Despite being rejected by the Tucson Mayor and Council, backers of the proposed Project Blue datacenter are moving forward, after filing an energy supply agreement with the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s utilities regulator on Monday.
The agreement states that the customer, Beale Infrastructure, will begin taking service by 2027 and that TEP is expected to provide 286 megawatts of capacity by May 2028.
“Which we would be able to provide using existing resources or some other clean energy products, projects that are under development right now,” said Joe Barrios, spokesperson with TEP. “There’s no financial incentives or discounts and that ensures that residential customers and other retail customers aren’t subsidizing the project.”
Barrios said that when the agreement was filed on Monday, the utility provider notified city and county leaders.
Earlier this week, County Supervisor Andres Cano took to social media and accused Beale of corporate collusion with TEP.
“I don’t believe that the actions taken by Amazon and by TEP are consistent with what the public has asked, which is for us to not have this proposal see the day of light,” Cano said.
Cano noted that he was notified of the agreement via text message and calls the latest filing a slap in the face to the public process.
“I’m incredibly disappointed and the lack of transparency from the onset of Project Blue into our community, I feel like there have remained to this day unanswered questions about the impact to our region, on our water resources, our energy grid, on job creation,” Cano said.
It is unclear where the water source for the project will come from after Tucson Mayor and Council blocked the project from moving forward.
Cano said he has requested more information and that the matter will be discussed at an upcoming Board of Supervisors meeting.
TEP officials said that while the Tucson City Council declined to annex the property into the city limits, the project developer is seeking electric service on county land.
“As a regulated entity, TEP has an obligation to to serve customers in this area, so we developed an agreement that would allow us to do so while protecting our current customers from any negative impacts,” TEP said in a statement.
The state utility regulators will now review the publicly available agreement that states the developing data center campus is on a 290-acre parcel located in Pima County in a sale approved by the County Board of Supervisors in June.
At the June 17th’s Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Steve Christy asked what would happen if the annexation was not approved by the Tucson Mayor and Council to which Beale representative Logan Craig said, “Annexation is a condition precedent to closing, if that annexation does not occur, we will not be closing on the land per the contract so it’ll remain county-owned property.”
AZPM reached out to Beale Infrastructure for comment and did not hear back.
