by admin | Jul 15, 2025 | News and Updates, Regulatory
Attorney General Kris Mayes has long fancied herself as a champion for ratepayers. After another round of rate hikes rolled in at the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), this time a proposed 14% increase by both APS and TEP, AG Mayes fired off a press release announcing that she will “vigorously oppose” these requests as “Arizona residents struggle to keep up with ever-increasing electricity bills.”
Setting aside the fact that the AG has little purview over ACC affairs, Mayes seems to think that her own time serving on the Commission back in the 2000s makes her uniquely qualified to stop what seems like an endless barrage of double-digit rate hikes by our public utilities. Unfortunately for ratepayers, having Kris Mayes involved will only pour fuel on the Net Zero fire currently raging at the Corporation Commission.
You see, Kris Mayes is the one that laid the foundation for the Green Scam rate hikes Arizonans are suffering through today. In fact, the biggest irony about having Kris Mayes jump into the rate hike fray is that it highlights the dangerous parallels between the Commission she served on in 2006 and the one that we have today.
Kris Mayes was actually appointed to the Corporation Commission as a Republican (even if in name only) by then-Democrat Governor Janet Napolitano. Despite an all-Republican commission (as we have today), Mayes was the leading voice for the original Green New Deal mandate. That first mandate, the Renewable Energy Standard and Tariff (REST), required 15 percent of all energy generation to be from renewable sources by 2025.
To meet the costs associated with the REST rules, the utilities received cost recovery from ratepayers to pay for these projects that accrued in the hundreds of millions. In 2012, there was another APS rate hike to cover, in part, the buildout of solar facilities, battery storage pilots, and transmission upgrades due to increased costs of integrating intermittent renewables on the grid. By 2019, the price tag for Mayes’ REST rules exceeded $1 billion, all paid for with rate hikes and fixed charges.
After Mayes’ departure from the Commission, she went to work as a lobbyist and consultant for the Green New Deal cabal. She even chaired the “Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona” campaign in 2017, an initiative measure bankrolled by California billionaire Tom Steyer to insert a clean energy mandate in the constitution.
So, after two decades of fighting for grid-crushing renewable mandates, you would think Kris Mayes would be ecstatic at the news that both APS and TEP have embraced her green agenda and have committed to go Net Zero by 2050. It’s exactly what she wanted—a carbon-free grid dependent on wind and solar to keep our A/C units running in the middle of summer.
Mayes should also be thanking the current Republican-controlled Commission for doubling down on her radical energy commitments. Just last year, the ACC approved integrated resource plans developed by APS and TEP that turbocharged her REST rules, putting Arizona on the path to having 90% of future energy generation come from renewables while closing all remaining coal generation by 2031.
But now, the bill for the green scam is coming due, and Kris Mayes wants to feign outrage at the rate hikes needed to fund it. Her plan is to blame the utilities and the Corporation Commission for the projected $42 billion this radical energy transition will cost ratepayers, even though they are implementing the plan she originally put together.
The green energy experiment in Arizona was never going to be cheap. What’s truly ironic is watching its architects pretend to be surprised by the cost.
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by admin | Jun 27, 2025 | News and Updates, Regulatory
PHOENIX, ARIZONA – On Tuesday, June 24, the Prescott City Council held another meeting to vote on the city’s proposed General Plan. This document contained various sections of woke policy such as Vision Zero, road diet language, and pushes for pricey, unreliable energy. Had it been approved, the City Council would have sent it to the ballot for an upcoming election.
However, the public made their voices heard during multiple meetings, urging the council to vote the plan down. The plan failed to obtain the required supermajority (five votes) for referral to the ballot. Prescott Mayor Phil Goode spoke out in strong opposition to the proposal which, as written, reflects policies that many fear could begin to turn Prescott into Los Angeles or San Francisco. The mayor, along with two other council members, heeded the calls from grassroots residents by voting against the original, problematic General Plan—and when a slightly revised version came up for a vote, it too failed, this time with four voting against and only three in favor.
Mylie Biggs, Associate of Government Affairs for the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, said, “This is a major win for the people of Prescott and the members of the Council that stood firm. Every other city in Arizona should be cautious of the language in their own General Plans and follow Prescott’s lead in rejecting wokeness in their cities.”
