You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Jim Hatfield, Chief Administrative Officer; Barbara Lockwood, Senior Vice President, Public Policy; and Jacob Tetlow, Executive Vice President Operations are also here with us.
First, I need to cover a few details with you.
It will also be available by telephone through August 12, 2021.
I know that the release is a recommended opinion and order in our pending case is the most significant development for all of you and both Ted and I will discuss that shortly.
But I do want to cover some operational and customer matters before we go there.
So as we progress through the summer season, I'm proud to say our team continues to excel in delivering reliable service to our customers.
Arizona experienced several dozen sizable wildfires in June with only mild damage to our infrastructure and minimal customer outages.
We have strong vegetation management and fire mitigation programs, as well as mandatory line inspection prior to reenergizing in high-risk areas.
And all of these contributed to the protection of our infrastructure and reliable service for our customers.
We also successfully navigated through an early summer heatwave that resulted in six consecutive days of at least 115 degrees and three days approaching our all-time peak demand.
Our resource procurement efforts and reserve margin standards ensured that we are able to meet the needs of our customers through the hot summer last year, through the early heatwave this year and we expect these efforts will continue through the balance of the summer.
Following the heatwave in June, July brought a relentless series of monsoon storms.
so it's good to see the monsoon back, but that does present challenges for us.
In a five-day period during mid-July, our teams restored power to more than 120,000 customers affected by storm-related outages and we effectively communicated with our customers regarding outage status and expected service restoration times.
Our field crews worked in wet, humid, and muddy conditions with no safety events.
I'm extremely proud of their exemplary work and the level of service that they provided.
With the weather we've already experienced this summer, it remains as important as ever to continue assisting our communities through our heat relief support programs.
APS is partnered with St. Vincent de Paul, The Salvation Army and Lyft to ensure that Arizonans have access to an emergency shelter, an eviction protection programs to cooling and hydration stations and have transportation to the nearest cooling shelter as part of heat relief initiatives offered throughout the summer.
This is another example of our effort to collaborate for the benefit of our customers, our communities in our company.
That focus on customer experience remains a top priority as we look to improve our JD Power Customer Satisfaction scores.
We are pleased to see a measurable increase in our year-to-date residential customer satisfaction, but we recognize there is more work to do.
We understand the importance of a high-quality customer experience and I'm grateful and proud of our teams for employing a continuous improvement mindset to drive change for the benefit of our customers.
So now on to the regulatory front.
As you all know, the administrative law judge issued the recommended opinion and order for our rate case on August 2nd.
I will say that we are disappointed and concerned by the recommendation, which would not appropriately allow for the recovery of important investments needed to serve customers reliably.
Ted will speak to our estimates of the potential financial impacts that the ROO are to be adopted by the commission.
However, I do want to note that this is a recommendation from the administrative law judge, it's not yet a final order of the commission.
A summary of the key points from the ROO can be found in our investor deck on slide 23.
From that you can see that the administrative law judge recommended a $3.6 million revenue increase or a non-fuel $29 million revenue decrease at 9.16% return on equity and implied 0.05% return on fair value.
The disallowance of the deferral and investment in the Four Corners SCR project and recovery of the deferral and investment in the Ocotillo Modernization Project.
There is no question that Four Corners has been a critical asset in serving our customers through the record heat the past several years.
Without the EPA mandated installation of SCRs, that plant would not have been allowed to operate and there just is not enough capacity in the West to reliably run the system without Four Corners.
We continue to believe that the commission and other stakeholders recognize the importance of investing in assets such as Four Corners to maintain reliability, given the challenges that we've all seen in the West.
And we've seen that as we work through the California will through order and the concern that the commission has expressed on limitations that reliability challenges in a neighboring state is imposing on Arizona.
So Four Corners is critical for us to continue to serve our customers and our goal is to continue to work with the commission to recover prudent investments and ensure that quality service can be maintained for our customers.
The ROO if approved as it is would put this objective in jeopardy.
So where are we procedurally?
We'll file exceptions to the ROO and that it currently asking for exceptions on August 23rd and then the commission will schedule the case to be voted on at a future open meeting.
We would expect a decision on this rate case to be issued during the third quarter of 2021.
If the outcome of the case does not provide for necessary investments to support customer growth and to maintain the financial health of the company, we have the option to petition the commission for reconsideration of that decision, to challenge the legality of the decision through the court system or to file another rate case.
And we will evaluate all of these options after the conclusion of the case to determine the best path forward to serve our customers and to provide value and predictability to our shareholders.
In the meantime, we'll follow the rate case procedural schedule and we will articulate and advocate the areas in which we disagree with the recommended order.
On the ESG front, in May, the commission voted to preliminarily approve new clean energy rules that would provide for a final standard of 100% clean energy by 2070 with interim standards, the first of which requires a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by December of 2032.
