Pima County, the city of Tucson and the Sierra Club all declined to sign a non-disclosure agreement this year with Tucson Electric Power, giving up access to the modeling data that is part of a major energy planning process rather than agree to the confidentiality terms.
The agreement is tied to TEP’s Integrated Resource Plan, or IRP, a planning document utilities file with the Arizona Corporation Commission every three years, sharing how, and how much, power they expect to provide over the next 15 years.
The process is non-binding but offers an important look into how energy decisions are made, including what electricity generation looks like in a rapidly heating region like Southern Arizona, and how controversial projects like data centers are considered in planning decisions.
It comes amid a year of community backlash over the Project Blue data center, which has left stakeholders wary of non-disclosure agreements around resource-intensive projects that obscure details from the public.
Some members of the resource council who did sign the non-disclosure agreement said they have not yet received any modeling data.
AriSEIA, a trade organization representing the solar, storage, and electrification industry, said they signed an NDA in January but had not received anything by mid-August.
“The utilities are working hard to hide the ball in the open,” said the group’s executive director Autumn Johnson. “Unless you get the data, I am not sure there is anything to do with the IRP other than line a birdcage. Modeling is only as good as its inputs and assumptions and without the underlying data you can’t access that.”
The scrutiny comes as the IRP process could overlap with the TEP rate case in which the company is asking the Arizona Corporation Commission for a 13% rate increase. Also moving ahead is Attorney General Kris Mayes’ case against the Arizona Corporation Commission’s decision to approve the energy agreement between TEP and Project Blue, which has an oral argument scheduled for next month.
The portfolios under consideration, which are reviewed by members of the Resource Planning Advisory Council over a year of regular meetings, include plans that would add more nuclear power or focus more on carbon-neutral resources. They also include two options that would add “high load” customers such as data centers.
An anticipated energy forecast slide shared as part of the council meetings shows that the energy load the company is currently delivering is expected to remain relatively flat, but that it sees “significant increases in load projected as a result of new large customers (primarily data centers).”
Given the ongoing local opposition to data centers, led by the No Desert Data Center Coalition, the next 15 years of energy planning are also likely to include a close watch of where this electricity goes, and an effort to stop it.
“Ultimately, no electricity should be going to hyperscale data centers in the Sonoran Desert. Just as we say not one drop for data, we say not a single megawatt,” according to a statement from the coalition, shared by spokesperson Lee Ziesche. “As we face increasing temperatures and drought, we must also conserve water and electricity, not waste it on energy guzzling hyperscale data centers.”
For the county, the outcome of the process “will affect the County’s emissions reduction goals, energy consumer costs across the community, and costs to the County for energy consumption,” Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher said in an Aug. 5 memo. “Depending on the location, type and amount of resource generation, the IRP could also impact local groundwater resources.”
Stakeholders question NDA use
To help draft the document before filing with the ACC, the company brings together a group of stakeholders to provide input on its plan.
This year, the company asked stakeholders who wanted to review modeling data to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Among the stakeholders are local governments, mining interests like Hudbay Minerals, consumer advocacy groups like Interfaith Community Services, education institutions including the University of Arizona and Tucson Unified School District, and business groups including the Chamber of Southern Arizona.
“A considerable barrier in this process is the provision of data and modeling — requiring nondisclosure agreements,” county administrator Lesher said in the August memo.
The Arizona Corporation Commission, Tucson Electric Power and city of Tucson said that using a non-disclosure agreement is standard for a process like the IRP. Tucson Electric Power also said the non-disclosure agreement is not related to data center projects.
The city of Tucson, for example, said it did not sign the non-disclosure agreement because the city could fully participate in the council process without seeing the information covered by the NDA, which was the specifics of a planning model.
Both Tucson and Pima County have redesigned their non-disclosure agreement process over the past year in response to the Project Blue process.
For those who did sign a non-disclosure agreement but did not yet receive any modeling data, Tucson Electric Power said its team was working through administrative issues and the data could become available in mid-August.
The Nature Conservancy said it requested data related to the IRP process, but were still waiting for clarification on whether a non-disclosure agreement was required before the information was shared.
Western Resource Advocates, a regional nonprofit that lobbies for climate solutions, said that while non-disclosure agreements are standard in these discussions they don’t always guarantee that important data is available.
“This is especially troubling when stunningly large new data center loads are pushing to interconnect to the grid, when the cost impacts and cost allocations are unclear,” said Gwen Farnsworth, deputy director of state advocacy at Western Resource Advocates.
State regulatory commissions like the ACC, or laws passed at the state level, can define what data access and confidentiality can look like in this process, Farnsworth said. The group has advocated for more information in IRPs to be publicly available, or shared with participants.
“The ratepayers are paying for the energy selected in these IRP processes, and the process is regulated by public oversight, so the public deserves transparency when costs impact their bills,” Farnsworth said.
The group has also been critical of Arizona’s IRP process in general, saying that its process is less robust than other states because plans are acknowledged, not approved, and that the state should not require all the utilities to submit at the same time because it creates an undue burden on staff.
The Arizona Corporation Commission said the current process is that IRPs are presented to the ACC, acknowledged by the commission and filed into a docket which becomes a public record. IRP rules are currently under review for possible revisions, which will include future stakeholder participation.
A public workshop to present the results of the 2026 Integrated Resource Plan will take place in October; the IRP itself is due Oct. 30 following an extension of several months. Stakeholders will provide comment on the plan this year, then in 2027 the utility will respond to those concerns.
Data centers, affordability at stake
An administrative law judge is expected to issue a recommendation and order in October on TEP’s rate increase request, and the commission could vote in November. If so, new rates would go into effect in December.
Affordability of energy in Southern Arizona amid increasingly hot summers is among the reasons stakeholders are watching the IRP process.
Tucson’s 2023 IRP promised to accelerate its clean energy expansion, continue to retire coal plants and bring new wind, solar and storage projects online. The company celebrated the expansion of its battery energy storage in southeast Tucson this week, boasting of the 400 megawatts of storage that could power nearly 85,000 homes for four hours.
But the landscape has changed since 2023, with public outrage over the Project Blue data center, along with a national push to build more data centers, stoking public concern about how future energy generation is being planned.
TEP spokesperson Joe Barrios said TEP will continue to meet growing energy needs with a mix of solar, wind and natural gas systems. Data centers would pay for the cost of serving their operations, Barrios said. “Large industrial customers pay rates designed to recover the full cost of serving them, including infrastructure and energy resources,” he said.
The No Desert Data Center Coalition, which has been at the forefront of organizing the opposition to a data center in Southern Arizona, said they remain concerned about what any data center projects mean for the region.
“We’re deeply concerned that TEP is continuing to build new, expensive fracked gas generation to power data center demand over the next 15 years that will drive up our monthly bills and contribute to the climate crisis,” according to the No Desert Data Center Coalition statement shared by Ziesche. “TEP’s owners, Fortis, told investors that making money off of new generation for data centers will be a big part of their business moving forward. TEP only makes money one way, through our electric bills.”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.
