BACKGROUND: To meet international greenhouse gas reduction targets and timelines, needed to prevent levels of warming that will lead to increasingly catastrophic impacts, we have to quickly electrify almost everything. Cars, heating for homes and business, etc. Critically, that electricity must be generated by clean and renewable sources like wind and solar.
The Inflation Reduction Act was passed in 2022 and it includes funding which makes building new clean energy infrastructure cheaper than building and relying on fossil fuels. But utilities have to respond and take action. Georgia Power has and continues to slow walk the transition to clean energy. Right now, they are asking our Commissioners to allow them to build new fossil fuel plants and greatly increase fossil fuel energy procurement. This is not to keep our power on, but so that Georgia Power can compete for new customers and make additional profits. Over 80% of the new customers would be data centers which use massive amounts of electricity.
CLIMATE IMPLICATIONS: If our 5 Commissioners grant Georgia Power's requests, we would be tied to fossil fuels for decades. Cities and counties across GA wouldn't be able to meet their clean energy goals. And it would set a dangerous precedent for other utility regulators. Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority are also seeking permission this year to increase their reliance on fossil fuels. If their regulators were to also grant their requests, then it would put critical 2035 targets to decarbonize our national electric grid out of reach. The US would lose the opportunity to assume a leadership role and influence other countries to take essential climate action.
IT IS ALSO A SOCIAL JUSTICE AND CLIMATE JUSTICE ISSUE: Georgia Power is choosing to ignore cost-saving clean energy alternatives such as solar and battery storage resources and instead is seeking approval for a major gas plant expansion project in Newnan, GA. These additional gas/oil turbines would heavily pollute our air, impacting communities across Metro Atlanta and beyond. This would cause greater negative health outcomes such as asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, etc. for those most vulnerable from air pollution including children, low-income families, and communities of color.
Georgia Power is also proposing additional gas and coal power purchase agreements that would prevent the retirement of polluting coal and methane gas power plants in Mississippi and Florida. Further reliance on these fossil fuel plants would raise rates. This would put low-income and high- energy-burdened customers at risk of shutoff or having to make difficult budgetary decisions such as whether to pay for medicine, put food on the table, or keep the lights on.
ACTION SO FAR: The Commissioners have held 4 days of public hearings so far as they consider Georgia Power's request. The cities of Atlanta, Decatur and Savannah, plus Athens-Clarke, DeKalb and Fulton counties, formed the Coalition of Local Governments and are formally intervening during the hearings in opposition to Georgia Power’s request. They and other intervening parties, including several business and environmental organizations, presented panels of experts to testify. These experts attested that there are clean energy alternatives that are cheaper and safer. Almost 50 Georgia citizens, many of them students and physicians, also attended the hearings to oppose Georgia Power’s request. They made public comments about the climate and health impacts of fossil fuels, and they cited studies and data to back their claims.
