The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) yesterday voted to approve a new roadmap for reducing instate gas sales. The news comes a month after regulators approved a new energy efficiency standard for utilities.

On July 27, the ACC passed an efficiency standard that calls for state utilities to sell 22 percent less energy by 2020. Now, pending approval from the attorney general and a final vote by the five-person ACC panel this fall, the state’s natural gas companies will be required to slash their fuel sales by six percent by that same 2020 deadline.

The goal of the new standards is to spur those companies to come up with new programs designed to encourage home and business owners to use less electricity and gas — programs that will likely include rebates for customers who purchase more energy-efficient gas furnaces and boilers, according to AZCentral.

Two of those natural-gas companies — Southwest Gas and UNS Gas – are publicly in support of the energy efficiency measure, but are wary of what toll the new standard will take on company profits. Both companies have made their concern public by filing comments with the regulators in which the companies ask for measures to be taken in which profits don’t nosedive as a result of promoting energy conservation. If the new efficiency standards are put into effect, each natural-gas company in the state would have to propose a detailed plan to the ACC as to how it plans to comply. Stay tuned.