Category Archives: Georgia Power

New nukes increasingly bad business bet for Southern Company and Georgia Power

Harvey Wasserman wrote for HuffPost 9 April 2012, America’s 2 New Nukes Are on the Brink of Death,

The only two U.S. reactor projects now technically under construction are on the brink of death for financial reasons.

If they go under, there will almost certainly be no new reactors built here.

The much mythologized “nuclear renaissance” will be officially buried, and the U.S. can take a definitive leap toward a green-powered future that will actually work and that won’t threaten the continent with radioactive contamination.

Those are the stakes. And in that high-stakes poker game, it seems Southern Company is doing a little bluffing.

In Southern Company’s (SO) Q1 2012 Earnings Call 25 April 2012, its CEO Thomas Fanning revealed another little flaw in the project:

Continue reading →

Fixing the illusion of certainty in Georgia Power’s decision-making

Why is it so hard to get a company like Georgia Power or The Southern Company to get on with solar and wind power for clean energy, for national energy independence, and, most importantly to such corporations, for their own profit? Why instead do they keep investing in coal and natural gas and wasting our tax and customer dollars on nuclear financial boondoggles? Why did Cobb EMC back new coal plants until they had their nose rubbed in national shame about corruption and do nothing about solar until their shareholders revolted and changed a majority of their board? We don’t even need to wait for that forensic audit the new Cobb EMC board wants to get the big picture. Such companies consider what they’re used to to be low risk, and anything new to be risky. Why are they so stodgy, and how do we change that?

These companies have many decades of experience with coal and natural gas, so they consider them less financially risky. (Details like neighbors dying disproportionately from cancer cost a little bit to buy up property, but that’s nothing compared to readily predictable profits.) Even nuclear such companies consider not risky to them, since they’ve got the federal government and their own customers guaranteeing all the financial risk through Construction Work in Progress charges on their bills for power they’re not even receiving from the new nukes and agreement from Georgia PSC that cost overruns like those caused by concrete sinking into the dirt can be passed on to the customers.

Neal Stephenson wrote for World Policy Journal September 2011, Innovation Starvation,

The illusion of eliminating uncertainty from corporate decision-making is not merely a question of management style or personal preference. In the legal environment that has developed around publicly traded corporations, managers are strongly discouraged from shouldering any risks that they know about—or, in the opinion of some future jury, should have known about—even if they have a hunch that the gamble might pay off in the long run. There is no such thing as “long run” in industries driven by the next quarterly report. The possibility of some innovation making money is just that—a mere possibility that will not have time to materialize before the subpoenas from minority shareholder lawsuits begin to roll in.

But if the old ways turn out to be suddenly risky, change can come. Funny how Cobb EMC changed its tune after subpeonas started raining down for its former CEO Dwight Brown. Sure, he got off on a technicality, but it turns out Cobb EMC shareholders didn’t like Continue reading →

Coal ash at Plant Scherer considered harmful for your health

Penny-wise, pound foolish, that's coal and coal ash, we're all discovering.

S. Heather Duncan wrote for the Macon Telegraph 14 April 2012, Plant Scherer ash pond worries neighbors as Georgia Power buys, levels homes,

The home among the trees was supposed to be Mark Goolsby's inheritance. His 78-year-old mother now lives in the large, white, wood farmhouse that his family built before the Civil War.

But Goolsby says he'll never live there now.

That's because across the street and through those trees is one of the largest coal ash ponds in the country. It belongs to Plant Scherer, a coal-fired plant that came to the neighborhood considerably later than the Goolsby family. In the mid-1970s, Goolsby said, “when (Georgia Power) bought 350 acres from my dad, they told him we'd never know they were there.”

Those acres are now part of an unlined pond where Georgia Power deposits about 1,000 pounds of toxic coal ash a day. Neither federal nor Georgia rules require groundwater monitoring around the pond. The federal Toxic Release Inventory shows that in 2010 alone, the pond received ash containing thousands of pounds of heavy metals and radioactive compounds including arsenic, vanadium, and chromium.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that up to 1 in 50 residents nationally who live near ash ponds could get cancer from the arsenic leaking into wells. The EPA also predicts that unlined ash ponds can increase other health risks, such as damage to the liver, kidneys and central nervous system, from contaminants such as lead.

