Justin Olson just another sock puppet for utility

It’s long been known that the Arizona Corporation Commission doubles as a set of Arizona Public Service sock puppets.

You saw it when regulators blocked an investigation into whether APS secretly spent millions to pack the commission with friendly faces.

You saw it when they voted to raise APS’ rates, with no questions asked about the impact on our monthly bills.

Now comes evidence that seems to suggest Arizona’s newest corporation commissioner, Justin Olson, gets his views on energy policy directly from the utility he presumably regulates. Then, he parrots those views, at times almost verbatim.

On Thursday, the Energy and Policy Institute, a pro-renewable energy watchdog group, released emails and texts showing that Olson in May went straight to Arizona Public Service when preparing for an interview with a Wall Street investment analyst.

The analyst, from Credit Suisse, sent Olson a list of questions he would ask during a scheduled May 18 phone interview. Olson forwarded the questions via e-mail to Amanda Ho, APS director of state regulatory affairs and compliance and a former Corporation Commission staffer.

“Let me know if you guys have any insights that you would like to share prior to the call on any of these topics,” Olson wrote.

The guys over at the monopoly utility did. Five pages of insights, in fact, all of them written, no doubt, with the best interests of APS in mind.

The Energy and Policy Institute obtained the emails and texts via a public records request. EPI says APS’ fivepage memo contained responses that were “biased” toward the utility and contained far from mere background information and data.

A transcript of Olson’s interview with Credit Suisse shows that Olson not only relied heavily on the APSsupplied answers, but at times read from the memo almost word-for-word.

For example, on the issue of rooftop vs. utility-supplied solar:

From the APS memo to Olson: “From a cost perspective, utility scale solar today is approximately 1/3 the price to install relative to rooftop installations while providing the same environmental benefits. It also has benefits such as tracking that can provide more energy during peak periods on the system. However, some customers have shown the desire to exercise their energy choices and install rooftop solar to suit their individual needs.” Olson, in his Credit Suisse interview: “The cost of installation is about a third of the cost of rooftop solar. In addition are added benefits of utility-

grade solar that it can track with the sun throughout the day which increases the efficiency of the energy generation. So more energy can be produced during the peak periods on the system. These are some significant advantages of utility-grade solar. Now the advantage of rooftop solar is clearly that that many customers want to have rooftop solar on their houses. And I recognize that there is that desire.”

It’s long been known that the Arizona Corporation Commission doubles as a set of Arizona Public Service sock puppets.

On the issue of whether utilities should build and own renewable- energy generating operations — investments for which they score profits — or buy the power generated from third parties, which EPI contends is generally cheaper for customers:

APS memo to Olson: “Future resource levels are best addressed through the (commission’s) IRP (Integrated Resource Planning) process. However, it is important that a significant portion of generating resources be owned, maintained and operated by financially healthy utilities as a means to ensure efficient and reliable operation of the electric grid.”

Olson, in his Credit Suisse interview: “You know I think that those discussions are best dealt with in our IRP process. I think that it’s important for us to look at the totality of the plan, what our utilities are looking to do to meet future demands on their systems and evaluate the entire approach to determine, you know, is this a balanced approach?”

On whether the state has made significant progress in energy efficiency.

APS memo to Olson: “Significant progress has been made on Arizona’s energy efficiency programs. Utilities have reconfigured their offerings to align with the way customers use energy with the focus now being on high-value DSM programs that address peak energy periods. Additionally, the toolbox for Demand Side Management is being expanded to include smarter or more efficient uses of energy as opposed to simply tracking kWh reductions.”

Olson, in his Credit Suisse interview: “You know I think that energy efficiency has been quite successful in Arizona at bringing down the demand. Significant progress has been made in these programs. Utilities have reconfigured their offerings to align with the way customers use their energy with the focus now being on the high-demand – the high-value demand side management that’s being executed and using smarter, more efficient technologies that are smarter than what historically has been using just simply tracking kilowatt hour reductions.”

Olson didn’t return my phone call to explain why he turned to APS for answers about the commission’s energy policy. In a tweet reacting to this column, he touted his independence from the state’s largest utility.

“My record of independence and acting in the ratepayers interest is clear,” he wrote. “I called for the commission to consider retail competition in electricity providers. I sponsored policies to prohibit commissioners from receiving campaign contributions from the utilities we regulate.”

All the more curious, then, that he would turn to APS for answers on the commission’s energy policy.

Olson was appointed last year by Gov. Doug Ducey, who is tight with APS/Pinnacle West Capital Corp. CEO Don Brandt and enjoys substantial support from the monopoly utility.

But he hasn’t yet had an opportunity to fully demonstrate where he stands on the sock-puppet scale. He wasn’t on the commission when it voted to raise rates or when it blocked an investigation into APS campaign spending.

During this year’s campaign, he initially teamed with Commission Chairman Tom Forese but wisely distanced himself from the commissioner, whose sock-puppet tendencies earned him an ouster in the GOP primary.

Olson has since joined the other candidates (Republican Rodney Glassman and Democrats Sandra Kennedy and Kiana Sears) in saying he would support Commissioner Robert Burns in his thus-far lonely efforts to force APS to open its books and show whether it secretly spent $3.2 million in 2014 to elect Forese and another of its favored regulators to the commission.

Now we learn that he turns to APS when discussing energy policy supposedly set by regulators and he doesn’t return a call to explain that curious fact and the whole thing gives me to cause to wonder.

If the sock fits...