With much fanfare and celebration, Georgia Power, the state’s largest electricity provider, just marked a major milestone: Two new nuclear reactors near Augusta are now generating enough energy to power a million homes, without using fossil fuels or emitting planet-warming carbon dioxide.
The new Plant Vogtle nuclear reactors are the first built in the United States in decades. They entered service years later than originally promised and at twice their original budget, after more than a decade of construction and financial delays.
At the launch event in May, a parade of utility executives and elected officials celebrated the project as a triumph of perseverance — and as a major step forward for clean energy.
Also applauding the effort was Chris Smith, the chief implementation officer for Hyundai’s new electric vehicle plant near Savannah.
“I’m very happy to be here to support another positive step toward clean energy in Georgia,” Smith told the crowd. “Hyundai is committed to contributing to the sustainable future of society and seeks to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.”
Smith said the carbon-free power from Plant Vogtle will help the car company reach its climate goal. But it doesn’t achieve it entirely.
As part of its target, Hyundai has pledged to use 100 percent renewable energy from the start of mass production at the Georgia plant, expected later this year. Even with the new reactors at Plant Vogtle, less than half of Georgia Power’s electricity is carbon-free, according to the utility’s data.
While Georgia Power’s next long-range plan isn’t due until next year, the current plans put forward by the utility and approved by the state’s Public Service Commission won’t significantly change that ratio in the near future; the utility has expanded solar, for instance, but also added gas turbines and floated delaying coal plant retirements. That has left Hyundai to make up the difference on its own. The company recently signed a deal to offset its Georgia energy use with power from a solar farm in Texas.
Voluntary clean energy targets like Hyundai’s are increasingly common among corporations and government entities — as are gaps between their ambitions and the clean energy that utilities and their regulators are providing.
As climate change intensifies, this story is playing out repeatedly in Georgia and across the country. Key deadlines for clean energy targets are looming — many of them cite 2025 or 2030 as their first goalposts — and companies and local governments can’t achieve those goals on their own. They need support from electric utilities and regulators in the form of pro-renewable energy policies and investments as well as more carbon-free energy, support that some say isn’t coming fast enough.
“Your schedule for operation is not dependent on your utility’s programs,” said Katie Southworth, who leads policy work in the U.S. Southeast for the Clean Energy Buyers Association, which represents more than 400 members looking to go carbon-free. “You have to have energy Day One.”
Georgia Power’s parent corporation, Atlanta-based Southern Company, has announced it aims to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2050. At the company’s annual meeting in May, CEO Chris Womack touted its progress: “Over 80 percent of the resource additions planned across our system, totaling nearly 10,000 megawatts from 2023 to 2030, are zero-carbon emitting resources,” he said.
But Southern Company subsidiaries like Georgia Power are still adding new gas plants and putting off coal retirements, committing to continued carbon emissions for years in the future.
Georgia Power and Southern Company both declined interviews for this story. Georgia Power pointed to its programs to expand clean energy, and Southern says it’s committed to its own net zero target.
Still, these and other utilities’ pace of change has companies and governments worried about meeting their own clean energy targets. Some are bypassing public service commissions and utilities by looking for alternative sources of energy outside, as in the Hyundai example. Others are wading into the world of state energy regulation, aiming to change utilities’ plans.
The city of Decatur, Georgia’s energy and sustainability manager David Nifong said the town is adding solar panels and improving energy efficiency as it aims to reach 100 percent citywide clean energy by 2050. But, he said, Decatur can’t do it alone. The city needs help from Georgia Power, which supplies electricity to 2.7 million customers in 155 of the state’s 159 counties, including all of Decatur.
“Our clean energy plan says it explicitly. We’re not going to be able to meet our clean energy goals without the utility,” he said.
So Decatur has joined forces with other local governments across the state to intervene before the state’s Public Service Commission, which has final say over Georgia Power’s prices and energy sources. They have opposed the utility’s proposals to add fossil fuel generation and pushed instead for expanded use of renewables, as well as more affordable energy for residents.
Large corporations with a presence in Georgia, like Microsoft, are citing their own fast-approaching clean energy deadlines as they aim to influence the state’s Public Service Commission, or PSC, as well.
Even the U.S. Department of Defense, which is trying to achieve carbon-free energy by 2035, had harsh words at PSC hearings earlier this year, criticizing Georgia Power’s updated integrated resource plan, or IRP, which lays out the utility’s long-range plans for generating electricity.
“I’m frustrated that we are probably your biggest customer and nothing in this IRP addresses any of our needs, which are substantial,” said Defense lawyer John McNutt.
Southworth of the Clean Energy Buyers Association said large customers are willing to pay for adding clean energy. “Our members are very motivated to bring solutions to utility commissions and to utilities,” she said.
There are small signs of progress from these efforts: Georgia Power has pledged to develop a new clean energy program that Nifong in Decatur and the other local governments pushed for, which will help customers install renewable energy paired with batteries that Georgia Power can draw on to bolster the power grid when demand spikes. The company’s latest IRP, approved by the Public Service Commission in April, also adds battery storage to existing solar fields at two Air Force bases.
Still, as death tolls from blistering heat rise and extreme weather intensifies, critics say the utility is moving too slowly — extending carbon emissions that climate experts say the planet can’t afford.
“We need utilities to match our ambition,” Southworth said.