AriSEIA Opposes Chino Valley Renewables Moratorium

Town of Chino Valley
Development Services
1982 Voss Drive
Chino Valley, AZ 86323
 
RE: Request to Amend the Town of Chino Valley Unified Development Ordinance, Chapter 154, to address Renewable Energy within Town limits on the September 2, 2025 Planning and Zoning Commission agenda as D.1.
 
Council, Commissioners, and Staff,
 
The Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association (AriSEIA) wrote to you regarding your pending solar ordinance in December 2024 and appeared at your March 2025 Council meeting on this topic. We have reviewed the moratorium on all utility scale renewable energy and battery storage. We strongly recommend against adoption as it is illegal and exposes the Town to unnecessary liability. It will also contribute to increasing electricity prices and decreased grid reliability, as well as the erosion of private property rights within the Town.
 
Proposed Moratorium is Illegal
 
This very issue came up recently at an Apache County Planning and Zoning work session on August 26, 2025. At that meeting, the Assistant County Attorney explained that the jurisdiction cannot just prohibit a land use. There must be a compelling reason and viewshed and loss of tourism are not compelling reasons to eliminate personal property rights.
 
Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) 9-463.06 specifically limits a city’s ability to adopt a moratorium on land development absent a justification based on a compelling need, demonstrated with reasonably available information. The Town has done no such thing. Indeed, Town Staff prepared an entirely different ordinance (2025-949), which you completely rejected and then upon a rushed and spontaneous vote at the end of a multi-hour meeting, directed Staff to simply draft an ordinance “prohibiting any additional utility-scale solar facilities, including BESS storage, CSP, and wind within the Town of Chino Valley limits.” The Town’s own recitation of your July and August study sessions includes no findings sufficient to satisfy Arizona law.
 
Further, there is no compelling need for the moratorium. The information presented in the various public meetings was entirely based on misinformation spread by renewable energy detractors, not science or economics or existing land use law.
 
ARS 41-194.01 allows any member of the legislature to request that the Arizona Attorney General investigate “any ordinance, regulation, order or other official action adopted or taken by the governing body of a county, city or town… that the member alleges violates state law.” If the Attorney General concludes that a violation has occurred, the Town has 30 days to cure the violation or the state treasurer “shall withhold and redistribute state shared monies from the county, city or town.” According to the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, the state shared revenues for Chino Valley are approximately $7.5 million.[1]
 
As a result of Prop 207, ARS 12-1134 states that “if existing rights to use, divide, sell or possess private real property are reduced by the enactment or applicability of any land use law enacted after the date the property is transferred to the owner and such action reduces the fair market value of the property the owner is entitled to just compensation from this state or the political subdivision of the state that enacted the land use law.” The Town would effectively be eliminating the ability of any property owner in Chino Valley to sell or lease their own private property for the purposes of utility scale renewables development. Therefore, the Town would be liable for reparations.
 
Proposed Moratorium will Contribute to Increased Electricity Prices
 
Electricity prices are rising at twice the rate of inflation.[2] They will continue to increase as long as demand outpaces supply. This is the law of supply and demand. Renewables are the cheapest electricity resources[3] and the fastest to build.[4] Local jurisdictions impeding the development of the least cost and easiest to deploy resources will contribute to increasing costs.
 
Proposed Moratorium will Contribute to Decreased Grid Reliability
 
There is currently a 5-7 year wait for new gas turbines nationwide.[5] Arizona has no existing gas pipeline capacity and a new gas pipeline will not be available until at least 2029.[6] New nuclear will not be available in Arizona until the 2040s.[7] Therefore, the only resources that can be built to meet increased demand now are solar, wind, and storage. The utilities all set new peak demand records this summer.[8] Further, a diverse resource mix and geographic diversity of those resources are essential for grid reliability because an outage in one area likely will not impact an outage in another part of the state, such as a storm.
  
Conclusion
AriSEIA asks you to vote NO on the 2025 Amendments to Chino Valley Town Code Chapter 154 Regarding Renewable Energy: Utility Scale Solar and Wind. This text amendment is a moratorium on all utility scale solar, wind, and battery storage in the Town and is illegal.
 
Respectfully,
Autumn Johnson
Executive Director
AriSEIA 
(520) 240-4757
[email protected]

[1] AZ League Data Portal, State Shared Revenues – Final FY 2026 Budget Estimates, June 3, 2025, available here https://azleaguedata.org/state-shared-revenues-final-fy26-budget-estimates/?utm.

[2] National Public Radio, Electricity Prices are Climbing More than Twice as Fast as Inflation, August 16, 2025, available here https://www.npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-5502671/electricity-bill-high-inflation-ai.

[3] Lazard, Levelized Cost of Energy, June 2025, available here https://www.lazard.com/news-announcements/lazard-releases-2025-levelized-cost-of-energyplus-report-pr/.

[4] Solar Energy Industries Association, We Need Solar and Energy Storage to Address the Energy Emergency, February 4, 2025, available here https://seia.org/blog/we-need-solar-and-storage-to-address-the-energy-emergency/.

[5] S&P Global, US Gas-Fired Turbine Wait Times as Much as Seven Years; Costs Up Sharply, May 20, 2025, available here https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/news-research/latest-news/electric-power/052025-us-gas-fired-turbine-wait-times-as-much-as-seven-years-costs-up-sharply.

[6] Salt River Project, Arizona Utilities Work to Lock in Critical Natural Gas Delivery to Power Growth, August 6, 2025, available here https://media.srpnet.com/arizona-utilities-work-to-lock-in-critical-natural-gas-delivery-to-power-growth/.

[7] Apache County Planning and Zoning Commission work session, August 26, 2025.

[8] Utility Dive, 3 Arizona Utilities Set Peak Demand Records, August 12, 2025, available here https://www.utilitydive.com/news/arizona-aps-tep-srp-peak-demand-record/757395/.