AriSEIA Sends 4th Letter to Yavapai County on Solar Ordinance

Yavapai County Board of Supervisors
1015 Fair Street
Prescott, AZ 86305
 
RE: September 4th Supervisors Meeting, Hearing No. 7, Solar Ordinance  
 
Chairman and Supervisors,
 
AriSEIA has previously submitted three prior letters and two rounds of redlines on prior versions of the draft ordinance. Our third round of redlines is included here as Attachment A. We also plan to attend the September 4th meeting.
 
Acreage Caps and Setbacks 
Our major issues continue to be related to the acreage cap and setback requirements spelled out in Section 608(F). A cumulative acreage cap is unnecessary and conflicts with the Comprehensive Plan. Yavapai County spans 8,125 square miles, equating to 5.2 million acres. A 12,000-acre cap represents only 0.23% of Yavapai's total area. In comparison, Eloy’s 2023 solar ordinance includes an 11,744-acre cap, or 16% of the city’s incorporated area, and introduces a process for increasing this cap.[1]
 
An acreage cap conflicts with the Comprehensive Plan. The Energy Element of the Comprehensive Plan “promotes the use of clean energy sources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, and biofuels.”[2] The Plan is intended to “identify policies and practices that increase the use of renewable energy sources.”[3] It goes on to say that “[t]hrough the Energy Element, the County can encourage the efficient use of energy and promote clean, renewable energy production.”[4] Finally, the Plan also says the County will “[a]dvocate for the development of renewable energy sources that are not water intensive.”[5] Solar uses very little water. We included data on water usage for solar in our July 26th letter to the County.
 
The acreage cap on solar development in Yavapai County will deter our member companies from applying for waivers if they do not already own land, due to increased business risk. This restriction hampers the County's economic development and grid reliability. As shown in our economic impact assessment, even a 200 MW project could generate over $200M in economic activity and create hundreds of construction jobs.

Moreover, a cap might lead to a rush to build, potentially compromising project quality. We recommend removing the cap and evaluating projects on a case-by-case basis. You can still reject projects that aren't suitable for the County, regardless of acreage. If you keep an acreage cap, we recommend adding language, like that of Eloy, to increase the cap when needed without a modification to the entire ordinance.

The setbacks continue to be a concern as they are too large and overly complicated. We recommended specific parameters for buffer zones in Attachment A. If the Board keeps all of the setbacks as is, we recommend increasing the per project acreage cap to 5,000 acres.
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Waiver Provision
The waiver provision located in Section 608(D)(2)(g) requires two levels of review. As is currently written, the waiver provision allows the Development Services Director veto authority over a waiver and then also provides that same authority to the Board. We recommend only the Board have that level of discretion over these projects. We recommend revising the language to say, “If the waiver request proposal is deemed to be complete and in compliance with the above tenets by the Development Services Director, the waiver request will be submitted for consideration as part of the final application to the Board of Supervisors.”  

Grid Reliability
The utilities anticipate very significant load growth over the next decade. That load growth requires additional generation. That generation improves reliability for everyone in Arizona, regardless of the county they live in. Outages like have been seen in California and Texas will not spare Yavapai County. We are all in this together. Whether or not a project solely benefits the community next to it is not the primary factor. Everyone in Arizona benefits from electricity that was generated from somewhere else. Yavapai County residents get power from wind turbines and coal plants in New Mexico and solar panels in California and hydropower from the pacific northwest and gas plants in Maricopa County. We have an interconnected grid and that geographic diversity of resources makes the grid more reliable. It is not cloudy or still everywhere at once. It is not hot or cold everywhere at once. This is an asset. The utilities cannot just build solar in Pinal and Maricopa Counties. We all benefit from generation and geographic diversity
 
Renewables Misinformation 
Over the course of this process, we have heard significant disinformation stated about renewable energy. We have included a fact sheet on Solar Panel Recycling and Disposal as Attachment B.[6] Columbia Law School’s Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles is included as Attachment C.[7] We have attached a battery safety fact sheet as Attachment D.[8] And our economic assessment as to the financial benefit to the County from even a single solar and storage project is included again as Attachment E.[9]
 
Respectfully,
/s/ Autumn T. Johnson
Executive Director
AriSEIA 
(520) 240-4757
[email protected]

[1] Eloy, Az., Code of Ordinances Code § 21-3-1.39(B) (2024).

[2] Comprehensive Plan Update 2023, Yavapai County Government, Section 8.0, P.101, available here https://www.yavapaiaz.gov/files/sharedassets/public/v/1/development-and-permits/development-services/documents/yavapai_cty_comp_plan.pdf (emphasis added).

[3] Id (emphasis added).

[4] Id (emphasis added).

[5] Id. at 108 (emphasis added).

[6] American Clean Power, Solar Panel Recycling and Disposal, August, 30, 2022, available here https://cleanpower.org/wp-content/uploads/gateway/2022/08/ACP_FactSheet_SolarDisposal_220830.pdf.

[7] Columbia Law School, Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles, False Claim #3 Solar Panels Generate Too Much Waste and Will Overwhelm Our Landfills, P.4, available here https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1218&context=sabin_climate_change.

[8] American Clean Power, Energy Storage Leading on Safety, December 2023, available here https://cleanpower.org/wp-content/uploads/gateway/2023/12/ACP_Energy-Storage-Leading-on-Safety_FactSheet.pdf.

[9] AriSEIA, Yavapai County Solar (Example Project) Economic Impact and Tax Revenue, July 2024, available here https://www.ariseia.org/myths-busted.html.