Tag Archives: Southern Company

4 of 5 incumbent GA PSC Commissioners accept massive utility campaign contributions

Could contributions produce influence? Neither of the incumbent Public Service Commissioners showed up for last night’s GPB debate, just as they didn’t show up for the previous weekend’s GIPL debate. Saturday the AJC examined the incumbents’ campaign finance and regulatory records, and let’s look a bit into how they’ve acted as regulators towards their biggest indirect contributors: Georgia Power.

Kristi E. Swartz wrote for the Augusta Chronicle or AP 21 July 2012, Donors to Georgia Public Service Commission members vested in decisions,

Four of Georgia’s utility regulators have accepted at least 70 percent of their campaign contributions from companies and people that could profit from the agency’s decisions, a review of five years of campaign finance records by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed.

The fifth member of the state Public Service Commission, Tim Echols, campaigned on the promise that he wouldn’t take money from employees or lobbyists for businesses regulated by the agency.

Even so, nearly one in five dollars in Echols’ contributions came from people or companies whose business is affected by PSC decisions, the review found.

Together, the PSC commissioners took in nearly $750,000 in the last five years, records show. Two of them — Stan Wise and Chuck Eaton — are seeking re-election this year to their $116,452-a-year posts.

Wise and Eaton would be the two incumbents who can’t be bothered to show up for debates. Doesn’t make them look very responsive to the people, does it? Who do they respond to, then?

A review of major decisions that have come before the PSC in the past five years shows utilities have received much — but not all — of what they have asked for.

Georgia Power donors

In the past five years, for example, Georgia Power’s rates have risen 24 percent, although they dipped in June. The PSC must sign off on the company’s rate changes.

Current and former employees of Georgia Power, its parent Southern Co. and its law firm, Troutman Sanders, poured $52,650 into the campaign coffers of four of the sitting PSC members.

A Georgia Power spokeswoman argued that including Troutman Sanders and other company vendors in an analysis of spending “is false.” But critics say including them is critical to capturing the full influence of the utilities on the PSC.

Influence like this? Melissa Stiers wrote for GPB News 19 July 2011, PSC Nixes Vogtle Cost Check,

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Debate: Georgia Public Service Comission candidates this afternoon on GBP

Rumor is that, like last weekend, the incumbents won't show up for this afternoon's Public Service Commission debates, this time on Georgia Public Television.

GPB does still list them as "invited", with this schedule for today, Sunday 22 July 2012:

Date and TimeDebateInvited Candidates
Sunday, July 22 at 4:30 pm Public Service Commission District 3 Republican Chuck Eaton and Matt Reid
Sunday, July 22 at 5 pm Public Service Commission, District 5 – Republican Pam Davidson and Stan Wise

If the incumbents don't bother to show up, how responsive to the people are they?

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Vogtle nuke overruns could be larger than entire Georgia state budget

Georgia Sierra Club Footnotes Issue #61 19 July 2012, Chances that Vogtle 3 & 4 Will be Built? 50%.

Already they are almost a billion dollars over and running behind schedule. People closely following this slow-motion train wreck doubt that the actual cost of Vogtle 3 and 4 will be less than $20 billion — and that is excluding capital costs, which ratepayers will be paying for the rest of their lives (like our house mortgages). To put that in perspective, the State of Georgia budget is about $20 billion annually.

The Public Service Commission has a third party monitor who helps them assess whether the project and associated costs are on track. Right now, Georgia Power is on the hook for $400 million in cost overruns. This fall will likely be a critical time for Georgia regulators to make a go/no-go decision. In the meantime, now is your chance to find out whether the two Public Service Commissioners who are up for election this year, Chuck Eaton and Stan Wise, deserve another term. Georgia Public Broadcasting will be hosting a debate which will air Sunday at 5pm. Click here for the broadcast, and don’t forget to vote on July 31st!

According to GPB, the PSC debate schedule for Sunday 22 July 2012 is:

Date and TimeDebateInvited Candidates
Sunday, July 22
at 4:30 pm		 Public Service Commission
District 3 Republican		 Chuck Eaton and Matt Reid
Sunday, July 22
at 5 pm		 Public Service Commission,
District 5 – Republican		 Pam Davidson and Stan Wise

Maybe, unlike for last weekend’s PSC debates, the incumbents will bother to show up. If they don’t, how responsive to the people are they?

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IKEA building almost as much solar as Southern Company

IKEA has already deployed more solar power than Southern Company, and plans almost as much as SO’s total planned solar generation. Remind me, which one is the energy company? Maybe we need to elect people who will remind Southern Company and Georgia Power.