A massive 2008 spill from a Tennessee coal ash pond led to greater scrutiny of the dams that hold these ponds in place, and the EPA promised new rules for storing coal ash. The process led to broader awareness of a more long-term health threat: groundwater contamination from the ponds.

So what's Georgia Power's solution?

Monroe County property records show Georgia Power has spent about $1.1 million buying property near Plant Scherer between 2008 and the end of 2010. But the true number may be higher.

They're going to have to keep doing that until they buy up a lot more property, I predict.

Wouldn't it be cheaper for the future bottom line of Georgia Power and its parent the Southern Company to invest in solar and wind power?

-jsq

Southern Company CEO got 62% raise in 2011

What did Southern Company (SO) do to justify a 62% raise for its CEO last year? Could it be lots of special financing for the proposed new nukes at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River?

Bill Murphy wrote for citybizlist Atlanta 16 April 2012, The Southern Company CEO Thomas Fanning Got 62% Raise in 2011 – cbl

The Southern Company (NYSE: SO) Chairman, President and CEO Thomas Fanning got a 62 percent jump to $9.75 million last year, according to an SEC filing. He got $6.02 million in 2010.

Fanning, who has led the Atlanta-based energy company since December 2010, received a base annual salary of $1.06 million, shares worth $2.25 million, stock options worth $1.50 million, $2.46 million in non-equity incentive and $2.42 million representing a change in pension value and nonqualified deferred compensation.

-jsq

ALEC, bills to ditch renewable energy, and the Southern Company

Got caught promoting laws that encourage people to kill people? Double down on laws to kill people through pollution! That’s what ALEC is doing. And look who’s apparently a member of ALEC: the Southern Company, parent of Georgia Power, and proprieter of several of the largest and dirtiest coal plants in the country.

Brian Merchant wrote for Treehugger Tuesday, Two ALEC Campaigns Exposed: One Kills Renewables, One Boosts Fracking,

After major corporations like Pepsi, Kraft, Proctor & Gamble, and Coke all ditched the rightwing group, ALEC announced that it would abandon its drive to enact gun and voter ID laws. The group’s decision came after a couple high profile campaigns were launched decrying ALEC’s involvement in passing the ‘stand your ground’ laws.

But the group is actually stepping up its efforts in other arenas, as I noted last week. And two new reports, one from ProPublica, the other from DeSmogBlog, outline its new aims: dismantle legislation that incentivizes renewable energy generation, and preserve loopholes that allow natural gas companies to keep the chemical cocktails in their fracking fluids secret from the public.

This is the same ALEC that promotes laws like Georgia’s HB 87 that lock up more people to benefit private prison companies like CCA, which wanted to build a private prison on Lowndes County, Georgia. Traficking in human beings is not too sordid for ALEC, so poisoning people through polution doesn’t seem surprising.

Hm, let’s look at the corporate membership of ALEC, as collected by Sourcewatch’s ALEC Exposed. Why there’s The Southern Company, parent of Georgia Power! I’m frankly a little surprised Continue reading →

Southern Company wants even more special nuke loan terms

Southern Company wants even more special loan guarantee terms for its new Plant Vogtle nukes. When that or CWIP gets revoked, maybe Southern Company will see that solar is a lot less trouble, and more profitable.

The license authorized by the NRC 9 February 2012 for the new Plant Vogtle nukes is the first one in thirty years. Harvey Wasserman wrote for CounterPunch 18 April 2012, The Big Liability,

It’s about a proposed $8.33 billion nuke power loan guarantee package for two reactors being built at Georgia’s Vogtle. Obama anointed it last year for the Southern Company, parent to Georgia Power. Two other reactors sporadically operate there. Southern just ravaged the new construction side of the site, stripping virtually all vegetation.

It’s also stripped Georgia ratepayers of ever-more millions of dollars, soon to become billions. This project is in the Peach State for its law forcing the public to pay for reactor construction in advance.

Look on your Georgia Power bill for Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Rider, aka Construction Work in Progress (CWIP). It’s probably about 3% of your bill, for power you may never receive.