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by admin | Jun 24, 2025 | News and Updates, Regulatory
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) that passed the House of Representatives last month contained numerous wins for the American people: permanent tax relief, funding for border security, an expansion of Health Savings Accounts, and even a new program to expand school choice. But arguably the most impactful accomplishment in the BBB was their success in taking a machete to the labyrinth of green new scam tax subsidies created by Joe Biden and the Democrats through the inflation-creating Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). That alone makes it the most beautiful feature of the Big Beautiful Bill.
The House’s version included key provisions sunsetting some of the worst subsidies authorized under the IRA, including:
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- Ending the Clean Electricity Production Tax Credit (PTC) and the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for any project that doesn’t start within 60 days of the enacting legislation and isn’t in service by 2028;
- Ending the Clean Electricity Investment Credit and Transferability of Tax Credits for Wind and Solar;
- Eliminating the Tax Credit for Residential Solar and Rebates for “Green” Products;
- Repealing the Electric Vehicle Credit designed to Force Manufacturers to Abandon Gas Powered Vehicles.
The rollback of these subsidies in the House BBB was a monumental feat, especially given the army of lobbyists hired by the green energy grifters to defend these subsidies on Capitol Hill. In fact, the big spenders in the GOP caucus almost succeeded in stopping the subsidy rollback. If not for the stalwart efforts of the House Freedom Caucus and the White House stepping in at the last minute of negotiations, the green scam subsidies would not be on the chopping block.
But now the bill is in the Senate, and the initial draft released of the revised Big Beautiful Bill by Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo is anything but big or beautiful. As detailed by energy expert Alex Epstein, almost every IRA subsidy that was rolled back in the House is revived in the Senate version of the legislation.
The green energy lobby must be giddy. The Senate version reinstates subsidies for green energy suppliers, reopens loopholes such as the transferability of tax credits, and most importantly it eliminates the hard “placed in service” 2028 deadline for new projects, replacing it with a toothless “construction begins” deadline. Taken altogether, these changes would guarantee that these subsidies would continue long after Trump’s term ends in 2028. Which means all of these subsidies will be renewed at some point, and America will be stuck with Biden’s green new scam for decades to come.
The Senate’s resurrection of the Biden green subsidies in the BBB didn’t escape the attention of President Trump. “They are largely a giant SCAM. I would much prefer that this money be used somewhere else, including reductions. ‘Anywhere’ would be preferable!…None of it works without massive government subsidy (energy should NOT NEED SUBSIDY!).” As usual, Trump knows a Washington, D.C., grift when he sees it.
Additionally, Trump is correct that America’s energy development, production, and generation should never require subsidies. Yet over the last decade, wind and solar have consumed hundreds of billions in R&D refundable credits, loan guarantees, grants, and other subsidies. Just in the Inflation Reduction Act alone, $96.7 billion was earmarked for “clean” energy grants, mostly directed at solar and wind.
These IRA subsidies are why every major public utility in Arizona and across the country is adopting grid crushing resource plans that rely solely on wind, solar, and battery storage for new generation capacity. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said it best earlier this month while testifying to the House subcommittee on energy, “If you’re not there at peak demand, you’re just a parasite on the grid, because you just make the other sources turn up and down as you come and go.” Solar and wind alone can’t carry our grid, yet these subsidies drive out the very sources that solar and wind require to operate. One needs to look no further than Spain to see what happens when you try to power your economy on intermittent sources of energy.
America cannot afford to have our grid ruined because Republicans in Congress can’t say no to the green grift lobby. The current subsidies not only represent hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, but they are dangerous to the reliability of our nation’s grid. And anyone who cares about that should reach out to their representative to restore the big, beautiful end to green scam subsidies.
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by admin | Jun 12, 2025 | News and Updates, Regulatory
Earlier this year, President Trump signed a trio of executive orders aimed at keeping our nation’s vital coal power plants online. In fact, at the signing ceremony, the President explicitly called out one of Arizona’s coal plants by name. He directed Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright to keep the Cholla Power Plant online and told the workers to remain calm because they are going to have that plant “opening and burning…coal in a very short period of time.”
The Cholla Power Plant is one of many Arizona coal plants that have either been mothballed or slated for retirement in the near future. In 2019, SRP and the other utilities shut down the Navajo Generating Station, resulting in a loss of 2,250 MW of reliable capacity. Earlier this year, an additional 425 MW of generating capacity was taken offline at Cholla. And over the next 6 years, Arizona’s public utilities, as outlined in Integrated Resource Plans recently approved by the Arizona Corporation Commission, plan to shutter every last bit of coal generation in Arizona by 2032. Most alarming is that according to those same Resource Plans, the replacement fuel for this reliable source of energy will be solar, wind, and battery storage, all to meet carbon free “Net Zero” goals that will cost Arizona ratepayers billions and destabilize the grid.
