Tag Archives: Arizona

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Solar Battle Heats Up in Arizona

Solar Action at the State Capitol

Solar Action at the State Capitol

From the Arizona Republic:

About 100 solar-industry workers protested at the state Capitol on Tuesday, hoping to draw interest in a battle with Arizona Public Service Co. that could alter the rooftop-solar industry in the state.

APS has proposed changing the way it gives new customers credit for the electricity their solar panels send to the power grid. The changes would not affect the 18,000 current APS customers with solar, or those who have a reservation to get their panels by Oct. 15.

SolarCity Corp., a California rooftop-solar company, is leading the opposition, but representatives from a variety of solar companies, including REC Solar, Wilson Electric and Kyocera were present Tuesday.

Under tents on the Capitol grounds, they spoke to the media about the importance of solar. Some carried signs supporting the industry, and most wore solar-company logos.

“It’s frightening and disappointing to think that solar energy in Arizona could be undermined by APS,” said Mark Holohan, solar-division manager at Wilson Electric in Tempe. “Arizona’s monopoly utilities are attempting to limit solar due to fears about competition.”

via Solar-industry workers protest at state Capitol.

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Solar advocate Nancy LaPlaca considers state office: “Arizona is at a crossroads.”

Citing Arizona’s potential to be a leader in renewable energy, former Arizona Corporation Commission policy adviser Nancy LaPlaca announced today she is considering running for a position on the ACC in 2014.

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“Arizona is at a crossroads on critical policies for electricity, gas and water.” Nancy LaPlaca.

“Clean energy will grow our economy and bring us good-paying jobs we can be proud of,” LaPlaca said in a statement released today.

“Instead of leading the U.S. in the $100B global solar energy industry,” she continued, “our current commission is satisfied that only 2% of in-state electricity comes from solar while we send $2+ billion in ratepayer money every year to Texas, Colorado and New Mexico to buy coal and natural gas. Those dollars should stay in Arizona…”

The five-member ACC sets utility rates and implements programs to nurture renewable energy — or to ignore it. After being a national leader in RE for many years, the ACC has, say its critics, abandoned that role, following November’s election in which the commission’s only Democrats were voted off and replaced by Republicans.

In January, the new ACC sent shock waves throughout the solar industry when it announced without warning that some of the most important solar incentives would be eliminated.

“The Arizona solar industry has dramatically reduced its dependence on incentives,” said one solar spokesperson at the time, “but this is too much, too soon.”

LaPlaca cited her four years experience as a policy adviser to ACC member, Democrat Paul Newman. During most of that time, the ACC was led by Kristin Mayes, a Republican who made Arizona one of the most renewable-friendly states in the country.

In addition to renewable energy, LaPlaca stressed the ACC’s role in solving other critical resource issues.

“The Southwest is feeling the results of rising temperatures and drought,” she stated. “A recent U.S. Geological Survey report says the Verde River is at serious risk of going dry and some water wells have already failed. We need smarter policies that value not only water, but all of our critical natural resources.”

 

 

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Arizona (River) Highways

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

— Henry David Thoreau

I moved to Arizona eleven years ago in search of wildness. I came from Iowa, the most successful state in the Union at eliminating wild lands. A majority of Iowa was once covered by prairie, a rich grassland ecosystem that was home to bison, prairie chickens, elk, bears, mountain lions, wolves, and even river otters. All that was dismantled — or 99.9 percent of it, anyway — to make way for row crops, mostly corn and soybeans. Iowa became a wilderness sacrifice area.

Yellow warbler, San Pedro River (Photo courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management).

The fact that so much of Arizona remains wild has nothing to do with any ecologically-minded superiority of its inhabitant, of course. Mostly, Arizona has been blessed with a lack of water. The Sonoran desert is still host to so much of its original wildlife simply because, with few exceptions, the European migration (or “invasion,” to most native peoples) that began in the early 16th century found the desert inhospitable, or more accurately, unprofitable.

Riparian areas — the interface between land and water — are home to countless species of plants and animals in the arid Southwest, most noticeably to birds that either live there permanently or travel along them. For much of the wildlife here, rivers are the true Arizona highways.

Profiled in the video below, the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in southeastern Arizona is one of the richest protected areas of its kind in the state. (Map, PDF)

To learn more about the SPRNCA, and efforts to protect it, visit the website of the Friends of the San Pedro River.