As the massive Project Blue data center starts to take shape in Pima County, both the city of Tucson and county supervisors are making a last-ditch effort to introduce new oversight mechanisms or push the center to stick to its big promises.
State commissioners are expected to vote on the request for Tucson Electric Power to begin providing hundreds of megawatts of energy to the data center — with Wednesday’s Arizona Corporation Commission meeting the latest venue for public appeal.
How to watch Wednesday’s ACC meeting
When: Wednesday, Dec. 3
In-person location: Hearing Room 1, 1200 W. Washington St., Phoenix
How to watch online: Click this link https://azcc.gov/live and scroll down the page to the “upcoming events” section.
How to participate: Sign up to speak in person, or remotely using the instructions in this guide from the ACC
The assistant city attorney to Tucson’s new top lawyer has filed a request with the commission on behalf of Tucson for a more thorough public hearing on the energy agreement, and raised questions about how providing new energy to the data center will impact Tucson residents.
“The very existence of these terms of the agreement raise the question of the impact of the agreement on the cost of electric power to other customers,” the filing says. “The Commission should order that a proceeding be opened to consider Company’s request, complete with discovery, sworn testimony, a hearing with cross-examination, and briefing.”
The Pima County Board of Supervisors will also discuss at their Dec. 2 meeting how an October ordinance to provide due diligence for heavy water and power users could be used to address the Amazon data center’s imminent operations.
Together, they show the efforts to exert some public oversight over the largest development project to ever come to Pima County — but one that public officials say has moved ahead without many of the standard channels of decision making and oversight.
Data center developer, Beale Infrastructure, said the energy agreement is not necessary for the data center to break ground, and that the company’s best-practice commitments are not subject to regulation by Pima County. The company is, however, working on an agreement with the county, they said in a statement to Arizona Luminaria.
“The goodwill community contributions and world-best practice commitments that Beale is making voluntarily are not subject to regulation by Pima County. We have made these commitments publicly, precisely because we value accountability and we fully intend to deliver on our promises. We are working with Pima County in good faith on an MOU to memorialize these commitments to the extent permissible by Arizona law,” the company said.
Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher said there were no other public votes scheduled or required by the county, and confirmed conversations between Beale and the county on a formal agreement. “Pima County has continued discussions with Beale Infrastructure on specific details and the potential for a binding agreement,” she told Arizona Luminaria in a statement.
Meanwhile, energetic community opposition to the data center has held steady.
Opponents working together under the umbrella of the No Desert Data Center Coalition have flooded public comment at county board meetings, took a field trip to the Arizona Corporation Commission’s November meeting in Phoenix and held a protest in front of TEP offices to protest the proposed energy agreement deal.
On Wednesday, they’re asking Arizona residents to wear red to the meeting to show opposition to all large data center projects in the state.
“We cannot afford to keep building these profit machines for billionaires that raise our bills and give us nothing in return. Together as communities, we need to imagine what sustainable economic development projects are that give our families a prosperous and livable future,” the coalition said in a statement to Arizona Luminaria.
Renewable energy credits
One major concern of data center opponents was how TEP would meet the center’s significant energy demand without shifting costs to residential consumers. Earlier this year, the company asked for a 14% rate hike.
The application to the Arizona Corporation Commission says TEP will provide 286 megawatts of capacity by 2028. The agreement is in the public interest, the application argues, because it protects other local power users from cost or reliability impacts. That includes a 10-year agreement with minimum monthly billing requirements, a provision that requires multiple years of notice before the agreement is terminated and a gradual increase in energy load over 18 months.
Now that request will go before the commission Wednesday.
In filings over the past several weeks, community members have flooded the comments section with statements in opposition.
Commissioners and TEP have also used the space to talk about some of the outstanding questions, including how much the data center would rely on renewable energy.
In a press release dated Nov. 6, Beale promised to “pursue 100% renewable energy for its Pima County data center,” as well as invest $15 million in Pima County to support education and workforce development.
Beale has promised, in the long term, to make investments that would “match 100% of energy use at its Pima County data center with renewable energy.” The timeline of that, however, is unclear given that the data center would need to develop new access to a renewable energy source, and any future change in what type of power TEP provides the data center would need to be approved by the commission.
On Nov. 20, TEP wrote in a letter to commission vice chairman Nick Meyers that the renewable promise will be met by purchasing renewable energy credits — essentially buying certificates tied to renewable power generated elsewhere to offset using non-renewables for a specific project.
“I can assure you that the power contemplated under the ESA will not be sourced from 100% renewable resources,” wrote Erik Bakken, senior administrative officer of the power company.
A recommendation from commission staff, shared Nov. 19, suggests that commissioners approve the power supply agreement, saying they do not expect providing power to the data center will hurt other customers’ energy reliability or immediate costs.
No Desert Data Center coalition has repeatedly contested this analysis.
“Project Blue threatens the environment and people of Southern Arizona and will send our energy bills skyrocketing, but for TEP it’s a good business opportunity,” the group said in a statement. “We deserve a public utility that will serve the people of Tucson, not Amazon. The ACC needs to stand with the people they are elected to serve, not Big Tech or a for-profit utility. We call on the ACC to deny the Energy Supply Agreement and halt this harmful data center for good.”
In response, TEP said other customers would not be subsidizing the project, and that TEP didn’t have the choice to pick and choose which customers it served.
“Large industrial users like data centers actually help keep rates more affordable for everyone. The agreement must be approved by the ACC, which has a constitutional obligation to set just and reasonable rates,” said Joseph Barrios, manager of corporate communications for TEP, in a statement.
“It’s a different project”
Beale Infrastructure originally wanted to bring the project into Tucson city limits so the city could provide water, but after city officials rejected the project amid intense public pressure, the company shifted back to the same county site with a revised design that uses less water .
Since the proposal didn’t follow the usual county process, it has left a few gaps, and left public officials struggling to tie up loose ends and brainstorm new accountability measures where possible before the data center goes online.
If Beale doesn’t sign a legally binding document on the details of what they negotiated with the county so far, it’s unclear how the situation will unfold, said District 3 Supervisor Jen Allen.
She also noted that the project moving forward now was markedly different to the one approved for a land sale by supervisors in the summer.
“This is not what we approved, and that is why we are now going back and trying to negotiate what would have been negotiated in advance, but that ship sailed,” said Allen, who has vocally opposed the project.
So many open questions with barely months to go until the project opens isn’t ideal, admits Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz. He has been largely supportive of the project, and says it will bring immediate union jobs to the county.
“The only currently scheduled public entity approval vote that we have that anyone knows about is the ACC evaluation,” Heinz told Arizona Luminaria. “We are doing this in the wrong order. It is my hope and expectation we get something beyond just statements and press releases.”
Heinz and two other supervisors — Rex Scott and Steve Christy — met with the Beale team several weeks ago, he said. The company wants to be “moving dirt” in January, using an 100% union workforce, Heinz noted.
Dec. 25 is the last possible day for the land closing date, per the purchase and sales agreement on the Project Blue data center.
News reports show that Beale is also planning a second data center for Pima County, this one in Marana, which has had data-center regulations in place since 2024 that include language saying the town will not provide potable water to a data center site for operations including its cooling systems or humidity control.
This story has been updated with additional information about Beale’s renewable energy promise for the data center.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.
