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APS owns and operates a number of power plants located across Arizona and in Farmington, NM (map).
APS’ sources of energy during 2006 were:
Since 2003, APS has formally included environmental factors when evaluating power purchase agreements or generation assets for procurement. Environmental factors considered include air emissions of priority pollutants, carbon emissions, water consumption and source, and compliance history.
Our electric generating facilities use a mix of fuels including coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear, as well as renewable sources. Having a balanced fuel mix has provided APS with a number of financial and environmental benefits. This fuel mix allows us to enter into long-term fuel-purchasing agreements with our suppliers, which reduces our costs and provides stable fuel sources into the future. In addition, it gives us operational flexibility so we can respond to changing markets and current events. Our fuel mix has been a significant factor in our ability to decrease our air emissions intensity while continuing to add generation resources to meet our rapid customer growth. This is discussed in more detail in the Air Emissions section of this report.
The pie chart above shows that about 10 MW (1%) of our owned generation is from renewable sources. At the end of 2006, APS had a total of 106.5 MW of renewable energy capacity, most of which comes from purchased sources under contract rather than APS owned generation. This is discussed further in the Clean Energy section of this report.
Nuclear energy is an important part of our generation mix, providing economic and environmental benefits, including significant air emissions avoidance, which is discussed further in the Climate Change section of this report.
We also remain committed to our policy of producing energy from natural resources in the most economic and efficient ways possible. We purchase approximately 97 percent of our coal locally. When feasible, energy is produced from local and regional fuel sources in an effort to limit the economic and environmental impact of transportation.
More detail on our fuel supply and purchased power may be found in the Investors section of our Pinnacle West Web site.
Our 2006 net generation and fuel use is shown in the table below:
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