CLEAN ENERGY—Joining Diane E. Brown, of the Arizona PIRG Education Fund (center) releasing “Renewing Arizona’s Economy” (from left) Glenn Hammer, First Solar; Dr. David Berry, Western Resource Advocates; Patricia Mathews, LWV of Maricopa County; Dave Castillo, Inter Tribal Council of Arizona; Amanda Ormond, The Ormond Group; Kevin Rogers, Arizona Farm Bureau. Former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon and others also participated.

Arizona’s current clean energy standard is to get 1.1 percent of our total electricity consumption from renewable sources, such as solar and wind power, by 2007. However, a new report by the Arizona PIRG Education Fund finds that developing clean sources to reach 10 percent by 2015, and 20 percent by 2020, would have substantial benefits for Arizona’s economy and public health.

The report, “Renewing Arizona’s Economy: The Clean Energy Path to Jobs and Economic Growth,” documents how investing in renewable energy would:

• Create jobs, increasing net employment by an average of 380 jobs per year;

• Increase the gross state product with a net present value of $1.6 billion;

• Help rural areas, directly generating over $600 million in property taxes;

• Save water, conserving a total of 23 billion gallons; and

• Reduce pollution, in the year 2020 by avoiding emissions of more than 11,000 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxide, more than 9,000 tons of soot-forming sulfur dioxide and 8 million tons of global-warming inducing carbon dioxide (equal to taking 1.5 million cars off the road) each year.

Representatives of the Arizona PIRG Education Fund released the report at news conferences in Phoenix, Flagstaff, Prescott and Tucson as the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s utility regulatory agency, planned to initiate a rulemaking process on the amount of clean energy Arizona would use over the next two decades.