If you get your electricity from an EMC instead, remember Georgia’s Electric Member Corporations already participate in the existing Plant Vogtle nukes, so you’ll be on the hook one way or another for the new nukes.

When the project fails, or the reactors melt, the public still must pay.

And even before then, Georgia Power customers get to pay for cost overruns. Not to worry; last time nukes were built at Plant Vogtle, they only ran over budget by a factor of seven.

Southern Company’s existing Plant Vogtle reactors had an unexpected shutdown last year days after NRC said they were fine. And Southern Company says Continue reading →

Concrete flaws at Vogtle delay construction, require modified nuke permit

Concrete sinking into the dirt less than two months after licensing? One license amendment already requested and dozens more to come? Does this give you confidence in Southern Company's ability to build a safe nuclear plant without huge cost overruns charged to you the Georgia Power customer or you the taxpayer?

In mid-March the nuclear industry bragged about

Progress continues at the construction site of Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 — the country's newest reactors and the first to be licensed since 1978.

We discover that at the end of March Southern Company had to ask NRC for a licensing change due to construction problems. Vogtle Nuclear Construction Faces “Additional Delay” Based on Miscalculations in Foundation Concrete — News Release from NC WARN and Alliance for Nuclear Accountability—April 9th, 2012, Continue reading →

Prisoners as cheap labor

Quite likely you thought massive prison populations used as cheap labor were some sort of medieval tradition. Nope. Here’s an article that debunks that misconception and informs you about many other things I (and perhaps you) didn’t know about prisoners as cheap labor.

Locking Down an American Workforce Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman wrote for TomDispatch 19 April 2012, Prison Labor as the Past — and Future — of American “Free-Market” Capitalism,

Penal servitude now strikes us as a barbaric throwback to some long-lost moment that preceded the industrial revolution, but in that we’re wrong. From its first appearance in this country, it has been associated with modern capitalist industry and large-scale agriculture.

So where and when did it come from?

As it happens, penal servitude — the leasing out of prisoners to private enterprise, either within prison walls or in outside workshops, factories, and fields — was originally known as a “Yankee invention.”
First used at Auburn prison in New York State in the 1820s, the system spread widely and quickly throughout the North, the Midwest, and later the West. It developed alongside state-run prison workshops that produced goods for the public sector and sometimes the open market.

A few Southern states also used it. Prisoners there, as elsewhere, however, were mainly white men, since slave masters, with a free hand to deal with the “infractions” of their chattel, had little need for prison. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery would, in fact, make an exception for penal servitude precisely because it had become the dominant form of punishment throughout the free states.

In case you’ve never read it or have forgotten, here is the Thirteenth Amendment (emphasis added):

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Got a population you don’t like? Continue reading →

Austin Energy changed from anti-solar to pro-solar in one year

At the end of 2003, Austin Energy (AE) suddenly went from very anti-solar to very pro-solar. Formerly coal-smoking Cobb EMC is doing it right now. If AE and Cobb EMC can do it, so can Georgia Power: change in one year from opposed to aggressively promoting solar power.

Mike Clark-Madison wrote for the Austin Chronicle 5 December 2003, AE drops a solar bomb,

In a near-complete turnaround from its public position just a week ago, Austin Energy has announced plans to adopt specific, highly ambitious, and undeniably expensive goals for adding solar energy to the Austin electric and economic mix. At a town hall meeting held Tuesday night to discuss the AE plan — also the subject of a public hearing at City Council today (Thursday) — AE’s Roger Duncan announced the utility’s commitment to develop 15 megawatts of solar generating capacity by 2007, escalating to 100 megawatts by 2020. The AE plan also calls for a study of the “comprehensive value” of solar power — putting a dollar amount on the economic and environmental benefits to Austin, in addition to the cost of solar-generated electricity itself. This would determine the price Austin Energy would pay for electricity generated by privately owned solar installations, just as AE now buys wind power from third parties.

Georgians tend to think Georgia Power’s foot-dragging and disinformation campaign about solar is so entrenched it will never change. But I’ve seen it happen, and it happened despite people’s expectations set by the power utility, and it happened very quickly and very big: