PHOENIX — Arizona utilities Tucson Electric Power Company (TEP) and Arizona Public Service (APS) filed their 2026 Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs) on Friday that evaluate how utilities will obtain energy for the next 15 years. While their plans include new renewable energy and storage, they continue to spend on fossil fuels, building new gas, and in the case of APS, extending coal use. Instead of facilitating a timely transition to affordable, clean energy, both utilities — and especially APS — continue an expensive dependence on fossil fuels that keep ratepayers in a dangerous cycle, paying the price for decades.

Arizonans already experience some of the highest electric bills in the country, with some of the most planned gas in the country. Yet, instead of easing energy burden and saving its customers millions of dollars, APS prolongs costly coal operations at the Four Corners coal plant, worsening climate impacts, increasing air pollution, and threatening public health.

Of all the state’s utilities, APS has the most planned fossil gas , adding over 4,000 MW of gas by 2041. APS’s gas projects include the planned Desert Sun Power Plant and the Redhawk Expansion Project, which includes constructing eight new methane gas-fired generating turbines in Maricopa County. It has also signed a coal supply contract extension to resuscitate its Four Corners Plant , abandoning APS’s previous plan to exit the plant in 2031 and instead extending coal-fired operations to 2038. In a pending case before the Arizona Corporation Commission, APS is also proposing a 14% rate hike that would increase the average residential customer’s utility bill by roughly $240 per year.

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