Remember Southern Company bragged earlier this month about its first big solar project coming online, 1 megawatt in Upson? IKEA plans to install that much solar in Atlanta this year on top of its furniture store:

Atlanta, Georgia: With a store size of 366,000 square feet, ft2 (~34,000 square metres, m2) on 15 acres (~6 hectares), the solar program will use 129,800 ft2 (~12,060 m2) at 1,038 kilowatts (kW) with 4,326 solar panels generating 1,421,300kWh/year. This is equivalent to reducing 1,080 tons of carbon-dioxide (CO2), 192 cars’ emissions or powering 122 homes.

IKEA plans more than that in Savannah, 1.5 megawatts:

Savannah, Georgia Distribution Centre: With a size of 750,000 ft2 (~69,700 m2) on 115 acres (~46.5 hectares), the solar program will use 187,500 ft2 (~17,400 m2) at 1,500kW with 6,250 solar panels generating 2,029,500kWh/year. This is equivalent to reducing 1,542 tons of CO2, 274 cars’ emissions or powering 175 homes.

Sure, but Southern Company already did it first, right? Nope, IKEA already powered up a megawatt in Houston, and already had some in Frisco and Round Rock, Texas, making IKEA already the largest solar owner in Texas.

As Kirsty Hessman put it in Earth Techling 8 December 2011,

They don’t call it the Sunbelt for nothing, and Ikea plans to take full advantage of the salubrious solar situation down South.

That was when IKEA was planning the Houston, Frisco, and Round Rock, Texas solar installations. Half a year later, they’re up and running. When will your new nukes be finished (if ever), Southern Company?

But back to solar. According to IKEA PR 9 July 2012, IKEA plans 38 MW of solar:

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Will electricity demand increase?

Back in April Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning gave yet another version of his stump speech that we saw at the shareholders’ meeting in May and that he’s video blogging on YouTube now. In April he emphasized a huge assumption with no evidence; an assumption that may just not be true.

National Energy Policy – Part 5 of 7 (30 April 2012)

This much we know: demand for electricity will increase. The Energy Information Administration projects an 18% increase in electricity demand nationally and in the southeast, we’re as expecting as much as a 25% increase over the next 20 years. So we know the need is real, immediate, and critical.

Really? Here’s recent electricity use and nearterm forcast by the U.S. Energy Information Administration:

Sure looks to me like there was a big dip in 2009, and projected use in 2013 is no higher than in 2007. What was that about “immediate”?

Now you may say, of course, that’s a recession. But what about this?

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Why Energy Matters to You —Thomas A. Fanning

Since our coverage of the Southern Company (SO) shareholders meeting in May, SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning has started his own YouTube video series, “Why Energy Matters to You”, in which he tries to head off a real energy policy by advocating SO’s nuclear and coal strategy instead.

SO PR 28 June 2012, Southern Company Chairman Launches CEO Social Media Video Series,

Southern Company SO today unveiled the first in a series of CEO Web videos examining issues critical to the electric utility industry. The video series, “Why Energy Matters to You,” is available on YouTube and features Southern Company Chairman, President and CEO Thomas A. Fanning. Fanning announced the Web series during an appearance at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colo.

Here are his two episodes so far. His theme:

“I believe that every American deserves a supply of clean, safe, reliable, and affordable energy.”

Who could argue with that? It’s just SO’s ideas of how to do it that provoke some argument.

Here’s Part 1 of 2:

Why Energy Matters to You —Thomas A. Fanning Part 1 of 2

His question:

“How can better energy create more economic freedom for the American people?”

His answer is in Part 2 of 2:

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Dear Southern Company: Green Energy Now! –Protesters

At yesterday’s Big Bets movie premiere, Southern Company doubled down and dug deeper in the hole.

Joeff Davis wrote for Fresh Loaf yesterday, Protesters picket utility’s Midtown film premiere, blast construction of new nuclear reactors

On the same day that tens of thousands of protesters rallied in Tokyo against the restart of Japan’s nuclear reactors, roughly 30 protesters chanted, marched, and handed out flyers today in Midtown to protest against Georgia Power’s construction of two new nuclear reactors in eastern Georgia. The two units, which are located about 175 miles from downtown Atlanta, are the first to be built in the United States in nearly three decades.

