Every month AzCaNE invites one of our prominent stakeholders to present their topic of interest or project to our executive committee, and our external collaborators and stakeholders. The topics can range across the range of pathways towards carbon-neutrality. Please contact us if you are interested in attending our ongoing series! Date: 4th Tuesday of every month

AzCaNE hosted its third in a series two-day workshop open to the public, with seven panels, 26 panelists, and nearly a hundred participants. The workshop brought together the public, students, university, utilities, industry, Tribal Nations, nonprofits, and government/state agencies. Our intended outcomes were to: 1) Support informed decisions on carbon-reduction strategies. 2) Explore innovative solutions to address challenges 3) Foster collaboration and strengthen connections among diverse stakeholders.  

AzCaNE convened a diverse group of stakeholders to discuss how low-CI H₂ production could be supported in Arizona without compromising water sustainability, noting low-CI H₂’s relatively modest water demand and the potential for voluntary reallocation of sustainable water supplies. AzCaNE also examined how Treasury’s 45V Clean Hydrogen Production tax credit rules could influence low-CI H₂ project development in Arizona.

Bill Brandt, Director of Strategic Integration at Arizona State University, highlights how Biomass-to-X pathways in Northern Arizona could move from promising to investment-grade, focusing on feedstock certainty, governance structures, and market design needed to support commercially viable projects.

This week’s Roundtable reviewed recent events on how recent energy developments, such as natural gas infrastructure, energy storage growth, policy actions, and regional investments, could shape Arizona’s energy reliability and resource mix over the next decade.

Matt Tomich, President of the nonprofit Energy Vision, examined opportunities to convert Arizona’s organic waste streams into clean fuels pathways, including renewable natural gas, in order to reduce methane emissions, create local economic value, and support near-term clean fuel deployment.

Aroon Vijaykar, Senior Vice President of Emerald AI, discussed how flexible, software-based workload orchestration can enable energy-intensive AI data centers to operate as grid-responsive assets, helping manage rapid load growth while supporting power system reliability without waiting for new infrastructure.

Discussion leaders Bill Brandt, Jeffrey Jacobs, Edward Saltzberg, and Geetesh Veeravalli explored what it would take for Northern Arizona to develop a climate-smart industrial hub, including opportunities and risks in scaling biomass-based value chains, the importance of stable feedstock supply, and the role of data, tools, and public–private partnerships in enabling coordinated investment and action.

Ellen B. Stechel, Executive Director of AzCaNE, reviewed recent Arizona and regional developments, including large-scale solar and battery storage projects, low carbon-intensity H2 initiatives, and new low-carbon energy financing, which stakeholders highlighting what these concrete signals could indicate about near-term deployment, infrastructure readiness, and investment conditions.

Neha Chhetri, Research Professional for AzCaNE, reflected on outcomes from the January 2025 Clean Hydrogen and Beyond workshop, with discussion spanning water use in low carbon-intensity H2, mining and critical minerals, bio-waste utilization, carbon capture and storage, regional low carbon-intensity H2 development, workforce needs, and industry perspectives on scaling low-carbon energy solutions across the Southwest.

Stakeholders discussed global clean energy and low-carbon fuels trends, supply chain concentration, workforce shifts, and policy uncertainty, and what these dynamics mean for building commercially viable low-carbon fuels pathways in the Southwest.