PHOENIX — Arizona’s largest electric utility is backing away from plans to stop burning coal by the start of the next decade.
Arizona Public Service says it signed a confidential agreement in September with Navajo Transitional Energy Company that could allow it to keep running the Four Corners Power Plant until 2038, KJZZ reported Monday. APS’s current resource plan assumed it would exit the plant in 2031.
Why APS says it wants to stay
In a statement to KJZZ, an APS spokesperson said the utility concluded that operating Four Corners beyond 2031 would be beneficial and would lower customer costs. In a post on its newsroom site, APS said its planning models show running the plant longer “could result in a meaningful reduction in costs to customers” compared with retiring it in 2031, and pointed to population growth, extreme summer heat and record peak demand. KJZZ noted that APS is facing unprecedented demand growth driven largely by data centers.
The plant sits on the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico, and its lease with the Nation allows operation through 2038. APS says it is the last coal-fired plant in its portfolio. Its two units produce about 1,540 megawatts; APS owns 63%, or about 970 megawatts, and employs about 250 people there.
What it means for the Navajo Nation
NTEC, the Navajo-owned company that supplies the plant from its Navajo Mine, welcomed the decision in an Oct. 1 release. Board chairman Tim McLaughlin said keeping the plant open adds reliability to the regional grid and supports the Nation’s economic sovereignty. NTEC says the mine employs more than 350 people, most of them Navajo or other Native American tribal members, and that taxes and royalties from the mine and plant make up about 35% of the Navajo Nation’s general fund.
The pushback and what comes next
The shift reverses years of planning around a 2031 exit, and it has drawn criticism from clean-energy voices; the outlet CleanTechnica framed it as an effort to “resuscitate” a coal plant already slated for closure.
Nothing is final yet. APS says the plant’s future will continue to be weighed in its integrated resource planning process, and it will file an updated resource plan with the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s utility regulator, at the end of this month. That filing is the next public look at how APS plans to balance coal, gas, nuclear, solar and batteries as demand climbs. APS says its current mix is about 58% clean energy.
Photo: John Neubauer for the EPA Documerica project, U.S. National Archives (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons). Historical 1970s file photo of Four Corners Power Plant in New Mexico.