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New Energy Economy's mission is to build a renewable energy future for our health and the environment

With bold legal interventions, public policy advocacy, and grassroots action we fight for a fossil-fuel and nuclear-free economy that stewards both the health of our environment and our communities. A Just Transition to renewable energy is not just about reducing carbon emissions but transforming our energy system, as we do so we must redress social inequity, build people power, and foster economic and environmental justice.

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what's happening now

OPPOSING THE GOVERNOR'S PLAN TO RE-USE FRACKING WASTE

We opposed the Governor's "Strategic Water Supply," a plan to use public money to fund treatment and re-use of fracking waste, a process lacking scientific evidence of safety and necessity. We won, defeating five enabling bills in the 2024 legislative session, we won again in May 2025 at the Water Quality Control Commission where a rule was passed to prohibit reuse outside the oilfield, we won again in November, defeating a corrupted new petition process at the WQCC, and again in the 2026 Legislative session. Now we are defending the prohibition rule at the WQCC again!

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OPPOSING BLACKSTONE BUYOUT OF PNM

Blackstone is planning to buy PNM because it can profit off captive New Mexico electricity customers, who will be forced to fund the grid expansion necessary to power its data center empire. Blackstone ownership will result in crushing rate increases for New Mexico families and small businesses already suffering under federal cutbacks, tariffs and inflation. The willingness of Blackstone to pay a 23% acquisition premium over PNM’s actual value means they expect to get that extra money back from customers, plus a 9.45% guaranteed return.

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OPPOSING A PRIVATE EQUITY TAKEOVER OF NM GAS COMPANY

Bernhard Capital Group has applied to the PRC to buy out the NM Gas Company. As a private equity company, Bernhard would not be required to report any financial information to the SEC, making proper oversight and regulation impossible. Private equity firms routinely purchase companies with the intent to cut costs, squeeze out high dividents for shareholders and then sell the stripped down company after a few years. Care for service, ratepayers and the environment are not considered.

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RESISTING DIRTY DATA CENTERS

New Mexico is experiencing a flood of new data center projects, pitched as "economic development,” that will extend fossil fuel dependence at the expense of New Mexico utility ratepayers and our environment. The convergence of the AI boom with associated rising electricity demand, New Mexico’s weak and fragmented regulatory environment and expanses of cheap, rural land have data center developers like Blackstone, Borderplex and others salivating over our state. New Energy Economy is engaging at the local and state level against polluting data center projects that threaten our people, our water and our climate.

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FEATURED NEWS

LET'S BE REAL...BUSINESS AS USUAL ENDS IN CATASTROPHE, NOT ONLY FOR HUMANITY BUT FOR ALL LIVING THINGS

Yesterday a NY times reporter covered the public announcement of an Anthropic researcher and former Open AI employee who just resigned because “neither company is acting responsibly.” He wrote that the two leading A.I. labs are sprinting to build “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources” without building in appropriate safeguards. Another Anthropic employee admitted that "he believed the risk of A.I.’s

New Energy Economy

Appointed PRC passes rules to further erode democratic rights of public and intervenors in utility cases

We've seen this playbook before. The Trump administration has moved to fast track permitting procedures for fossil fuel projects, issued new rules proposing to eliminate public comment on data center air permit proceedings, and reduced permit reviews for power plants to 45 days. Now the Governor's handpicked PRC has voted to approve a slate of new rules to limit the ability of the public and intervenors to participate in PRC hearings, even as they acknowledge that the powerfu

New Energy Economy

State Land Commissioner rejects Spaceport Data Center and NM Attorney General supports our petitions against Project Jupiter at NM Supreme Court. But PRC passes rules to limit rights at hearings.

Today the State Land Commissioner, Stephanie Garcia Richard, informed the Sierra County Commission that the State Land Office will respect Sierra County's recently passed data center moratorium ordinance and "will not be approving any data centers, including the proposed Aetherion sublease at Spaceport America." This principled stance is important because Spaceport operates on state trust lands and, in general, local governments cannot regulate state activities on state lands

New Energy Economy

NM Supreme court rejects Project Jupiter bid to vacate stay. Also, PRC admits it doesn't understand the law governing mergers right after approving the buyout of NM Gas Company.

Breaking news - today Project Jupiter's bid to lift the NM Supreme Court's stay on the air quality permit proceeding was DENIED. Evidently the Justices were unmoved by their false insistence that the permit deadline is set in stone, or that the other parties in the case should be forced to proceed with submitting testimony when discovery and due process were denied. The Air Permit hearing remains on hold pending the NM Supreme Court's decision on our Writ of Mandamus request.

