Two companies that were negotiating to take over a coal-fired power plant on the Arizona-Utah line ended the effort Thursday, saying the challenges were too great.

As scandal erupted in the Republican special primary election in Arizona's 8th Congressional District, a Senate staffer was revealed to have exchanged suggestive text messages with former state Sen. Steve Montenegro.

The state’s largest utility wasted no time in spending money to discredit a ballot measure that seeks to increase renewable energy goals.

Navajo leaders expressed hope October 2 that the Navajo Generating Station will be able to continue operations past 2019, after Peabody Energy said it had come up with a list of potential investors in the plant.

In the 24-month report released by the United States Bureau of Reclamation in 2016, the bureau predicted a more than 50 percent chance of a water shortage in 2018. This August, the Bureau of Reclamation report reduced that projection to zero.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by attorneys for Salt River Project that SolarCity cannot challenge its pricing system. The appellate judges said they have no authority to consider the finding of a trial judge in Phoenix who said the challenge should be allowed to go ahead.

Coal supplier Peabody Energy is pressing the case before the Arizona Corporation Commission to save the Navajo Generating Station. Peabody Energy, the largest private-sector coal producer in the world, owns the Kayenta Mine, which operates solely to fuel the Navajo power plant.

Arizona saw a 6 percent increase in solar jobs in 2016, bouncing back from a sharp drop the year before but still trailing well behind the national average growth of 25 percent in solar jobs.

Electricity-generation markets across the U.S. are changing, which is to say they are modernizing. Our research shows time and again that coal-fired generation plants are no longer the viable business propositions they used to be.

The energy landscape is rapidly changing, however, and we are very possibly in the midst of writing a new energy chapter for Arizona.