On the same day President Trump signed the coal orders, the Arizona legislature, led by Representative David Marshall, sent a letter to the Department of the Interior urging the Administration to help keep Cholla, and every other coal plant in the state, online. Last month, every Republican in the legislature voted to send HCM2014 to the Corporation Commission, urging them to protect our grid, fight to keep these plants online, and support the Trump Energy Agenda.
What Arizona ratepayers got instead was a late Friday afternoon news dump from Kevin Thompson, Chairman of the Corporation Commission, blasting the idea of reopening Cholla. In his press release, Thompson and fellow Commissioner Nick Myers claimed that it would cost ratepayers $1.9 billion to keep Cholla online and then took the time to attack and belittle GOP lawmakers and advocates of the Cholla option.
It is interesting to note that prior to this figure being disclosed by Thompson and Myers, it was impossible to get any actual numbers or a cost analysis from the commission comparing the price of coal to other Green New Deal options. Every time the subject was brought up, we were simply told that going solar is the cheapest option and that we should just “trust the experts.” It is unclear how Commissioner Thompson even arrived at this figure.
But now that we have their figure, let’s take them at their word: keeping Cholla online has a price tag of $1.9 billion. That sounds high, and ratepayers might be concerned about footing that bill. But this doesn’t take into account that the 425 MW of electricity from Cholla has to be replaced with another source of energy. So, instead of keeping coal online and adding additional capacity to meet future demand, we now must foot the bill for replacement power and new capacity.
And what would that replacement power cost? Since the utilities’ future resource plans depend almost exclusively on green energy generation to meet their climate commitments, “Net-Zero Heroes,” that is what ratepayers should expect – solar plus battery storage to replace our coal plants.
And what do solar plus storage projects cost? The Eleven Miles Center, built in 2024 by SRP at a cost of $1 billion, has an advertised peak capacity of 300 MW with four hours of 300 MW storage. The APS Papago Solar and Storage project is planned to be operational in 2026 and has the same capacity. The advertised cost is $836.4 million.
At first blush, both solar projects appear to have a similar output compared to Cholla at a slightly lower price, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. A coal plant with a capacity of 425 MW of capacity can produce power 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Solar? The advertised capacity of 300 MW of solar from Eleven Miles Center or the Papago project will only produce 300 MW for a few hours each day and drop to zero every single night when the sun isn’t shining.
So how much solar needs to be built to match the dispatchable coal power being replaced? According to energy experts such as Alex Epstein, AlwaysOn Research, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, for every 1 MW of reliable, dispatchable coal power being replaced, the grid will need more than 3 MW of solar plus storage to meet demand.
In effect, to replace the capacity of 425 MW at a plant like Cholla, the utilities will need to build approximately 1,700 MW of solar plus storage at a ratepayer cost between $4.7 billion and $5.7 billion dollars! Additionally, paying triple the cost for solar will only provide the grid with four hours of battery backup, so ratepayers would still benefit more from investments in projects like Cholla than in unreliable solar and storage.
Given the exorbitant price tag to build thousands of acres of intermittent, unreliable solar and batteries, it seems crazy not to seriously consider keeping Cholla open. Combined with the announcement this week by the EPA to move toward repealing the radical Obama/Biden era “Clean Power Plan 2.0” rules and anti-science “endangerment finding,” the cost and regulatory barriers to expanding the use of coal and natural gas are being swept away.
Yet despite the efforts of the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers, Commissioners Kevin Thompson and Nick Myers continue to obstruct the exploration of expanded coal development in Arizona. They have also shown no interest in revisiting the utility Resource Plans that were rammed through the process right before the November election. The regulatory, tax, and subsidy environment that drove many of the assumptions in those plans are now defective with Trump in the White House. Items such as the closure of the Cholla Plant, along with other coal facilities on the chopping block, should all be reopened and reconsidered.
Arizona has huge energy demands on the horizon. The implementation of Trump’s agenda will secure our energy future and keep Arizona free and prosperous. The reflexive opposition to coal and other fossil fuel generation perhaps made some sense when Biden and the Green New Deal Left were driving the energy agenda, but that’s no longer the case. Instead, Commissioners Thompson and Myers seem stuck in the Green New Deal world of 2023, which means ratepayers all get stuck with a costly, unreliable grid while they are at the Corporation Commission.
