The Renewables Battle Underway in Arizona

1. Apache County, Arizona – Renewables developers are trying to head off restrictions in a coveted region of the sun-swept Arizona desert.

• I’ve detailed how this county is a crucial battleground in the fight over local restrictions on renewable energy. So profound the conflict has been over renewables in Apache County that it helped spur a failed campaign to enact a statewide pause on wind development.
• Well, the next engagement is underway: On June 3, the Apache County Planning and Zoning Commission recommended a temporary moratorium on future solar and wind development, responding to resident-run campaigns against specific projects.
• I’ve noticed large advocacy non-profits have begun running hyperlocal letter campaigns to the Apache County Board of Supervisors asking pro-renewables voices to weigh in against the moratorium. Arizonans for a Clean Economy is running a sponsored ad on Google, resulting in a letter campaign popping up if you search renewable energy and the name of the state. “Send a letter today and ask your Supervisor to support policies that unleash Arizona’s energy potential while keeping costs low, conserving our water, and creating energy independence for Apache County,” their letter-writing website states.
• Meanwhile, Veterans Power America, a national organization, is asking people to tell the board: “Clean energy projects can bring new revenue and economic opportunity to Apache County for Veterans like us. Don’t shut the door on progress.” (For what it's worth, I learned of this ad from anti-wind activists complaining about it on Facebook.)
• What happens now is a procedural waiting game. The county will now go through a public notice and comment process ahead of formal consideration of the planning and zoning commission’s recommendations. While a decision isn’t imminent, I will be watching this one like the area’s sharp-shinned hawk.

2. Montgomery County, Alabama – A so-called “AI watchman” has won the GOP nomination for Alabama Public Service Commission, indicating how deeply frustrations run in red states against the nascent infrastructure buildout for artificial intelligence.

• Former state auditor Jim “Zig” Zeigler won a runoff for the nomination on Tuesday, defeating incumbent commissioner Chris Beeker. Zeigler, a public critic of data centers and renewable energy projects, won the nomination by at least 8,000 votes according to public reporting.
• Zeigler ran a campaign critical of the PSC’s decision to approve the power agreement for Silicon Ranch’s solar project in Stockton – the proposal that motivated a now defunct push to ban new solar across the state. As I’ve previously explained, that solar farm is often considered linked to Meta’s data center buildout in the Montgomery metro area to the north.
• “Alabama has been targeted by massive data centers and solar farms. They can ruin your community, consume water, and drive your electric bills up. No one in Montgomery is overseeing this,” Zeigler said in an election ad spotlighted on his campaign website. His slogan? “Your watchman.”
• This is quite significant for many reasons. Of course, Zeigler’s now likely to win the Public Service Commission seat and then have a decision-making role in state energy policy. Nationally, this is a bellwether for future success should Republicans seek to win primary campaigns against energy regulators by bashing past decisions on data centers and renewable energy.

3. Goodhue County, Minnesota – The mayor of a small city at the center of a significant data center conflict abruptly resigned, indicating further municipal dominoes will fall because of the AI data center backlash.

• David Friese, mayor of Minnesota city Pine Island, stepped down from his post this week shortly after work on a large hyperscale data center – Google’s Project Skyway – was halted under court order. The legal edict resulted from litigation filed on behalf of nearby landowners by Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which argued Skyway was not properly reviewed by the city.
• The brief statement did not address data center development but noted the position would be “open for election in 2026.” Temporarily a sitting city councilor, Vernon Pahl, will hold the position until a successor is chosen by the city government.
• Of note: the data center debate in Pine Island has grown so intense that city officials instituted a new public input decorum rule asking for “no name-calling.” Let’s see how long that stops them!

4. Reno County, Kansas – We close this week’s Hotspots with a county rejecting a data center moratorium.

• This week commissioners in this rural Kansas county said no to saying no, voting down a proposed temporary ban on data centers and battery storage facilities. Richard Winger, one of the county commissioners, compared the idea to banning railcars from passing through their area because of hypothetical harms, noting there are no large-scale data centers being proposed in the county.
• “You want to ban this because it has a very minute chance for danger, when we have 20-to-30 trains go through this town on a regular basis,” Winger said at the vote, per local reports. “We had a derailment not too long ago. Luckily it wasn’t hauling anything hazardous.”
• I think we’re going to see more Wingers pop up in the coming weeks and months ahead as the backlash to AI data centers starts to foment its own backlash.