TWW’s Arizona Director Doran Miller joined Steve Zylstra, President and CEO of the Arizona Technology Council, and Rich Reyher, Senior Director of Site Reliability and Cloud Engineering at PayPal, to discuss the future of clean and renewable energy technology in Arizona as part of the Phoenix Business RadioX.
The conversation explored the benefits to Arizona’s economy of wider adoption of clean and renewable energy technology, efforts at the Arizona Corporation Commission to adopt updated energy rules, and some of the challenges Arizona is facing as a state in its efforts to generate the energy needed to grow the economy while reducing the impact on the environment of that energy generation.
The conversation also highlighted the report released jointly by The Western Way and Arizona Technology Council in December 2020, which laid out a menu of policy options to incorporate the clean energy and innovation sectors into Arizona’s post-COVID economic recovery.
As Miller pointed out, in many ways Arizona is already leading the nation when it comes to clean and renewable energy technology. Arizona’s business community—and in particular Arizona’s growing technology and innovation sector—is increasingly demanding more clean and renewable energy options to meet their corporate sustainability goals, and Arizona’s utilities have voluntarily committed to their own robust carbon-reduction plans. And, the recent effort by the Arizona Corporation Commission to update and modernize Arizona’s Energy Rules will provide the market certainty necessary to continue to drive investment into Arizona’s clean energy sector.
You can watch or listen to the full conversation above or here.