Law professor co-hosts Arizona Solar Summit 2011

Professor Kris Mayes, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law faculty director of the Program on Law and Sustainability, recently co-hosted the Arizona Solar Summit 2011. Other co-hosts were Gary Dirks, director at Lightworks, a multidisciplinary effort to leverage ASU’s unique strengths, particularly in renewable energy fields, and Todd Hardy, ASU’s Vice President of Research.

Mayes, a graduate of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, also participated in the closing panel at the Aug. 2-3 summit at the University of Phoenix Stadium. It is the first in a series of ASU Solar Summits, including one that the College of Law will host at the Arizona Biltmore next spring.

The summit brought together industry leaders, major landowners, research institutions and federal, state and local government representatives to discuss policies, projects and collaborations necessary to significantly advance the solar energy industry, on a national and regional scale.

It included a discussion of challenges and proposed solutions associated with key topics:

• Supporting and growing the country’s leading industrial cluster in renewable energy in Arizona;
• Developing a blueprint for sustainable utility leadership in the renewable energy marketplace of the future; and
• Launching a program for the reform and integration of critical federal and state solar-based policy initiatives.

Before joining the College of Law, Mayes served as chair of the Arizona Corporation Commission and helped co-author the Arizona Renewable Energy Standard, which requires that by 2025 utilities must generate 15 percent of their overall energy portfolio from renewable sources, like wind solar, biomass, biogas, geothermal and other technologies. The Standard contains the most aggressive distributed generation requirement in the country, requiring utilities by 2011 to acquire 30 percent of their energy from residential or non-utility owned installations, like rooftop solar panels on someone’s home or on a shopping mall.

Mayes also helped establish one of the most ambitious energy efficiency standards in the nation, requiring utilities to sell 22 percent less energy by 2010 than they would have under current forecasts.

Judy Nichols, judith.nichols@asu.net
Office of Communications, College of Law
480-727-7895