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by admin | May 29, 2025 | News and Updates, Regulatory
Within President Trump’s first 100 days in office, he has issued back-to-back executive orders aimed at cleansing America of woke ideologies as well as dismantling the Green New Scam. States can hardly keep up with the rapid changes being made. U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary (USDOT) Sean Duffy is leading the effort to defund city projects involving road diets and “green infrastructure.” Leftists and bike-enthused activists are losing their minds over the removal of “Complete Streets” links on the USDOT website, horrified by the idea that vehicle travel might be prioritized over barely used bike lanes.
And good to his promise to unleash American energy, Trump’s team has eliminated excessive greenhouse gas (GHG) rules, vowed to get existing and new coal plants opened, and most recently played a major role in the House’s passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” that included the repeal of many of the Inflation Reduction Act green scam subsidies. Every day this administration is dismantling the Green New Grift and restoring practical, pro-America policies.
And if there ever was a city in Arizona that should be jumping on the Trump bandwagon – it’s the City of Prescott. Prescott is a conservative community where registered Republican voters out number Democrat voters 3:1. It’s “Trump Country.” But take a look at Prescott’s recently proposed General Plan and you would never know it.
In Arizona, every municipality is required by statute (ARS §9-461.05) to build out and adopt a General Plan that outlines a pathway for growth in the community, covering topics such as land use, transportation, environment, water, and energy. This seemingly innocuous document that must be ratified by voters has become a pathway for city bureaucrats to sneak woke ideologies and climate goals into city planning.
General Plan Transportation Policy: Drive Less
Prescott’s Plan is nearly 150 pages and includes a number of statements and policies that do not align with the conservative ethos of the community. Under the “Air Quality” section (pg. 26), the Plan editorializes the reasons increased urbanization is harmful to the environment and claims that they must reduce dependence on automobiles as a solution. It further promotes “alternative transportation” which is typically code for forcing people to walk or bike and subsidizing a bunch of public transit people won’t ride. It is unlikely that the residents of Prescott will agree with “Prescott’s Plan” that they should give up their cars.
The General Plan includes an entire section dedicated to “Complete Streets, Vision Zero, and Transportation Safety Planning” (pg. 79-81). The Vision Zero initiative, funded by the Left, claims to aim for zero traffic deaths by making it increasingly difficult to drive. This signals a shift toward a “multimodal transportation system,” and the emphasis on “traffic calming” measures reveals their intention to narrow roads, reduce speed limits, and expand heavily subsidized public transportation – such as buses, light rail, and street cars. Prescott’s General Plan also looks to create a “Traffic Calming Design Guide” to implement many of these policies and disincentivize driving by adding layers of inconvenience (pg. 53).
General Plan Energy Policy: Use Less
Additionally, rather than the proposed general plan recommending the prioritization of cheap and reliable energy, it pushes for “renewable” sources to reduce carbon emissions (pg.41), a policy goal the council itself hasn’t declared is a priority of the community to begin with. It calls for increasing energy efficiency by promoting land use patterns that “encourage walkability and reduce dependency on cars” (pg. 42). In other words, residents are to be forced into centrally planned 15-minute city boroughs so Prescott residents will stop gobbling up so much energy. And because bureaucrats are at least realistic about literally no one doing this of their own accord, the city plans to provide financial incentives to manipulate residents and businesses into installing solar. Because solar is unreliable and Prescott would rather residents just use less energy anyway, they then intend to conduct energy audits in homes, potentially requiring costly upgrades at the expense of the homeowner (pg. 43).
General Plan “Services”: Pay More
Lastly, Prescott is pursuing designation as a “Tree City” (pg. 83). Achieving this status would require the city to expand bureaucracy and increase costs for city residents. To be eligible as a “Tree City,” Prescott would need to create a “tree board” or designate a tree czar. They would need to adopt a “municipal tree ordinance” to “protect” public trees, and the organization recommends the city develop their licensure for any person looking to trim, plant, or work on public trees, and even become a certified arborist. The Tree City USA program also creates an unfunded mandate of Prescott taxpayers, requiring a minimum expenditure of $2 per capita every year on “urban forestry”. What does the city get in return for obligating taxpayers and expanding government? Nothing. They get to call themselves a “Tree City.”
