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Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Georgia Power rolls out new long-term plan, red carpet for more data centers
Sierra Club of Georgia community activist Keyanna Jones Moore leads a group of demonstrators outside Tuesday's Georgia Public Service Commission meeting about Georgia Power's controversial energy roadmap. Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder. A panel of Georgia Power representatives testified for eight hours at Tuesday's Public Service Commission hearing about its controversial roadmap for meeting large-scale, data center-driven energy demands over the next decade. The executives testified that the investor-owned utility's 2025 Integrated Resource Plan would provide the right balance of energy capacity to meet the rising demands of a growing Georgia, largely based on the projected boom in data centers supporting emerging internet technologies and their voracious appetite for electricity. The company's long-term plan forecasts 8,000 megawatts of growth through early 2030s, while citing the potential of 40,000 megawatts of industrial interest in the state. Georgia Power officials have defended the company against criticism of past overly optimistic projections that could burden ratepayers and concerns about the financial and environmental impact of large data facilities. In its 10-year plan, Georgia Power proposes a resource mix that is reliable, economical, and diverse enough to meet the growing needs of its 2.8 million customers, including plans to build 1,000 miles of transmission lines, adding renewable solar storage facilities, and continued investments in nuclear, natural gas, coal, and hydropower plants. A company official said it will continue to use informed judgment and historical trends to adapt to load forecasts. A Georgia Power industrial pipeline tracking includes companies that have shown interest and companies that have committed, which occurs after a customer selects the state's largest supplier as their electric service provider. A PSC public interest attorney asked how much experience Georgia Power's staff has working with data centers customers, particularly large facilities that will operate artificial intelligence. Georgia Power's director of resource and policy planning, Jeff Grubb, said the company has forecast industrial energy demands successfully for years. 'It doesn't mean that every industry that we model has had somebody from Georgia Power working there,' Grubb said. 'We work with those customers. We learn from those customers.' The company said its economic development staff can promote Georgia to prospective commercial and industrial customers. 'There's a reason why these data centers are here in Georgia,' said Michael Robinson, vice president of grid transformation for Georgia Power. 'It's the infrastructure, it's reliability. It's the affordability in Georgia.' Georgia lawmakers, clean energy and consumer advocacy groups have warned against state regulators signing off on Georgia Power's repeated utility bill increases after the Southern Company subsidiary stuck ratepayers with new electricity base rates, overrun costs associated with building two new Vogtle nuclear power plant units, coal ash cleanup and other expenses. On Tuesday, Emory University freshman Ava Trachtenberg criticized the utility's plan to the five-member PSC panel of elected Republicans before gathering outside to protest with her fellow Sunrise club members along with Georgia Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club of Georgia. 'The Georgia Public Service Commission has been prioritizing Georgia Power's profits over future health of the communities, over people's bills for so many years,' Trachtenberg said. 'This is our opportunity to speak to them, to let them know that we're paying attention. It's really, really important that they know that young people are here. We're paying attention, and we want clean, affordable energy.' Georgia Power officials have said new PSC rules for data centers will prevent residential and commercial customers from being billed for power consumed by facilities that rely on enormous amounts of energy day and night. The new rules include a provision allowing Georgia Power to require data center companies to put up front-end collateral for energy costs over the lifetime of the contract for electricity supply. Georgia Power officials testified Tuesday that the process the company uses to forecast commercial and industrial demand factors in how much the company requests to increase its energy capacity in its resource plans. Georgia Power to argue new long-term plan to PSC after Legislature stalls consumer-friendly bills Georgia Power executives were grilled about the transparency of filings, including new generic expansion plans that lack details about specific projects. A company official said Georgia Power adhered to a PSC rule protecting confidential information, which was put in place to prevent competitors from gaining advantages. Jennifer Whitfield, a senior attorney representing Georgia Interfaith Power and Light and Southface Institute, requested that state regulators require Georgia Power to provide more information to consumer and green energy advocates, including fuel types and the megawattage for the proposed projects. 