New Energy Economy

Groundbreaking study quantifies the loss of water resources directly attributable to fossil fuel companies in the western United States

A groundbreaking new study has identified specifically who is responsible for the loss of over a third of the typical annual snowpack in the Western United States between 2014 and 2024, and decreased streamflows of about 13 percent. The authors found that about half of those losses - 40 to 64% - are attributable to emissions from the “carbon majors,” 122 fossil fuel companies and cement producers responsible for the majority of carbon emissions. Who are those "carbon majors"

New Energy Economy

👏👏👏👏Today we welcomed New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez’s filings in the New Mexico Supreme Court supporting the Center for Biological Diversity’s challenge to the OSE’s expedited approval of a well for Project Jupiter construction purposes, arguing that “Delay in the construction of a private data center does not rise to the level of a genuine emergency,” and another supporting @newenergyeconomynm Emergency Request for a Stay and Petition for Writ of Mandamus challenging the rushed air permitting process for Project Jupiter.

The Attorney General’s filing is unequivocal: the New Mexico Environment Department violated @newenergyeconomynm (and other opponents’) constitutional due process rights by abruptly accelerating the hearing schedule and then eliminating discovery in an extraordinarily complex proceeding. The AG asks the Supreme Court to grant NEE’s Petition and continue the stay until the writ proceeding is resolved.

Most importantly, the Attorney General rejects any suggestion that Project Jupiter can be treated like an ordinary air permit, emphasizing:

“the unprecedented nature of so many of these fuel cells in one location, which prohibit comparison to another facility already in operation as there are none—in the world.”

Article in @source_nm as reported by Joshua Bowling

New Energy Economy has appealed the PRC’s decision to approve the private equity Bernhard Capital Partners purchase of NM Gas Company to the NM Supreme Court.

Now, after approving the buyout of NM Gas Company, the Commission has asked the Supreme Court for “more certainty and clarity” about the legal framework governing utility acquisitions.

For nearly 30 years the PRC has evaluated utility acquisitions under a public-interest framework that examines whether customers receive affirmative benefits and whether those benefits outweigh the transaction’s risks.

A utility merger must have a “net public benefit.” Customers must be better off than before the deal.

Every single intervenor argued that this was a bad deal for New Mexicans, but we were all ignored.

Thirty years of ratepayer protections cannot be tossed out the window to pave the way for private equity takeovers of our essential electric and gas utilities.

PRC Commissioners must follow the law.

Today @newenergyeconomynm filed an emergency request with the New Mexico Supreme Court seeking a temporary stay and writ of mandamus to halt the New Mexico Environment Department’s (“NMED”) air-permit proceeding for Project Jupiter until the constitutional right to a fair hearing is protected.

Our request does not ask the Supreme Court to decide whether Project Jupiter should receive an air permit. It is asking the Court to ensure that NMED provides opponents a meaningful opportunity to investigate the facts, prepare expert testimony, test the Applicant’s claims, and present our case before the State decides whether to authorize one of the largest industrial projects ever proposed in New Mexico.

Essentially our experts are being told to testify first and learn the facts later. If Project Jupiter suddenly unveils a new gas-supply plan, new engineering assumptions or new technical evidence, we are apparently expected to discover it at the hearing and cross-examine on the fly. That is not due process. It is trial by ambush.

Our Petition invokes the New Mexico Supreme Court’s mandamus authority, arguing that administrative agencies have a nondiscretionary obligation to administer the law and that extraordinary judicial intervention is appropriate where fundamental constitutional questions and the need for immediate resolution converge.

Yes we did! We filed a motion to dismiss Project Jupiter’s air permit! 👏👏👏

@newenergyeconomynm argues Project Jupiter’s application for an air quality permit should be thrown out because the natural gas pipeline that would fuel the massive Southern New Mexico data center has yet to be legally authorized.

In a motion filed Tuesday, New Energy Economy noted State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard has twice denied a Project Jupiter-related application — most recently last month — to run a portion of natural gas pipeline through state trust land. The pipeline, dubbed the Green Chile Lateral, is seemingly the only way to supply the expected 400 million cubic feet of gas the data center will require each day.

“Whether Project Jupiter will ever exist now depends upon an entirely separate administrative proceeding challenging the Commissioner’s denial of the Green Chili Lateral pipeline. That appeal has not even begun. It may take years. It may never succeed,” New Energy Economy’s motion states.

It adds, “The ability to deliver approximately 400 million cubic feet of natural gas every day is not merely one feature of Project Jupiter. It is the project. Without fuel, there is no electric generation. Without electric generation, there is no data center.”

The air quality permit is now the biggest barrier to the completion of the lightning rod project, which is part of the $500 billion, four-year Stargate initiative to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence for companies like Oracle and OpenAI.