This expansion of government authority over routine plant management is excessive and emblematic of something President Trump would undoubtedly sick DOGE on. The Tree City USA section as a whole should be removed, and Prescott City Council should reject adding more layers of unnecessary government.
The city council in Prescott will be voting on the language in its 2025 General Plan on June 3rd; if approved, it will go to the voters on the ballot in November of this year. The majority-Republican city in rural Arizona should be safe from net-zero, anti-car, 15-minute city goals. However, it seems that these bad ideas have seeped into even the reddest of areas.
Republicans have the momentum with President Trump leading the charge to restore sanity in our country. Prescott council should feel empowered to follow in this administration’s footsteps and send a General Plan to the voters that reflects their conservative values.
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by admin | Apr 29, 2025 | News and Updates, Regulatory
For the past decade, our organization has been fighting the Green New Deal agenda in Arizona, working to score a decisive victory for reliable and affordable energy. Thanks to President Trump, that decisive victory now appears within reach.
Earlier this month, President Trump released three new executive orders and one proclamation, all aimed at unleashing American energy abundance. These executive actions are all part of a coordinated White House effort to initiate a tidal shift in the ever-steady march toward the Net Zero nightmare being pursued by radical environmentalists, the green industrial complex, and public utilities across the nation.
For years, energy regulators have forewarned of the impending grid crisis due to the overreliance on costly renewable energy, yet the previous administration only accelerated the catastrophe. The new Trump Executive Orders, coupled with his declaration of a National Energy Emergency, will directly address this crisis by ending the regulatory discrimination against coal, empowering the domestic mining of coal resources, encouraging the development of coal energy generation, and allowing for these activities to take place on federal lands.
Reigniting the American coal industry couldn’t happen soon enough. While China and India are building new coal plants at unprecedented rates to power their economic growth, we have been aggressively shutting our plants down. As a result of costly regulations, market manipulation to inflate the cost of coal and throwing immense subsidies at wind and solar projects, coal was set to be nonexistent within the next decade.
In Arizona, nearly 4,000 MW of reliable coal generation has been shuttered in the last decade alone. For reference, Arizona’s largest electricity provider has a peak demand of 8,000 MW. And the remaining coal generation benefiting Arizona’s electric grid is either being shuttered this year (Cholla) or is slated to be retired in 2031 (Four Corners Generating Station).
For some time, the thought of keeping coal in the resource mix, let alone building new capacity, was nothing more than a pipe dream. Despite tremendous work at the state level, reversing the war on coal has been viewed as an impossible task. The Obama/Biden EPA worked to regulate coal out of existence, the “Inflation Reduction Act” was dumping trillions into unreliable solar and wind, and the impact of ESG had taken its toll on the energy industry. And the Arizona Corporation Commission, the regulatory body that oversees our public utilities, has shown little interest in challenging the phase-out of coal.
Now everything has changed. The most destructive regulatory and economic barriers hindering new fossil fuel development and generation, including coal, have been removed, thanks to President Trump.
Just as significant, multiple banks and hedge funds have dropped their woke Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) lending requirements due to pressure from the White House. And another Trump executive order cracking down on state overreach has directed the Attorney General to act against states with laws and policies that undermine energy resource development and grid reliability, including ESG (a term the Arizona Corporation Commission has previously claimed to be undefinable).
With a stroke of his pen, President Trump has committed to funding the reopening and new construction of coal-generating plants in states.
With Trump leading the way, our elected leaders have never had a better opportunity to boldly and enthusiastically reshape Arizona’s energy future. Much of this work must begin at the Corporation Commission, which is why Republicans at the legislature are rallying behind HCM 2014, a memorial to the Commission to support the buildout of reliable energy and reconsider previous decisions that are leading to the closure of Arizona’s remaining coal facilities.
For those evaluating the politics of sound energy policy, the risk now isn’t opposing the radical environmentalists and climate change fanatics, but resisting the headwinds of Trump’s energy agenda. Let’s hope that our elected leaders don’t waste this historic opportunity for meaningful reform.
Help Protect Freedom in Arizona by Joining Our Grassroots Network
Arizona needs to have a unified voice promoting economic freedom and prosperity, and the Free Enterprise Club is committed to making that happen. But we can’t do it alone. We need YOU!
Join our FREE Grassroots Action List to stay up to date on the latest battles against big government and how YOU can help influence crucial bills at the Arizona State Legislature.
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