When political pundits call Arizona a key swing state in November’s midterm elections, they’re talking about the races for control of the US Senate and House. But it’s a down-ballot contest that makes Arizona a swing state in the battle against climate change: the race for two open seats on the five-member Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC). Depending on what voters decide, Arizona could either become a leader in decarbonizing electricity or it could abandon those efforts entirely.

Autumn Johnson, executive director of the Arizona Solar Energy Industries Association, says that if the two Democratic candidates are elected—incumbent Sandra Kennedy and Lauren Kuby)—then “that completely changes the universe of what might be possible at the ACC.” But if Republican candidates Nick Myers and Kevin Thompson both win, Johnson paints a bleak picture for residents of a state that’s on the front lines of climate change, currently enduring the worst drought in 1,200 years, record extreme heat that killed 339 people in the Phoenix metro area alone this summer, and a wildfire season that’s growing longer and more dangerous. (The Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter has endorsed Kennedy and Kuby.)

Until recently, solar power was not a particularly partisan issue in a state that sees about 360 sunny days a year, says Johnson of the solar industry association. Arizona’s most recent renewable energy standard, established in 2006, mandated utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025—and it was created by a Republican-led commission.

But that was before Donald Trump. Today, the Arizona GOP has climbed onto the Trump Train and Myers and Thompson are clearly on board, with endorsements that include several pro-Trump groups.

Like public utility commissions in most states, the Arizona Corporation Commission sets the rates utilities charge customers. But the ACC is different in two important ways: It’s Arizona’s primary governmental body for mitigating climate change and it holds enormous power to do so. The commission, which is sometimes called the state’s fourth branch of government, was created by the Arizona Constitution at statehood to be largely independent of the governor, the legislature, and the courts, responsible only to the voters of Arizona when it comes to ratemaking. Kennedy and Kuby want to continue using those powers to hasten the adoption of clean power. Their opponents want to jettison that authority.

“The Corporation Commission shouldn’t be setting policy,” Republican Kevin Thompson told Sierra. “That should be done at the legislative level.”

Candidate Lauren Kuby says there are several problems with that change. “It’s a part-time legislature,” she said in an interview, “and It doesn’t have the staff or resources to do the kind of studies required” to make energy policy. The ACC, on the other hand, has a total of 223 staff members, many with years of experience in electrical engineering, nuclear power, finance, energy law, safety, water resource management, environmental science, and regulatory compliance.

In 2019, the commission used its policy-making power to prohibit utilities from shutting off power to customers in arrears during heat waves, after a 72-year-woman who lived alone died when Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility, cut off her power over an unpaid bill for $176.84 on a day when the temperature was well over 100 degrees. Asked if he would vote to rescind the policy if elected, Thompson would only say it’s the federal government’s job to help vulnerable people deal with utility bills.

The two slates of candidates are also 180 degrees apart on the energy future they envision for Arizona. Thompson and Myers believe the invisible hand of the market is best equipped to choose energy sources. When asked about the market's failure to account for the changes in climate caused by burning fossil fuels, Thompson hedged. “There is something happening to the climate,” he allowed, but insisted that nobody knows “the correct level” of CO2. Besides, he added, “Plants and forests thrive off of CO2.”

Democratic candidate Kuby believes her opponent’s view of Arizona’s energy future is based on his past employment. Thompson worked for Southwest Gas, the largest distributor of methane gas in Arizona, for 17 years. “He's knee-deep in the utility industry,” she said.

Gas is the largest source of electrical generation in the state (at 43 percent of the total), and if elected, Thompson would be regulating the company he worked for. But, he argues, his background in the industry isn’t a conflict of interest, it’s a bonus for Arizonans.

“It gives me kind of a leg up,” he said, “because I can walk in already knowing how the utility world revolves.”

Besides, Thompson said, he’s not wedded to gas and points to his support for mini-nuclear reactors, known in the industry as Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs. “[SMRs are] going to be our energy future,” he told Sierra. “I think it’s our job as commissioners to remove regulatory barriers and pave the way for new technologies such as SMRs.”

Thompson said it’s Kuby and Kennedy who are too aligned with one fuel source. “They’re really focused on bringing solar to Arizona,” he said, and insisting that solar power is still too expensive and would threaten grid stability because it generates power only when the sun is shining. “The technology for battery storage isn’t where it needs to be for a hundred percent solar.”

That causes his opponents to scratch their heads for several reasons. First, they point out that the cost of solar panels has dropped by 85 percent since 2010, making it as cheap or cheaper than building new fossil fuel power plants.

Besides, they’re not advocating a switch to all solar anytime soon, or ever. What Kennedy and Kuby support is a switch to clean power in any form and with a reasonable time frame. Kennedy called her opponents' charges “a scare tactic” designed to make voters believe their utility bills will go up overnight if the two Democrats are elected.

They also point out that battery storage is already widespread and getting cheaper and more technologically advanced (including the ability to provide power to the grid from electric vehicle batteries during peak demand). Small nuclear reactors, on the other hand, are still only hypothetical. A 2022 industry report concluded that the single SMR project that began in the United States in 2000 is “too late, too expensive, too risky, and too uncertain.”

The competing slates also disagree on what the state owes the Hopi and Navajo communities that for six decades fueled Arizona’s prosperity by leasing their lands to coal mining companies.

Kuby believes some kind of transition program is needed to support coal-dependent and impoverished communities. The fact that over 70 percent of all unelectrified homes in the United States are on Navajo land is, she said, “a moral stain on our state.”

The Republicans are just as adamant that Arizona owes nothing to Indigenous communities, with Nick Myers dismissing any such help as “foreign aid.”

The candidates agree on one thing: that this election gives voters the starkest choices possible. Where they differ is on what the downstream effects of those choices will be. The Republicans say the ACC should end mandates—and let the market figure out what’s best. The Democrats say that the state’s vulnerability to climate change necessitates that the ACC maintains its role in directing utility policy to ensure that all Arizonans get clean, healthy, reliable energy at an affordable price.

Paid for by Sierra Club Arizona PAC. Not Authorized by any candidate or candidate committee.