A campaign to raise Arizona’s share of renewable energy has filed the proposed constitutional amendment with state election officials.

The ballot measure, Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona, would require the state’s public utilities to get half of their power from renewable resources, including solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower by 2030.

Ten percent of that electricity would specifically come from distributed energy resources like rooftop solar.

Arizona State University Professor Kris Mayes helped craft the current clean energy target of 15 percent by 2025 while serving on the Arizona Corporation Commission.

She said this initiative resembles the existing policy, but bumps up the target.   

“Because renewable energy is now cheaper than central scale fossil fuel plants, this proposal will actually help ratepayers … to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars,” Mayes said.

"We now have the lowest renewable energy standard of all the states in the southwest and it's probably high time to allow Arizonans to decide," she said.

The ballot measure has local support from groups like the Arizona Asthma Coalition and the backing of a national advocacy group founded by progressive billionaire and activist Tom Steyer.

The new clean energy target would not include the Salt River Project.

An opposition group called Arizonans for Affordable Electricity has already formed.

“This initiative attempts to hijack the constitution and prescribes very specific requirements in terms of the kind of energy that should be produced and in what proportion,” said Matt Benson, a spokesperson for the group.

“Anytime you come in and do that it is necessarily going to raise rates,” he said.

Arizona Public Service’s parent company Pinnacle West Capital Corporation is funding the new group, Benson said.

Supporters of the renewable energy initiative now need to gather more than 220,000 signatures to get it on the ballot as a constitutional amendment this November.