Photos: @fcdx.da

New Energy Economy has filed an Appeal of the PRC decision to sell out New Mexicans in NM Gas Company buyout case at the NM Supreme Court 🙌

PRC Commissioners O’Connell and Nibert voted for the private equity firm BCP to buyout NM Gas Co deciding that when a private company buys exclusive, monopoly access to captive utility customers, they do not have to provide any meaningful benefit to those customers.

BCP buyout of NM Gas is NOT a good deal for New Mexicans
Raise your hand in the comments if you’d like to get involved 👏👏
👉BCP has only 1 year of gas utility experience
Customers will only get $3.29 back on their monthly bill for 1 year

👉There is only a 2-month rate freeze.
After that, BCP can apply to raise gas rates.

👉The Board of Directors will have only three “disinterested” directors, and all will be selected by private equity firm BCP
Implementing an expensive proposed IT system that BCP has failed to prove would provide any direct benefit to its customers.

The Commission abandoned its longstanding requirement that utility mergers produce a net public benefit, replacing it with a far weaker standard that merely maintains the “status quo.”

New Energy Economy argues that this unprecedented change in legal standards violates New Mexico law and undermines the Commission’s fundamental duty to protect the public.

Hearing examiners find Blackstone and PNM violated New mexico laws and recommended undoing the 4 million stock deal 🙌

Mariel Nanasi, whose Santa Fe nonprofit @newenergyeconomynm is a party in the case, said Monday’s recommendation “raises serious questions about the fitness and judgment of the entities seeking to acquire one of New Mexico’s most important public utilities.”

Her group has long been critical of past utility deals, including the failed takeover of TXNM by Avangrid Inc. just a few years earlier.

“They spent millions of dollars on lawyers trying to explain away a transaction that never should have happened,” Nanasi said.

“Today’s decision sends a clear message: billion-dollar Wall Street firms do not get a hall pass to ignore state law.”

As reported by Justin Horwath in Abq Journal

👏👏👏👏Private equity firm Blackstone is now under investigation for purchase of $400 million merger related stock from PNM without prior approval by the New Mexico PRC commission.

Investigative legal hearing into Blackstone will be virtual Thursday, April 30th (no public comment taken at this hearing)

Listen to Mariel Nanasi, Attorney at @newenergyeconomynm

The evidentiary hearing on Blackstone’s buyout of PNM is now on hold.

Investigation of Blackstone hearing will be on Thursday, April 30th

Last week @newenergyeconomy and @centerforbiodiv filed a Motion asking why the oil & gas WATR Alliance attorneys, who are seeking permission to reuse and discharge fracking waste in New Mexico, fabricated quotes from peer-reviewed scientific papers in their petition to the WQCC.

Now WATR filed an errata stating that their petition contains “minor clerical errors relating to the ordering and numbering of certain footnotes” and attempts to correct those errors by adding the actual source of their quotes - unsworn statements from a Dr Stoll of the Produced Water Research Consortium at a legislative committee meeting.

The errata compounds the WATR Alliance’s misrepresentation:

* The actual sources of the quotes were omitted while peer-reviewed studies were cited, giving the impression that the authors of the peer-reviewed scientific papers made those conclusive statements. When citing to a direct quote the name of the source is the proper citation. Misattributions of direct quotes are not “minor clerical errors relating to the ordering and numbering of certain footnotes.” They materially impact the weight given to an argument.

The errata perpetuates the material misrepresentations made to the WQCC by again including citations to the peer-reviewed studies as additional sources supporting Dr. Stoll’s statements, a representation that we contest.

None of the studies cited conclude that their “findings indicate that produced water can be treated to a non-toxic level in a real-world setting” as Dr. Stoll said in his unsworn statement to the Committee. Each article cited concludes that further study is necessary.

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@newenergyeconomynm

PEOPLE POWER

New Energy Economy's mission is to build a renewable energy future for our health and the environment

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR STRATEGY & THEORY OF CHANGE

what's happening now

OPPOSING THE GOVERNOR'S PLAN TO RE-USE FRACKING WASTE

OPPOSING BLACKSTONE BUYOUT OF PNM

OPPOSING A PRIVATE EQUITY TAKEOVER OF NM GAS COMPANY

RESISTING DIRTY DATA CENTERS

FEATURED NEWS

LET'S BE REAL...BUSINESS AS USUAL ENDS IN CATASTROPHE, NOT ONLY FOR HUMANITY BUT FOR ALL LIVING THINGS

Appointed PRC passes rules to further erode democratic rights of public and intervenors in utility cases

State Land Commissioner rejects Spaceport Data Center and NM Attorney General supports our petitions against Project Jupiter at NM Supreme Court. But PRC passes rules to limit rights at hearings.

NM Supreme court rejects Project Jupiter bid to vacate stay. Also, PRC admits it doesn't understand the law governing mergers right after approving the buyout of NM Gas Company.

Groundbreaking study quantifies the loss of water resources directly attributable to fossil fuel companies in the western United States

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