Are Ducey and APS lying about renewables?

Politicians take advantage of us because we’re stupid when it comes to science.

I am, anyway.

(And, yes, I know that my intellectua limitations go well beyond this.)

Likewise, big businesses take advantage of greedy politicians (who crave campaign funds) because politicians, too, are stupid about science.

I don’t understand a lot about the science behind what is called “renewable energy,” for example. All that means, essentially, is creating electrical power using resources that never run out and don’t cause pollution. Like the sun and wind.

Arizona requires utility companies to develop some of that energy. But not a lot, given all the sunshine we have. For generations, however, the men who run Arizona Public Service also seem to run Arizona by way of the politicians they controlled. They’ve gotten what they wanted.

And they’re still getting what they want, particularly from the Republicans who dominate the Arizona Legislature and from Gov. Doug Ducey.

A group called Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona has been collecting signatures for a voter initiative that, if passed, would require utilities like APS to get 50 percent of their power supply from renewable sources such as solar and wind by 2030. The number is only 15 percent now.

APS runs the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant and also runs Arizona’s most powerful politicians.

Not long ago, Gov. Ducey signed a bill that would take the teeth out of the clean-energy initiative, even before the thing got on the ballot. The new law says that if the initiative passes and utilities fail to meet the 50 percent goal, the penalty for not complying will be no more than $5,000 and as low as $100.

In other words, to a monster like APS ... nothing.

Why would the politicians do such a thing?

The Republican who sponsored the bill, Rep. Vince Leach, said it was because, under the initiative, “Electric bills would skyrocket, tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue would be lost, thousands of jobs would go away, Arizonans would be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to construct new power plants, and the state’s economic competitiveness would be severely jeopardized.”

Is that true?

I don’t know.

But there are really smart scientists who actually do know. One of them is from right here.

And he says that’s not true. Wesley Herche, senior sustainability scientist, Global Institute of Sustainability, and associate director of research with the Global Security Ini-

tiative at Arizona State University, writing in Medium.com, said, “I wanted to see if there is an actual relationship between how aggressive a state’s renewable portfolio standard is and any subsequent increase in utility rates for the states that have already successfully implemented it.”

Here’s what he discovered:

“I found that there is no correlation at all. In the 32 states that had a renewable portfolio standard from 2005–2012, there is, on average, no correlated rate increase. And numerous states that achieved a renewable portfolio standard even saw a decrease in rates. These issues involve a complex interaction of factors, and we should be careful not to oversimplify things. But renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind, and battery storage have become so cheap recently that this finding is not all that surprising.”

No correlation at all. Numerous states with a decrease in rates.

Herche goes on to write:

“Closer to home, Tucson Electric Power announced it will buy solar energy (and storage) from a new plant at the lowest cost ever. The developer noted, ‘in addition to clean, low-cost energy, this project will create good-paying jobs and increased tax revenue for the state and local community.’ Our area of the country has the best solar potential of anywhere in America in terms of available sunlight, so we will probably see more of these record-breaking low prices for solar in Arizona.”

To review:

The bought-and-paid-for politicians say approving the initiative would cause your bills to “skyrocket” and run the state into the ground.

The scientist with actual knowledge of the situation and actual facts to back up his conclusions says increasing renewable-energy requirements will more likely lead to “record-breaking low prices.”

Who is more believable?