23-05-2025
State regulators should push Georgia Power to mothball coal, methane energy sources
Georgia Power uses methane gas to generate electricity at Plant Yates in Newnan. Grant Blankenship/GPB
The Public Service Commission's mission statement says that it is supposed to ensure that Georgians have safe, reliable, and reasonably priced electricity. To be honest, natural (methane) gas and coal and any combustion fuel are neither safe nor reasonable cost. Methane gas is not actually natural, it is a fossil fuel just as coal and oil are fossil fuels. There is an entire scientific article in the prestigious medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, titled 'The False Promise of Natural Gas.' This scientific article describes many of the health harms caused by natural methane gas, from production to pipelines to end use in power plants or homes. These health harms include exposure to carcinogens, air and water pollution, earthquakes, pipeline and other facility explosions, and climate change.
We know that both coal and methane gas power plants produce many kinds of air pollution, including fine particles (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and volatile organic compounds or VOCs. Some of these pollutants are precursors for ozone, which is created every day from a chemical reaction in the air between air pollution and sunlight. In addition, there are contaminants in both coal and natural gas that affect our health. Coal contaminants include many heavy metals, including lead, mercury, and arsenic, among others. Natural (methane) gas has benzene and other cyclic aromatics. All of these kinds of pollution and contaminants harm our health and damage our economy.
In the U.S., PM2.5 from fossil fuels causes 13% of all deaths, and NO2 from burning fossil fuels causes 1.6% of all deaths. Ozone causes even more deaths, and is known to cause as much progression of emphysema as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day. Ozone also triggers asthma and COPD exacerbations. In the Southeast, all of the kinds of air pollution made by coal and gas power plants put people in the hospital.
Recently, we have learned that PM2.5 damages children's IQ, from exposure during the prenatal period through the childhood years. We know that children exposed to air pollution are more likely to have mental health problems too, either within a few days of a PM2.5 spike or even eight years after exposure to NO2 or PM2.5. We know that the kinds of air pollution that coal and methane gas power plants produce will trigger asthma attacks and can cause children to develop asthma. And we have learned that giving air filters to pregnant women who live in polluted cities improves their children's IQ 4 years AFTER the children are born.
In California, when coal plants closed, the rate of preterm births for those who lived near the coal plants went down by over 25%.
Here in Georgia, more than two-thirds of our rivers and large lakes are contaminated with mercury to the point that the Department of Natural Resources has to publish guidelines every year about which fish need to have limited consumption, because the fish are contaminated with mercury. The vast majority of that mercury came from coal-fired power plants.
These are some of the reasons that it is clear that both coal and natural gas are not safe sources of fuel. The PSC needs to be true to its mission, and encourage safer sources of electricity production.
In addition, even though Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy (an energy cost analysis) shows that methane combined cycle and utility scale solar with storage appear to be in the same price range, this ignores the economic harms of reduced crop yields, work absences, and lower work productivity caused by fossil fuels, and also the enormous health costs of all the health damage from both coal and methane. Therefore it is also clear that both methane and coal are not reasonably priced, the stated costs are artificially low because they don't include the enormous economic and health damages. It is massive cost-shifting, and Georgia residents are paying with increased taxes, increased health insurance premiums, and with our own lives.
However, it's not all doom and gloom. There is a good solution: we can have abundant affordable electricity without all the health and economic damages. It sounds like pie-in-the-sky, but it's true. Solar with storage is in the same price range as methane gas combined cycle, and wind with storage is less expensive. And both are quicker to build than a new gas turbine power plant. The PSC should require Georgia Power to have much more solar with storage and much less health-damaging methane and coal.
And just this week, news came out that Georgia Power will be asking to recover costs from Hurricane Helene next year. Many scientists have shown that Hurricane Helene was more damaging and carried more moisture because of climate change. Yet, while Georgia Power is asking to recover costs of damages from a climate change enhanced hurricane, they are at the same time asking to build new natural gas power plants that will make climate change worse. It doesn't make sense, especially when we know that for about the same cost they could build solar with storage and stop making climate change worse.
Georgia has abundant sunshine that is more direct than in much of the United States. It is an abundant natural resource we can easily use without hurting people's health or hurting our crop yields. Georgia power has abundant opportunity for utility scale solar with storage, which is the safest and most reasonable cost form of electricity that there is.
The bottom line is this: air pollution is so bad for our health and economy, that you don't have to care about climate to want clean energy. Solar is one of Georgia's most abundant natural resources. The PSC should be true to its mission and require Georgia Power to use more solar and wind energy with storage so that we have safe, affordable, and reliable energy.
If you want to comment on Georgia Power's energy plan, you can use this link, or go to the PSC comment form and use Docket Number 56002, Agenda Item 'Georgia Power Company's 2025 Integrated Resource Plan', and the hearing date May 27, 2025. Please make your comment before the hearing.
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