The Holbrook City Council convened Thursday, Feb. 9, during which the council received a presentation on the Just Energy Transition (JET) Center from its Co-Director, Amanda Ormond.
The JET Center is based out of Arizona State University (ASU) and works to assist communities facing consequences due to the closure of coal power plants, such as Cholla Powerplant in Joseph City, which will be closing in 2025. “ASU is working in this region to try to help communities as coal plants close,” stated Ormond, “We want to help communities if they’re interested in developing visions, like what could come next.”
JET Center hosts educational discussions to promote understandings of the impacts and options for effect communities, support vision exercises and economic redevelopment locally, help identify funding opportunities to plan for transition and connect communities to regulatory and legislative forums. All of these services provided are at no cost to the communities.
“Early action is essential,” explained Ormond. “Your plant is already really close to closing, but the other plants are a decade off, or they haven’t been announced, so getting in and starting to work with communities really early is going to have the best outcome.”
Ormond also explained that the transition has to be community led. “I can come here with resources, APS can come here with resources, other folks, but it really is up to the community to think about what they want to be in the future.”
Funding resources available to the community can be the state, federally authorized programs and utilities. “There have been settlement agreements where the utility will collect money from customers and make a payment to communities to school districts to nonprofits as a transition.”
Ormond also discussed rate cases, which the Arizona Corporation Commission holds to determine is proposed base rates are appropriate. Arizona Public Service (APS) filed a rate case with the Arizona Corporation Commission. “Interveners can seek funding and other support for transition by substantiating the negative impact of the Cholla closure.” The deadline to intervene in the most recent rate case is tomorrow, Feb. 16.
“Joseph City Unified School District is intervening in the case; they are going to make their arguments about how losing workers, losing students affects them and the future operation of that school district,” stated Ormond. Any party interested can provide public comment on the proposed Opinion and Order to decide the rate case from July 1- 31. For information on the rate case, visit the Arizona Corporation Commission website.
Ormond referenced a previous rate case where the Navajo Nation intervened, wanting a package of resources from APS due to the closure of Navajo Generating Station (NGS) in 2019. “The package included $100 million worth of cash, and a whole bunch of other details related to transmission or purchasing renewable energy and other provisions. So, the Navajo Nation and APS agreed on a set of items that was put into the case.” The case then went before a judge, and then corporation commissioners themselves.
“That $100 million was reduced down to $10 million. the commission said ‘we don’t think that the ratepayers, the utility customers, U.S. should have to pay the Navajo Nation that much money,’ but they did provide $10 million dollars.” That funding was in addition to other provisions. Ormond added that although APS and the Navajo Nation agreed on certain terms, the commission can still decide not to approve them.
APS is also agreeing to provide other things through their profits and/or shareholder funds. “APS voluntarily agreed, I think to buy 600 megawatts of renewable energy on or near Navajo land. So that creates economic development,” Ormond explained. Shareholder funds are not the same as taxpayer funds and are at the expense of APS itself.
Ormond also related how the Economic Development Agency US funded ASU to do a study of two different power plants to see how they could be repurposed for future use. “I want to make sure I make a very strong point that these plants are owned by the utilities. They were paid for by US citizens and ratepayers, but they’re owned by the utilities, they’re private facilities. APS has the last word on what’s been done with their facilities. But we wanted to look at what the opportunities are.”
The project will look at Cholla Power Plant and Coronado Power Plant located in Apache County. The study tasks are to catalog the assets of the plants, report what could be done with the plant, then develop an advisory group to give ideas and support on how to move forward. The grant was received in September and the study is in its planning stage. “In next quarter, we’ll think about an advisory group. So, if anyone’s interested, please let me know. This is a 24 to 36-month project. We’d like to get it done in two years.”
Ormond explained that JET Center has already started working with Joseph City and has held visioning sessions. “We came in and gathered the community and asked some things about what do you have that you want to keep? What do you think are your good assets? What might you want to do in the future?” Some ideas presented by the community were things such as biomass gas, small modular nuclear plant, battery recycling facility, refueling facility and a transload facility. “It’s not for us to decide what happens to this power plant. It’s up to APS, but thinking creatively about well, there’s these assets like the road and rail that aren’t necessarily owned by APS, and there’s land nearby. What are the types of possibilities that could be used going forward?”
Ormond offered JET Center to come to Holbrook and do similar vision sessions as was done in Joseph City. “We’d like to stay in touch if we think that there are grants that may be appropriate for the community.”
Several councilmembers expressed their dislike for the termination of coal plants during the presentation, to which Ormand had little to say as such issues are not in the purview of JET Center, which is to assist communities as they consider plans moving forward. No other business was conducting during the council meeting.