“Georgia Power is using our money to pay for something we don’t need, we don’t want and is killing us,” said Margie Resse as she handed out flyers outside the Fox Theatre. Southern Company, Georgia Power’s parent company, had reserved the historic Midtown venue to screen a documentary that it commissioned about the utility’s 100-year history for shareholders and executives.

The flyers claimed that Southern Company used “its notorious lobbying machine to

push a $2 billion rate hike” onto Georgia ratepayers to build “two risky nuclear reactors on the Savannah River,” which the groups say are months behind schedule and $900 million overbudget. The flyer urges ratepayers to refuse to pay a fee tacked on to utility bills that helps pay for the reactors’ construction.

Southern Company Spokesman Steve Higginbottom, standing just inside the Fox Theatre’s entrance and speaking barely above the protesters’ chants, said that Southern Company supports the rights of protesters but disputes their claims.

The “$900 million” figure cited by protesters, he said, has been alleged by Westinghouse, the manufacturer of the reactor, and Shaw, the project’s general contractor.

Um, Southern Company’s response is to talk about infighting among the consortium building the new nukes? SO could be digging themselves a hole deeper than the one the reactors sit in….

I do compliment Higginbottom and Southern Company on being consistently civil, however.

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CNN report on cancer in Shell Bluff, GA: near nuclear Plant Vogtle

CNN reported in 2010 on Shell Bluff, Georgia, near Southern Company’s nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle. Why is there so much cancer in such a small population? Why are not just the older folks, but younger folks, dying? Who is looking into all this before Southern Company builds two new reactors? Um, not clear. Does that seem right to you?

Here’s the video:

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Southern Company movie Big Bets at the Fox in Atlanta this afternoon

If you happen to be in Atlanta, there's a movie premiere this afternoon! Southern Company has made a movie out of its corporate biography, Big Bets, and is showing it today.

1:30 PM 16 July 2012
The Fox Theatre Atlanta
660 Peachtree Street NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30308

Oh, sorry, SO didn't send you a ticket? Well, I hear there will be people standing outside with signs starting around 1:30 PM. Maybe you'd like to join them. And if you're not in Atlanta, maybe you'd like to do something where you are.

Here's a preview of the movie, starring FDR: as the villain!

This appears to be the entire book online as a PDF. It starts in on FDR on page 100:

FDR had become known in utility circles as a “dangerous man” for advocating state ownership of power projects and denouncing the “sins of wildcat public-utility operators” and the “Insull monstrosity” with insinuations that all utilities were guilty of betraying the public's trust. He also proclaimed the rights of any community unhappy with its service to take over private utility operations and develop their own power sites—a “birch rod in the cupboard” to be used when good service was not provided by private companies.

Imagine that, generating your own community power! Imagine it, but you can't do it. Southern Company and Georgia Power fixed that in the 1973 Georgia Territorial Electric Service Act.

What you won't see in the movie or read about in the book, Big Bets, is much about the bet-the-farm risk of nuclear power (bond-rater Moody's phrase), or how much water nuclear uses, or the profit opportunity of renewable energy such as solar and wind power. You can see some shareholders ask SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning about some of those things in these videos from the shareholder meeting back in May. If you run into him at the movie premiere, maybe you can check in with him on whether any of his answers have evolved, for example, does he still think SO won't get to solar or wind power this decade? Or maybe you’d like to ask Southern Company some questions online.

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Fukushima children: 35.8% thyroid cysts (0.8% in control group)

ENENews reported today that Just 0.8% of children in 2001 Japanese control group had thyroid cysts or nodules — 36% in Fukushima study. Is that a risk we want in Georgia from the new nukes at Plant Vogtle? How about we deploy wind and solar instead, faster, cheaper, and on time, plus solar or wind spills do not cause thyroid cysts.

Now you may say there’s little chance of similar problems in Georgia, since Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning assured us Plant Vogtle is 100 miles inland where there are no earthquakes. Still, the same could have been said of Chernobyl. And TEPCO back in 2001 reassured everyone that tsunamis were not a problem for Fukushima.

Economics, as in the stealth tax rate hike, $8.3 billion loan guarantee, cost overrun passthrough boondoggle sucking up money that could be going to make Georgia a world leader in solar and wind for jobs, energy independence and profit, is the main point. But let’s not forget the health risks of nuclear power, from Three Mile Island to Chernobyl to Fukushima. Or Southern Company’s Plant Hatch, for that matter, leaking radioactive tritium into the ground water 90 miles from here. No tsunami and no earthquake was required to produce that leak. It’s our money and our families’ health Southern Company is experimenting with.

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