'This will allow intervenors to assess what the resources look like. Right now, 95% of the need to fill capacity beyond 2031 is not made available to the intervenors,' Whitfield said. Commissioner Tricia Pridemore said that the terms of the future plan were set in a previous filing and were being withheld for good reasons this year. 'I don't want to see us do anything that exposes pricing or anything that would jeopardize the all-source RFP,' Pridemore said. In the recent filing, the utility company proposes extending the lifetime of coal-fired units at Plant Bowen and Plant Scherer by converting them to co-firing natural gas generation by 2030. The updated electricity generation could delay the retirement of the plants until early 2039, according to Georgia Power. Whitfield questioned why Georgia Power staff failed to study the effects of retiring fossil fuel units at Bowen and Scherer on the economy and the environment. Georgia Power officials said in 2022 that it was no longer economically feasible to maintain the coal-fired units. Grubb said that because the expected energy demand increased this time, it was in the best interest of customers to continue operating the units. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Georgia Senate panel advances ‘anti-squatters' legislation
A so-called "anti-squatters" bill will next go to the Senate Rules Committee, which determines which legislation will be heard in the chamber by April 4, the last day of this year's legislative session. Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder The Georgia Senate Public Safety Committee Monday passed the 'anti-squatters act' that establishes a process for requiring law enforcement officers to remove people accused of illegally staying at a residential property. Under House Bill 61, people who stay in residential properties, hotels or cars without the owner's express permission are guilty of misdemeanor unlawful squatting. Any person violating the law would be subject to having law enforcement officers remove them from the property within 10 days of notification. The bill's advancement by a 7-2 committee vote comes on the heels of a coalition of housing rights advocates heading into a disappointing homestretch of the 2025 legislative session after seeing little progress on bipartisan bills aimed at protecting Georgians from higher rents, problematic landlords and increasing threats of eviction. If passed, people convicted of unlawful squatting must also pay restitution based on fair market rent to the property owner. The squatters bill will next go to the Senate Rules Committee, which determines which legislation will be heard in the chamber by April 4, the last day of this year's legislative session. The bill's supporters argue that it closes loopholes in the anti-squatting laws. Housing rights advocates have argued that the bill infringes on the due process that should be afforded to people who have been living in extended stay hotels for long periods of time. Innkeepers are permitted to evict tenants and withhold belongings if they fall behind on payments or overstay their welcome under the anti-squatting law. Marietta Republican Rep. Devan Seabaugh, the bill's sponsor, said that extended stay hotels are still businesses rather than social safety nets for families who cannot afford traditional housing. 'They play an important role in our communities, and they often provide affordable, flexible lodging for individuals and families in transition, whether due to job changes housing shortages or emergencies,' Seabaugh said. 'I think we can all agree on that, and we recognize and appreciate how helpful they are to people facing hard times, but at their core, these are private businesses, not public housing providers or charitable shelters.' Seabaugh said the bill's requirement of the property owner providing police with an affidavit is not trying to target holdover tenants but instead people who are illegally occupying a property. Stone Mountain Democratic Sen. Kim Jackson argued that there should be a distinction between squatters and tenants who have consistently paid their rent but may have fallen behind for a few days. 'A squatter is someone who intentionally goes into my house and sets up camp and says, 'it's my place,'' Jackson said. 'A person who's been staying in an extended hotel for a year straight and misses a day, they're not a squatter, they're a person who's late. To charge them with criminal trespass and to set them out and their kids out is an injustice.' Sen. Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican, said the new anti-squatting measure could provide better regulation over the many extended stay hotels that he says are magnets for crime. Robertson said that more effort can be put into engaging government agencies like the state's Division of Family and Children Services to support families living in long term hotels who are at risk of becoming unhoused. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Georgia House Republicans advance bill to withdraw state from voter location data group
