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When demand for any product exceeds supply, the price will increase. As the price increases, people will either use less or find a less expensive substitute. Demand for electricity will increase, not decrease. Hotter summers in Tucson will require more air conditioning. Battery powered transportation will require more electricity to recharge batteries. Proposed data centers will demand massive amounts of electricity.

As demand increases, the price of electricity will inevitably increase. Tucson Electric Power’s (TEP) charge for electricity went up 9.5% in 2023; this year TEP requested an additional 14% rate increase.

Electricity is not something we can easily use less of. Keeping the lights on, keeping the temperature of ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥, hospitals, and businesses livable are not luxuries, they’re necessities. But we could reduce the cost by switching to a municipal electric utility.

Municipal utilities are common throughout the United States. In those cities, electricity usually costs less. Austin, Texas’s municipally owned utility, for example, charges its residents .12 per kWh, 1/3 less than the .18 per kilowatt hour (kWh) Tucsonans pay TEP. Why is our electricity so much more expensive than Austin’s?

Tucson Electric Power is a for-profit company whose primary goal is making money for its owners. It does this by receiving a guaranteed return of 10% on the assets it owns to generate and deliver power. The more assets TEP owns, the more profit they make. Naturally investors want TEP to use more expensive forms of power generation, such as coal, rather than less expensive wind and solar. It isn’t because coal is more reliable. The sun shines and the wind blows every day and sends more power to Tucson than we can use. That excess power can be stored in utility scale batteries for use as needed. Sun and wind are reliable. Solar and wind power farms aren’t adopted precisely because they cost less to build, not because they’re less reliable.

How does TEP’s 2025 request for a 14% rate increase compare to a non-profit electric utility? Pinal County’s non-profit Trico Electric has asked the ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ Corporation Commission for half that much (7.1%). TEP increased the cost of electricity in 2023. Trico’s last increase was 2017. Electric wire, poles for electric wire, and equipment for servicing those electric wires aren’t twice as expensive in Pima County as they are in Pinal County. If anything, TEP is probably able through volume purchasing to buy equipment for less. The only obvious appreciable difference is that Trico is owned by its members while TEP is privately owned.

Throughout the U.S. municipally owned electric utilities charge less, are equally reliable, and are far more responsive to community needs than privately owned utilities. Though the process would be laborious, we could make that happen in Tucson.

Tucson would have to terminate its franchise agreement with TEP. In anticipation of this option, the city commissioned a feasibility study by an outside firm which determined that a municipally owned utility would cost rate payers less. After terminating its franchise with TEP, the city would petition the ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ Corporation Commission to allow it to become a regulated utility provider. Finally, either a public vote or an action of the elected city council would be required.

Adopting a municipal utility would be expensive, but those costs could be amortized over years resulting ultimately in lower costs for electricity. A municipal electric utility would be reliable, more responsive to community needs and desires, more likely to utilize our abundant sunshine and wind to produce clean electricity and would be operated by a well-trained and knowledgeable professional staff.

Tucson’s municipally owned water and sewer utility has operated in the public interest for decades. We would gain from a municipal provider of electricity as well.