AriSEIA Files Ethical Concerns Against Project Bella

READ THE FILING

Arizona Power Plant and Line Siting Committee
Arizona Corporation Commission
1200 W. Washington Street
Phoenix, AZ 85007
 
RE: Bella Project, L-21314A-24-0144-00233
 
Dear Chairman and Committee Members,
 
The Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association (AriSEIA) was not originally planning to engage in this docket. However, in observing the start of the hearing, we noticed the attorney for the Applicant lie to the tribunal in the opening statement. Mr. Moyes said that gas plants are “clean.” Rule 42 of the Arizona Rules of Professional Conduct prohibits an attorney from knowingly making a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal. ER 3.3. Gas is not clean by any definition. The Department of Energy (DOE) lists clean energy types as: solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, bioenergy, nuclear, and hydrogen.[1] According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), “clean energy” means energy resources that produce no greenhouse gases, which includes hydro, geothermal, solar, wind, nuclear, and sometimes bioenergy.[2] According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), clean energy is renewable energy, energy efficiency, and efficient combined heat and power.[3]
 
According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), natural gas has less greenhouse gas emissions than coal or oil. However, even then, “[t]he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that in 2021, methane emissions from natural gas and petroleum systems and from abandoned oil and natural gas wells were the source of about 33% of total U.S. methane emissions and about 4% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.”[4] We are not aware of any credible resource that defines gas a “clean.”
 
The Applicant lying to the tribunal at all, let alone within a few minutes of the hearing commencing, should be cause for concern and we encourage you to strenuously review the veracity of the information presented by the Applicant and, certainly, by their attorney.
 
Further, within the first panel of witnesses, the panel seems to be attempting to speak under oath for the Arizona utilities. The Applicant is not a utility and has no ability to speak for the utilities or their coal retirement plans. The Arizona Corporation Commission just held an integrated resource plan (IRP) workshop last week in which the utilities confirmed their coal retirement dates. It is entirely speculative and inappropriate for the Applicant to be testifying under oath about any changes to those retirement dates or any other utility business plans.
 
The Applicant also mischaracterized California Independent System Operator (CAISO) outages. It was unclear from the testimony, but presumably the panel was speaking to 2020 outages in California. Gas plant outages played a significant role in those outages. CAISO has issued a Root Cause Analysis.[5]
 
We are gravely concerned with the credibility of this Applicant and would encourage you to strenuously review this application. We recommend you ask who is buying this power and also ask questions about a) Arizona gas pipeline constraints and b) whether or not these turbines can be run on 100% hydrogen by when and at what cost. It may be more appropriate to deny this application and focus on applications from known entities in Arizona that can at least avoid lying on the record.
 
Respectfully,
/s/ Autumn T. Johnson
Executive Director
AriSEIA 
(520) 240-4757
[email protected]

[1] U.S. DOE, Clean Energy, available here https://www.energy.gov/clean-energy.

[2] MIT, Climate Portal, available here https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/what-clean-energy-any-kind-energy-completely-clean.

[3] U.S. EPA, Lean About Energy and its Impact on the Environment, available here https://www.epa.gov/energy/learn-about-energy-and-its-impact-environment#:~:text=reduce%20my%20impact?-,What%20is%20clean%20energy?,pollution%20emitted%20as%20a%20result..

[4] U.S. EIA, Natural Gas Explained, available here https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/natural-gas-and-the-environment.php. 

[5] CAISO, Root Cause Analysis, available here https://www.caiso.com/Documents/Final-Root-Cause-Analysis-Mid-August-2020-Extreme-Heat-Wave.pdf.