Rep. Martin Momtahan, a Dallas Republican, presents House Bill 215 at the Feb. 18 House Elections Subcommittee meeting. The bill would regulate how voter list maintenance is conducted in this state. Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder A Georgia House elections panel advanced a bill Tuesday that would prevent the Secretary of State from participating in a multistate database that state election officials and voting rights advocates say helps maintain accurate voter rolls. Republican members of a House elections subcommittee voted Tuesday in favor of passing the so-called Voter Integrity Act. House Bill 215 would prohibit state election officials from remaining in the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, and sharing voter registration data with non-governmental entities. The bill was amended Tuesday to allow the Georgia secretary of state to enter into other intra-state compacts for voter list data. Georgia Secretary of State's office officials and various voting rights advocacy groups defended the ERIC system as a way to maintain accurate voter rolls and cautioned that leaving the system would be costly and inefficient for the state. Georgia now spends about $97,000 annually as one of 24 members of the election registration database. ERIC is a multi-state voter list database that has been used by state election officials to identify 72% of people during voter list maintenance since 2021. Using various sources such as property tax records and motor vehicle department reports, the voter lists database attempts to identify people on voting rolls who have moved out of state, died or may be ineligible for other reasons. The bill now advances to the full House Governmental Affairs Committee after advancing by a party-line vote Tuesday. Rep. Martin Momtahan, a Dallas Republican, sponsored the bill and said Georgia should follow several other states in moving away from the ERIC system in favor of more state-based solutions. 'Some of this has to do with voter data and confidentiality,' Momtahan said. 'Obviously, sending that information to a third party is not always foolproof or safe from a cybersecurity standpoint.' In recent years, President Donald Trump and a number of Republican officials across the country have targeted the Electronic Registration Information Center as they've questioned election security. They've complained about the potential cybersecurity threats, including the sharing of personal information. Critics also focus on ERIC's expansion of voting access because states are notified when individuals have not registered to vote after moving to a new district. State Elections Director Blake Evans said obtaining data from one state takes 20 times as long as getting data from the entire ERIC membership. Evans said the ERIC database is the only multi-state entity capable of detecting duplicate voter registrations across state lines. Last year, the state received an exemption from the provision that requires Georgia to mail notices to unregistered eligible voters, he said. Marisa Pyle, senior democracy defense manager with All Voting is Local, said HB 215 would have unintended consequences by making it harder to maintain accurate voter rolls. Pyle spoke about the difficulties faced by states that have left the ERIC system, including increased costs and inefficiencies. Garland Favorito, co-founder of Voter GA, said that a pressing concern about ERIC is that it violates public trust by sharing personal identifying information without their consent. Favorito repeatedly cast doubt on former President Joe Biden's 2020 Georgia win over President Donald Trump. According to Favorito, there are other options for maintaining voter lists, such as Eagle AI and state-to-state exchanges that share information such as public tax records without requiring personally identifiable information to be shared with third parties. 'We can use out-of-state voter registrations that can be matched to detect permanent moves and public tax records, all without third-party access, all without giving our data away,' Favorito said. State Rep. Saira Draper, an Atlanta Democrat, said state law does not prevent Georgia from joining other voting list compacts with other states. Draper, who is an elections attorney, said the Republicans supporting the bill are focused on a 'solution in search of a problem.' Draper said Eagle AI lacks the level of security protocols implemented by ERIC, which has not been hacked. When sharing certain voter information with other member states, ERIC adheres to rigorous security protocols such as encryption, she said. 'You can get into an agreement with Alabama but if there is a breach in Alabama then it's out of your hands,' Draper said after Tuesday's meeting. Draper said she believes security concerns aren't the prime motivation behind Republicans in Georgia wanting to change the current system. 'I think part of the motivation was to remove that requirement that we registered unregistered voters, because they didn't realize that we already are exempt from that provision of ERIC,' she said. 'I think the other motivation is to try and push the legitimacy of Eagle AI, which is far from a legitimate data source.' The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice describes Eagle AI as a project developed by election deniers that could undermine voting rights. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
