As the cost of installing new renewable energy technologies like solar and wind threatens the profitability of the country’s fossil fuel infrastructure, utility companies are fighting to keep customers on more expensive nonrenewable sources of energy.
One such company is Georgia Power, an “emissions cutting” utility monopoly that distributes electricity to 155 of Georgia’s 159 counties. Georgia Power is a subsidiary of Southern Company, a Fortune 500 behemoth that provides electricity and heat to millions in the American South. For years, a pattern has existed among the subsidiaries in Southern Company’s portfolio: angry customers, frequent blackouts, and cozy relationships with utility regulators.
Georgia has been a bright spot in the South for solar energy installation and manufacturing. This is due in part to the Inflation Reduction Act’s $10 billion in tax credits for renewable energy manufacturers and a popular net metering program that allowed utility customers to sell excess energy from rooftop solar to Georgia Power, effectively lowering bills. But in December, following lobbying efforts and a battle in court, the state’s utility regulators sided with proposals by Georgia Power that strengthened the company’s profits and monopoly power.
“Georgia Power has long opposed pretty much any distributed energy resources or effort to expand smaller scale renewable energy for homes and small businesses and nonprofits,” Daniel Tait, research and communications manager of the Energy and Policy Institute, tells The Progressive.
In December, following lobbying efforts and a battle in court, the state’s utility regulators sided with proposals by Georgia Power that strengthened the company’s profits and monopoly power.
Despite the popularity of a net metering program as a way to help Georgians lower utility bills, the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC), at the request of Georgia Power, refused to expand it. There were 5,000 participants in the pilot program, which reached capacity back in 2021.
When The Progressive asked Georgia Power why it wanted to end the net metering program and if the program was a threat to the company’s profitability, the company said the program “shifted significant costs from customers participating in monthly netting to all other customers.”
“Georgia Power fully supports the continued expansion of renewable generating resources across our electric system,” the company said in an email response to The Progressive. “All expansion, however, must occur in a safe, reliable, and equitable manner that protects customers from bearing costs that are not caused by or attributable to them.”
However, given that only 5,000 customers were limited to the net metering pilot program and that Georgia Power has millions of customers, the increases facing customers not using the net metering program would only have been slight—far less than the company’s recent 12 percent rate increase.
Tait attributes the end of the net metering program and new rate hikes to Georgia Power’s friendly relationship with the GPSC, the regulators of Georgia Power. When The Progressive asked Georgia Power what kind of lobbying it engages in with the GPSC, the company did not address it in its email response.
“It’s quite clear that this commission has given Georgia Power anything it wants for a long time,” Tait says. “There’s very little that Georgia Power wants that it does not get.”
Georgia Power cannot donate directly to the campaigns of the commissioners. Instead the company keeps a close relationship with the individual commissioners. Tricia Pridemore, chairwoman of the Public Service Commission, is also the second Vice President of National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), which has close ties with fossil fuels companies across the country. Pridemore did not respond to The Progressive’s request for comment.
A recent investigation by Grist magazine found that the natural gas industry’s friendly relationship with utility regulators, like those that fill the GPSC, has helped legitimize false solutions to climate change, like “renewable natural gas.” At a 2022 annual NARUC conference in New Orleans, Kim Greene, then-president and CEO of Southern Company Gas and current CEO of Georgia Power, was the first speaker in a panel titled “The Role for Natural Gas in America’s Clean Energy Future.”
Despite evidence that natural gas is not a clean energy source, utility companies like Georgia Power have attempted to delay and control the transition away from fossil fuels. Preventing the expansion of the net metering program, which was a financial incentive for rooftop solar, is one of the ways Georgia Power is trying to maintain its profitability, according to Dennis Wamsted, energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
“Utilities make money by building things, so there is a built-in disincentive for utilities to like things like rooftop solar because they don’t own it and they don’t earn a rate of return on it,” Wamsted tells The Progressive. “The system is set up to be adversarial.”
Since 2010, Georgia’s use of natural gas for electricity has tripled. Concurrent with this increase has been bigger utility bills for customers, dividends for shareholders, and compensation for executives at Southern Company. A report called “Powerless in the US” by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Energy and Policy Institute, and Bailout Watch attributed further rate increases that will extend through 2025 to the fact that “Georgia Power is exacerbating the problem by deepening its dependence on gas.”
Wamsted also said one of Georgia Power’s arguments against the net metering program is that solar is less reliable in weather events like storms. However, Wamsted’s research at the IEEFA has found that fossil fuels like gas and coal are not reliable during intense weather; Georgia is expected to be hit particularly hard by the effects of climate change on the American South.
Energy grids have a significant amount of room to increase distributed renewable energy like rooftop solar. However, personalized rooftop solar is a threat to the business model of utility companies, which make more money when the grid runs on fossil fuels.
“They try to highlight the potential downfall of lots of little solar projects [on people’s homes],” Wamsted explains. “That actually makes things more reliable because then one small rooftop solar project can go offline, rather than a really giant project that goes offline if it gets hit by lightning or a tornado.”
In October 2022, Georgia Power proposed new rate hikes and anti-solar fees to Georgia regulators. In an attempt to fight back, trade association Solar Energy Industries Association and non-profit Vote Solar submitted joint testimony in which they argued that Georgia Power used incorrect data to justify fees on solar, overcharged and misled customers, and that the company is collecting excess revenues.
But when the Georgia Public Service Commission made its decision, it allowed Georgia Power to hike rates by 12 percent, end its net metering program, and impose a $100 interconnection fee on its new solar customers.
Jill Kysor, senior attorney and leader of the solar initiative at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said energy grids have a significant amount of room to increase distributed renewable energy like rooftop solar. However, as Wamsted notes, personalized rooftop solar is a threat to the business model of utility companies, which make more money when the grid runs on fossil fuels.
“The biggest issue confronting any Georgia Power customer is bill increases,” Kysor tells The Progressive. “A fuel cost docket proposal [was just approved] that would increase the typical residential customer’s bill somewhere between $17 and $23 per month, on top of the rate increases that were just approved. Removing barriers to solar is one way to let customers help people save money on their bills.”