Georgia Energy is caught within the fossil previous. If their newest requests are granted, all of us pays the value.
Cary Ritzler | February 19, 2024
| Local weather Change, Power Coverage, Excessive Climate, Fossil Fuel, Georgia, Utilities
Carbon Air pollution From Electrical Utilities is Hovering
The utilities that provide our electrical energy are chargeable for nearly one third of the carbon air pollution that’s overheating our planet. A long time of dependence on fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gasoline – has pumped carbon air pollution into the environment, resulting in the excessive warmth and excessive climate that made 2023 a 12 months of file calamity.
But at a time when the devastating influence of fossil gas air pollution is more and more clear, many electrical utility firms are persevering with a decades-old technique of blocking and delaying significant modifications that would faucet the brakes on runaway local weather warming, whereas persevering with to pursue long-term investments in fossil gas buildout. Their resistance to alter has created situations that bind us all to utilizing fossil fuels to satisfy our every day power wants for many years to come back, even when dependable, cheap, and clear alternate options like photo voltaic, wind, and power storage are available. With current actions, it seems Georgia Energy and its father or mother, Southern Firm, are digging in much more firmly to this technique, regardless of the state’s fast transformation right into a hub for clear power manufacturing.
A Two-Pronged Assault on Our Clear Power Future
Lately, the utility filed an Intregrated Useful resource Plan (IRP) replace exterior the traditional three-year timeline asking to massively broaden gasoline and oil vegetation, and doubtlessly even add extra coal to the state’s combine. This shock IRP exposes Georgia Energy’s poor planning, as they’re in search of main, expensive modifications barely a 12 months after finalizing their final plan, which ought to have projected wants by means of 2041. As a substitute, Georgia Energy underestimated, in one other of many miscalculations that find yourself costing Georgia Energy prospects.
Whereas Georgia Energy and Southern Firm search to power feed the Georgia grid with fossil fuels, they’re additionally preventing guidelines that would restrict carbon air pollution from their vegetation.
Final summer season, the EPA proposed commonsense guidelines to restrict carbon dioxide (CO2) air pollution from energy vegetation, which thus far has been primarily unregulated. If finalized as-is, the brand new EPA guidelines would cut back emissions from all coal energy vegetation and plenty of gasoline energy vegetation within the 2030-2040 timeframe, considerably limiting local weather air pollution.
However Southern Firm, has sought to weaken and delay the principles’ implementation, suggesting to EPA that the timelines are infeasible and that carbon-free applied sciences will price prospects. And our (elected) Georgia Public Service Fee (PSC) echoes the Firm’s speaking factors, calling the principles “extraordinarily advanced with an aggressive timeline” and saying they may result in elevated prices for residents and companies.
Versatile Guidelines with Many Choices to Comply
These are mischaracterizations. The truth is that the proposed carbon guidelines are designed flexibly and supply a number of cost-effective and dependable strategies for utilities to hit the targets. Choices embrace the utility investing extra in power effectivity to assist scale back demand (which may decrease the necessity for extra energy vegetation), creating photo voltaic and batteries as major power sources, and implementing progressive grid administration that reserves utilizing fossil gasoline for much less frequent use, akin to excessive winter mornings when renewables aren’t as available. Utilizing these cleaner alternate options would enable utilities to satisfy the necessities with out relying closely on the costlier applied sciences, like equipping fossil energy vegetation to burn hydrogen or seize carbon emissions.
A Probability to Select Individuals and Planet Over Income
Each the utility and the PSC could make decisions that may both decrease payments and scale back carbon emissions, or increase payments and enhance air pollution. The choices that Southern Firm, Georgia Energy and the PSC immediately will influence Georgians for many years to come back. If the utility firm chooses to spend money on lower-cost power sources, they may have much less want to lift buyer charges whereas supplying cleaner energy to the grid. If the PSC chooses to prioritize prospects, they’ve many levers to maintain the corporate from elevating charges, together with denying or decreasing utilities’ proposed payment and price hikes. The PSC may also require Georgia Energy to produce a better quantity of unpolluted, renewable power to the grid.
Georgia Energy’s resistance to a clear power future is not going to solely exacerbate the already-dire results of local weather change, however will even proceed to lift the payments for Georgia households, a lot of whom already wrestle to make ends meet. The utility’s new plan would enhance local weather air pollution at a time when individuals all around the world are dealing with the lethal (and dear) impacts of local weather change. It could expose Georgians to many years of unstable gas prices which can be handed on to us by means of increased month-to-month utility payments. And, in the event that they (alongside different utilities) reach delaying or weakening the proposed carbon guidelines, it should imply extra carbon emissions throughout the nation. Georgia Energy is proposing to guard their harmful “enterprise as traditional” in these most uncommon instances, and we’ll all undergo for it in the event that they succeed.
What Occurs Subsequent
The Public Service Fee will hear testimony concerning the Georgia Energy IRP replace from intervening events on February 29 and March 1st. Intervening events, like SACE, are stakeholder teams who file official testimony with the Public Service Fee. Click on right here to learn SACE’s filed testimony. Members of the general public who wish to tackle the PSC can attend the assembly and communicate in the course of the first hour of the hearings on both day. People may also submit written feedback to the general public service fee at this hyperlink, referencing docket quantity 55378.
The result of the proposed carbon guidelines will probably be decided by the Environmental Safety Company (EPA) below President Biden. You’ll be able to be a part of SACE in urging EPA to finalize strong guidelines as shortly as doable by signing your identify to this petition.
