Georgia Power, the largest subsidiary of Southern Company, said Friday that it had joined with other energy companies in support of a motion to stay the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan due to its threats on the reliability of the state's power grid and the affordability of electricity.
Specifically, the company said it was “firmly committed” to protecting its generating plants in the state, which includes the two-unit nuclear power plants, the Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant near Baxley (in southeastern Georgia) and the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant near Waynesboro, close to the South Carolina border.
Georgia Power owns 50.1 percent of Plant Hatch and 45.7 percent of Plant Vogtle, Hatch is also owned by Oglethorpe Power Corporation (30 percent), Municipal Electrical Authority of Georgia (17.7 percent) and Dalton Utilities (2.2 percent). Plant Vogtle is also owned by Oglethorpe Power Corporation (30 percent), Municipal Electrical Authority of Georgia (22.7 percent) and Dalton Utilities (1.6 percent).
Georgia Power, which also owns 16 other generating plants and 20 hydroelectric dams spread across the state, said in a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the company would have to retire 4,800 megawatts – more than 20 percent of its total capacity – of fossil fuel-fired generation by 2030 under the Clean Power Plan (CPP). As it stands, the company said it faces premature closing of Plants Bowen, Hammond, McIntosh and Scherer, as well as Plant Gaston in Alabama.
Plant Bowen alone has a 3,499 megawatt capacity, while Scherer has a capacity of 3,564 megawatts.
The company also said the plan would result in “higher production costs and an insufficient reserve margin resulting in increased customer costs of approximately $830 million in 2016 and 2017. In addition, there would be a need for more than $515 million in costs for transmission projects, $485 million in costs related to the impacts to the company's fuels program in the same two years, and a loss of $8 million in annual property taxes and $15 million, approximately, in annual fuel taxes lost, starting in 2016.
On top of that, at least 800 jobs would be forfeited due to the plan, Georgia Power said.