Small-Scale Clean Energy Must Be Georgia's Priority
Submitted to the Georgia Public Service Commission, July 19, 2022
by Center for a Sustainable Coast
We share the concern of many others that despite the alleged financial advantages of energy efficiency, these claims are not well-founded because Georgia Power’s proposed Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) maintains the status quo that has hidden costs and risks jeopardizing the public. If this Georgia Power plan is approved, more fossil fuels and higher utility costs will be unjustifiably imposed on its customers who have already suffered the financial burdens of the company’s past mismanagement of energy projects. Moreover, the plan does not ensure sufficient reliable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which is essential to curbing the most destructive impacts of climate change.
Decentralized Facilities Serve the Public Far Better Than Costly Corporate Projects That Are Vulnerable to System Failures
The most fundamental issue, effectively masked by preconceptions assumed in preparing the plan now under review, is the crucial distinction between a corporate-dominated, capital-intensive approach in contrast with a decentralized, “distributed-system” strategy, wherein the energy-generating and storage capacity is primarily owned by energy consumers, not stockholders.
States that have been most successful in achieving clean energy goals are those that have incentivized residential and small-scale commercial solar installations. In these cases, rates paid for all energy are uniform, so that when combined with tax credits, revenues from the sale of excess power at market rates enable these small-scale systems to recover their total acquisition costs in less than five years.
Contrast those installations and their benefits to energy customers with the capital-intensive model being advanced by this plan, which advocates massive ‘solar farms’ that occupy vast areas of land and are implemented as an industrial-scale investment returning income to stockholders, not consumers. These projects cost millions of dollars, which once invested under routine PSC approval are guaranteed a handsome return, yet the vast majority of energy users will remain under the yoke of their substantially greater monthly billing obligation, including repayment of the corporate utility’s capital project costs, plus profits to stockholders.
Moreover, beyond the injustices and inefficiencies caused by abandoning a more equitable, cost-effective policy remedy offered by decentralized facilities (demonstrably proven in other states) the capital-intensive corporate model is also more vulnerable to blackouts and brownouts because there are fewer (and more distant) installations providing power to the energy network (grid). When one or another of the few major power-generating facilities in existence is compromised, the whole system may be jeopardized, and service becomes unreliable.
Similar conclusions can be drawn when comparing centralized energy-storage facilities with those that are distributed among millions of households. As the conversion from fossil fuels to clean energy progresses under a decentralized strategy, the availability of small-scale storage devices will flourish – as both site-based installations at homes and small businesses as well as the cumulatively substantial mobile storage capacity provided by plug-in, interconnectable batteries of tens-of-thousands of electric vehicles integrated into a “smart grid”.
This diverse and decentralized power-storage network would ensure a far more reliable, resilient, and stable energy supply than the capital-intensive system now being proposed. If any single large energy-storage facility became inoperable or disconnected from the grid, without a robust, decentralized (owner-based) array of facilities with comparable cumulative capacity, the whole system would suffer, especially during periods of peak demand.
Natural Gas Leakage & Mandatory Monitoring
Overdue attention must also be given to resolving the methane-leak problem inherent in the use of natural gas. These leaks are not acknowledged in unconditional claims that natural gas is a clean substitute for coal. Yet, energy analysts consistently assert that leaks of more than 2% of natural gas during extraction, processing, distribution, and/or end-use will completely negate any benefits gained by burning natural gas instead of coal, because the leaked gas will produce the equivalent heat-trapping effects in the atmosphere. (Methane has far greater heat-trapping effects than carbon dioxide, making relatively small natural gas leaks costly and counterproductive.)
Studies have shown that many gas-based systems exceed the two-percent leakage limit when they are evaluated throughout the entire cycle, from extraction to end-use. Until and unless the natural-gas systems being advocated and used under this plan are evaluated and continuously monitored to ensure they do not exceed the leak-limit, such systems should not be approved or sanctioned as part of Georgia’s energy-production portfolio. Without rigorous, mandatory use of leak monitoring and assessment safeguards applied to natural-gas energy generation, the state cannot reliably achieve greenhouse gas reductions that are essential to curbing the destructive effects of climate change.
~ David Kyler, Center for a Sustainable Coast