By Shelby Stults – Contributing writerKatie Hobbs will take office as governor with an enormous opportunity to lower energy costs and improve the landscape for clean energy businesses in Arizona. Billions in federal dollars and private investment will flow into the state if the new administration takes a few simple steps to accelerate the clean energy transition already under way, which will lower costs for households and businesses and spark job creation and economic opportunity for the state.
Governor-elect Hobbs has already announced plans to establish a new Water and Energy Innovation Initiative — a great step forward to ensure Arizona can maximize federal funding to save energy, water, and money in the state. Utility regulators at the Arizona Corporation Commission — the folks who oversee the state’s power providers — also have a key role to play in helping Arizonans save money.
In a sunny state like Arizona, the newly elected commission can steer power providers toward the 10 years of tax-credit certainty for new solar projects provided by the Inflation Reduction Act — ensuring the steady growth of low-cost renewable energy. And maybe the best part: the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act are designed to spark more domestic manufacturing. The goal is to reduce the cost of every solar panel, wind turbine, electric vehicle and battery that rolls off a U.S. assembly line, a benefit to Arizona manufacturers such as Lucid and KORE Power. It also means that when domestic energy developers and utilities build new projects, they will get the biggest break on cost when they build in Arizona with U.S.-made products.
New state leaders are Republicans, and they hate energy that is not a fossil fuel.
Big govt for everybody!!! Yayyyyyyyyy!!!