A final commission vote on the clean energy rules package is required for the rules to become effective.
We think we're well-aligned with the commission on the interim goals and expect to continue our current path to achieve 100% clean energy by 2050.
We've executed a contract for an additional 60 megawatts of utility-owned energy storage to be located in our APS solar sites.
This contract with the 2023 in-service date will complete the additional storage on all of our current APS-owned solar facilities.
In addition, we're working through our current all-source RFP for 600 megawatts to 800 megawatts of additional resources with decisions from that RFP expected in the third quarter of this year.
Our MSCI ESG rating improved from A to AA this year with MSCI noting our strong water management performance and decarbonization efforts as key score attributes.
So we made good progress through the first half of this year, improving our customer experience, enhancing our stakeholder relationships, and working toward achieving our ESG and clean energy goals.
We need to work through the recommended opinion and order and ensure that our perspective is understood by the commission.
With Jeff having covered our operational and regulatory updates, I'll cover our second quarter 2021 financial results.
I'll also provide additional details around our customer and sales growth and potential impacts from the administrative law judge's recommended opinion and order.
Our performance in the second quarter remains strong earning $1.91 per share compared to $1.71 per share in the second quarter of 2020.
Higher pension and other post-retirement nonservice credits, higher sales and usage and weather, all contributed to the increase in earnings, partially offset by higher operations and maintenance expenses compared to the prior-year period.
We experienced 2.3% customer growth and 5.7% weather normalized sales growth during the second quarter compared to the same period in 2020.
Residential sales increased 1.3% and commercial and industrial sales increased 10.3% compared to the second quarter of 2020.
The increase in C&I reflects the reopening and return to in-person work we are seeing this year compared to the second quarter of last year and COVID business closures that occurred last year and primarily remote work environments.
Given the strong rebound in C&I sales and continued residential strength, we are increasing our 2021 sales estimate to 1% to 2% growth from our previous estimate of 0.5% to 1.5% growth.
The labor market in Arizona is also recovering from the COVID pandemic impacts.
For 2021 through the end of May employment in Metro Phoenix increased 1% compared to 2.2% increase in the entire US.
To be clear, that's 1% Metro Phoenix compared to 0.2% increase in the entire US.
In 2020, Arizona was the third fastest-growing state in the US.
As a result of this continued strong population growth, Arizona reached the highest level of residential housing permits since 2006 last year.
This year, through May, Maricopa County has already reached 21,000 housing permits, which puts housing permits on pace to exceed last year.
We believe the relatively low mortgage rates, low cost of living, desirable place with more space and affordable housing will continue to be a driver and grow Metro Phoenix housing market and benefit the overall local economy.
This continues to be one of our core strengths of our long-term growth thesis.
Turning to our financial health.
While the recommended opinion and order from the administrative law judge is not a final order from the commission, we want to be transparent about the potential estimated financial implications if the commission were to approve the recommended opinion and order as written.
For perspective, the general rule of thumb is that every 50 basis point reduction in ROE equates to approximately $32 million in revenue requirement.
Regarding the potential impact from the recommendation to deny Four Corners of the -- to deny recovery of Four Corners SCR investment and deferral, as of June 30, 2021, the SCR deferral balance was approximately $75 million and the net book value of the asset was approximately $320 million net of accumulated deferred income taxes.
Because this is only a recommendation from the ALJ and not a decision from the commission, we will not be making any changes to the deferral at this time.
If the commission denies recovery of the deferral, it would likely result in a write-off of approximately $75 million, which is net of accumulated deferred income tax.
If the commission also denies recovery of the investment itself, we will consider all regulatory and legal avenues to mitigate any potential write-offs.
In summary, we estimate the ROO, if approved, could decrease annual net income up to about $90 million, which includes the non-fuel decrease as well as the effects of incremental costs we incur once rates become effective.
We're already a top quartile performer for O&M and are employing additional robust cost management improvements throughout the enterprise.
This magnitude of revenue decrease will be significant and detrimental to all of our stakeholders, including customers.
Regarding our financing plans, we expect to issue up to $500 million of long-term debt at APS during the remainder of 2020 to fund capital investments.
We will hold an investor briefing at the rate case concludes at which time we will provide financial guidance, including any forecast at Pinnacle West level funding needs.
As we continue to navigate through the evolving pandemic and the resolution of our current rate case, we will continue to focus on our commitment to our shareholders, customers, communities, and our team.
The fundamentals within our service territory of strong and diverse economic growth and increasing population and the general attractiveness of Arizona, our strong operational performance, our disciplined cost management all bode well for the future.
We will continue to work hard to resolve these current challenges.

user
compname reports qtrly earnings per share of $1.91.
qtrly earnings per share $1.91.
qtrly operating revenues $1 billion versus $ 929.6 million.

assistant