizona PBS and moderated by Ted Simons, host of “Arizona Horizon,” was more cantakerous, with more interruptions, than a Sept. 2 debate involving the same six candidates and sponsored by the Arizona Clean Election Commission.

Republicans hold a 4-1 edge currently on the comisssion, with Republicans Nick Myers and Kevin Thompson not up for re-election this November. Democrats urged voters to set a new course by electing candidates from their party.

Democrat Joshua Polacheck implied that Republicans on the panel are too cozy with “rapacious corporations that are picking our pockets.” Arizona residents, he said, “know their rates have been going up.”

Republican candidate Lopez said Arizonans pay the second-lowest rates in the nation, but Hill criticized that finding because it came from WalletHub, a personal finance app that, he said, “most people have never heard of.”

Walden said it’s important to embrace a broad energy mix and to let market forces dictate prices, as that will lead to the “cheapest options.” She also said it’s important for voters to realize that utilities like APS, in their rate-application cases, are largely seeking to recoup costs on investments they already have made. And because rate cases come up only every few years on average, the increases seem larger compared to more, minor adjustments along the way, she explained.

Both sides have focused on the need to keep rates affordable for consumers and businesses while ensuring that Arizona has the power-generation capacity to support population increases and economic growth. Much of that is coming from relatively new entities such as semiconductor-plant expansions and data centers, a power-intensive industry where metro Phoenix has emerged as a national leader.

The Arizona PBS date was held on the same day that SRP and NextEra Energy Resources unveiled a new wind farm on private land halfway between Flagstaff and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. All of the clean energy from that project, enough to power around 40,000 homes, has been allocated to a new Google data center in Mesa.

Candidates from both parties largely steered clear of presidential politics, though Walden in her closing statement blamed the Biden-Harris Administration for regulations and other policies that, she said, have worsened pricing pressures in the utility industry.

Reach the writer at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com.