Rogue Columnist

I arrived back in Phoenix to find the local newspaper editorializing, "Now is the time to invent a new Arizona." I thought the "new Arizona" was what came together to put St. Janet in power and had since been cleansed from the capitol by the Kookocracy. Anyway, on a Page One snippet (the highly formatted "product" is full of "snippets") we read, "Arizona stands on the threshold of a shimmering future…This place is redolent of change — Arizona is primed for progress." While it talks of "lift(ing) off the dead weight of the Great Recession and … start(ing) now to ambitiously reinvent our state," the overall tone of the package is very cheerleader-y. No edge. Kid gloves. The reliable developer-economist Elliott Pollack is quoted. Gov. Jan Brewer is given a column. The status quo smiles. Everything's fine.

No disrespect. The people that remain there are nice folks doing the best they can within the constraints of the huge corporate owner, right-wing extremists and Real Estate Industrial Complex. But the Arizona Republic under Sue Clark-Johnson had a few years of sterner stuff, when I and others wrote seriously about the state's opportunities — and the challenges it would take to achieve them. We had a few successes: ASU downtown, the Phoenix Convention Center, T-Gen, Science Foundation Arizona, all-day kindergarten and light rail (WBIYB). But the moment was fleeting, the opposition ferocious and the real progress was stymied or rolled back. It has been a decade since Mary Jo Waits of a more muscular Morrison Institute wrote the Five Shoes Waiting to Drop report. While it helped spur some action back then, the rise of the Kookocracy stopped it. All shoes dropped. As Waits repeatedly warned, "Arizona will become the Appalachia of the 21st century."

Back in the 1980s, when the Republic was independent, publisher Pat Murphy led similar efforts to get the city and state's attention. Powerful civic leaders — and Phoenix once had them — used the 1990-91 crash to form a new economic strategy and go after high-wage clusters. In every case, the growth machine overwhelmed reform. Why should the Great Recession, which hit Phoenix worse than most places, be any different. But my intention today is a deeper examination of where the state and metro actually stand.

After I wrote the first column on this topic, the Arizona Republic rolled out a creditable series on solar energy in the state. Among other things, it examined the recent setbacks solar has faced; did a close-up on what will be one of the nation's largest solar arrays on three square miles near Gila Bend, the $2 billion Solana Generating Station, and the forces that will challenge solar, such as cheap natural gas. It properly points out that Phoenix's two utilities get a small fraction of their energy from solar, and the "action" is on rooftop installations for relatively well-off house-owners — and even here the numbers are small. One is left to wonder who is running a hustle, a la the alt-fuels scandal from the early 2000s…

In any event, my intention has always been to dig deeper. The alpha tragedy is that the solar power movement was born in Arizona and the state let it get away. The International Solar Energy Society, one of the premier organizations in the field, was founded in 1954 in Phoenix. The original name was the Association for Applied Solar Energy. Among the founders were executives of Arizona Public Service. More than 1,000 scientists, engineers and government officials from 36 different countries attended the first two meetings in Phoenix and Tucson. The organization went on to become accredited by the United Nations and was based at ASU until 1970, when the headquarters moved to Melbourne and finally to Freiburg, Germany. The early research gathered by the organization is still in the ASU library collections. But the headquarters, brainpower and influence is long gone.

Neither fact is surprising. Old Phoenix had a progressive streak and an ambitious nature. This was before changes in the economy and a zombie-like focus on adding population and housing took over everything. Yet solar energy was very primitive and a gallon of gasoline cost 21 cents ($1.85 in today's money). There was no way solar could compete. It's still difficult. And the leaders of the state were primarily focused on winning the Central Arizona Project. But when people wonder why sunny Arizona isn't the center of the world's solar power efforts, the answer is simple and sad: It once was.

Arizona Public Service is engaged in a campaign to undercut solar power in the state. The 18,000 APS customers with solar panels essentially get a credit on their bill for the energy they don't use from the regular electrical grid. APS complains, as an Arizona Republic story put it, "customers with solar often see their bills reduced to the point that they are no longer contributing toward routine costs associated with maintaining the power grid. That, they say, forces customers without solar to pay the entire cost of maintaining the grid, even though solar customers use the grid to get power at night or when clouds pass overhead and to distribute their excess electricity." APS is asking the Corporation Commission to allow it to charge new solar customers an average of $50 to $100 more.

This has produced protests and at least one critical editorial. It is happening against a backdrop of efforts to "deregulate" the state power market (California, Enron, hello…?). Even the long arm of the Koch brothers is reaching in to support APS. The state's nascent solar industry is fighting on the other side. But with the powerful and little-scrutinized Corporation Commission now firmly in the hands of the Kookocracy — I'll make an exception for Susan Bitter-Smith — APS may well win. It would be one more headwind facing solar power in the sunniest state in the union. Perhaps worse, it distracts from the conversations we ought to be having about solar. With most of the reporting being "he said/she said" stories intended to avoid irritating powerful APS, it's difficult for most Arizonans to get the facts or explore the larger issues. I'll try to make a beginning in the next few columns. But today I'll focus on APS.

The company's argument is bunk. All customers must pay a basic fee that includes maintenance of the grid. But the attempt to kill solar in the crib — 18,000 customers out of more than 1 million — shows how the state's largest utility is accustomed to wielding influence and getting what it wants.