Don't let the lights go out on clean energy

This week was crossover week at the Legislature, where bills approved on the floor of one chamber go to the other chamber for hearings. If you've been keeping up with the Request to Speak actions, there is nothing new this week. If you haven't weighed in you can find the past RTS actions here:

Below the legislative update, please find two petitions from the Sierra Club. Use them to contact your legislators on some bad energy bills that are still up for a vote.

Legislative Update:

Among the bills that passed were a bunch of bad water bills, some of which have been previously vetoed by the Governor, measures to allow siting of small modular nuclear reactors with no local review, bills to hinder voting, and several anti-solar bills.

On a positive note, it appears that HB2641 PFAS; firefighting foam; prohibition (Ligouri: Biasucci, Fink, et al) will make it to the floor. It is on a calendar for Monday. HB2641 bans the use of firefighting foam with PFAS in it. PFAS are known as "forever chemicals" that cause serious health issues. Limiting them in firefighting foam is an important public health issue for firefighters and will help limit contamination of lands and waters. We're glad to see this advance.

HB2267 passed out of the Arizona House this week along party lines 31-23-6. It establishes that any utility-scale solar or wind project that is built within four miles of a residence is automatically considered a public nuisance, meaning wind and solar are automatically considered harmful. Thanks for taking action on this bad bill while it was in the House. You can now contact your senator about it as it is likely to be in a committee soon.

Ask your Arizona Senator to vote NO on HB2267!

Act on Solar!

HB2331 was retained (held) on the House Committee of the Whole calendar, so there is still time to take action on it. HB2331 (electric service providers; energy reliability) as amended requires that 85% of generation for utility retail customers be from "reliable" sources. The bill creates its own definition of reliable and defines it as a generation resource that is dispatchable. Battery storage would be excluded, even though it is dispatchable as it is not a generation resource. The definition would exclude most forms of renewable energy and effectively requires that 85% of generation capacity for utilities has to be from fossil fuels, such as coal and gas.   Please tell your representatives to Vote NO on HB2331!

Say NO to Even More Fossil Fuels!

Here are a couple of sessions you might want to listen in on.

Tuesday, March 3rd House Natural Resources, Energy, and Water Committee at 2:00 PM  Members of the public may access a livestream of the meeting here. Presentation - Arizona Water Banking Authority Thursday, March 5th House Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Committee at 9:00 AM  Members of the public may access a livestream of the meeting here. Presentation: National AI Legislative Trends - Adam Kuckuk, National Conference of State Legislatures