Solar Wind Energy Tower Inc. won approval from an Arizona city to develop a $1.5 billion project that would use ambient desert heat to create a draft to generate electricity, in a concrete colossus that would be the tallest structure in North America.

The 2,250-feet (686-meter) project, which resembles a nuclear plant’s cooling tower, would be capable of generating at a average rate of about 435 megawatt-hours over the course of a year, Ron Pickett, chief executive officer of the three-year-old Annapolis, Maryland-based company, said in a phone interview today. In July and August, the Southwest’s hottest and driest months, the plant could produce more than 1,200 megawatt-hours.