** Southern Company extends life of coal plants to power data centers, appears to abandon net zero goal ([link removed])
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By Daniel Tait on Feb 20, 2025 09:48 am
New filings in Mississippi and Georgia show Southern Company’s utility subsidiaries in those states are seeking to extend the life of three coal-fired power plants, jeopardizing the company’s ability to achieve the net-zero emissions target it promised to investors. The three plants are collectively rated at approximately 8,200 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity.
The three plants, Plant Daniel in Mississippi and Plants Bowen and Scherer in Georgia, were slated for closure by 2028 (Daniel and Scherer) and 2035 ([link removed]) (Bowen). Georgia Power recently claimed in an integrated resource plan that it filed with its regulators that the utility faced more than 9,400 megawatts in new electric demand in the next ten years, mostly from data centers, leading to a purported need to extend the life of the Bowen and Scherer plants. Georgia Power expects to co-fire gas with coal at Plants Bowen and Scherer starting no later ([link removed]) than January 1, 2030, which the company says would allow it to delay retirement for the plants to as late as January 1, 2039. In Mississippi, attorneys for Mississippi Power told
([link removed]) its Commission that new data centers would “necessitate” the extension of Plant Daniel Unit 2.
Southern Company did not respond to a request for comment from the Energy and Policy Institute.
After Mississippi regulators ordered ([link removed]) older generation to be removed from customer bills in 2021, the company sold ([link removed]) Plant Daniel’s capacity to Georgia Power. Georgia regulators approved ([link removed]) the deal in 2024.
** Utilities warm back up to coal despite steep costs to customers
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Coal-fired generation across the country has been declining for years as it became uneconomic to compete against clean energy and methane gas. Southern Company’s dispatch practices of the three coal plants have charged customers $2.52 billion dollars more than dispatching other resources since 2015, according to data maintained ([link removed]) by RMI, a clean energy think tank. But utilities’ claims that vast and ever-increasing demand from new data centers, and their preference to meet that demand with their coal plants, threatens to stall or even reverse the decades-long trend of decarbonization in the power sector.
Many data center operators have their own carbon emissions goals, but some of those companies – notably Meta and Amazon – appear to be fine with utilities using their data center growth to justify new fossil fuel plants. Entergy is citing Meta’s plans in North Louisiana as responsible for more than 2.2 gigawatts of new gas-fired generation ([link removed]) . It is unclear how much gas-fired generation Entergy intends to construct for Amazon in Mississippi, but Entergy Mississippi’s CEO, “estimated between $2 billion and $3 billion will be spent on the power generating facilities, ([link removed]) ” including both solar and gas. Amazon and Meta have pledged to invest in clean energy, but new carbon emissions are indisputably being added to local grids because of their
plans.
Neither Meta or Amazon responded to a request for comment from the Energy and Policy Institute.
In other cases, Southern may be inflating its data center-based load growth estimates, a practice with a long precedent ([link removed]) among electric utilities. In Georgia, Microsoft commented on the utility’s integrated resource planning proceeding to challenge ([link removed]) the company’s modeling methods, expressing “concerns that they both undervalue renewable energy and overestimate data center load.”
** Southern’s long history of blocking distributed energy, energy efficiency, regional transmission
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While Southern Company struggles to accommodate the new load growth that it is forecasting will come, its electric subsidiaries in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi have blocked or delayed solutions to increase distributed energy and energy efficiency, which could help address an energy shortfall, if it materializes.
Alabama Power has regularly ranked as one of the worst performing utilities in America on energy efficiency, according ([link removed]) to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. Alabama Power uniquely charges an extra fee on most small residential and commercial customers that opt to install solar energy, adding thousands of dollars to the lifetime cost of ownership of a solar array. Clean energy advocates are challenging ([link removed]) that fee in federal court.
In 2024, Alabama Power reduced ([link removed]) the compensation it pays to larger-scale solar generators and began charging them a new “integration” fee. The new fees on large scale solar only applied to qualified facilities, known as QFs, which are not owned by Alabama Power. The utility’s own renewable energy projects would have been exempt from the fee, according ([link removed]) to the company’s 2024 filing with Alabama regulators. In February 2025, Alabama Power told ([link removed]) its regulators it would remove the fee for the time being, though said it “will revisit the need to restore” it. Alabama regulators are expected to vote on Alabama Power’s proposal in March.
Mississippi Power has opposed ([link removed]) modest incentives for solar and battery storage on low-income homes and schools. After three newly elected Mississippi public service commissioners were sworn in last year, the incentives were suspended by the Commission. That suspension is now being challenged ([link removed]) in court by clean energy advocates and environmental groups. A hearing is scheduled in that matter on February 26, 2025.
Alabama ([link removed]) Power and Mississippi ([link removed]) Power have even blocked organizations from intervening in dockets. And, despite clear economic benefits ([link removed]) to customers, Southern Company, and its subsidiaries, have sought to delay ([link removed]) interregional transmission at both the state and federal levels.
** Local concerns about coal pollution
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Beyond the large economic costs of paying for inefficient coal plants that would be borne by some of the poorest customers in America if Southern extends its coal plants, coal-fired generation is fraught with local pollution concerns, many of which Southern Company knows well. Alabama Power is currently fighting ([link removed]) against stricter regulations on coal ash in court, despite its Plant Barry discharging pollution into local waterways and being fined at least $1.5 million ([link removed]) by even Alabama’s notoriously ([link removed]) lax ([link removed]) state regulators. Local residents in Juliette, Georgia fought
([link removed]) Georgia Power’s water pollution for decades, alleging they had experienced a variety of cancers and diseases due to the utility’s contamination of ground water supplies. Residents settled out of court with Georgia Power in December 2024.
ProPublica investigations ([link removed]) revealed the depths to which Georgia Power went to fight public health regulations, going so far as to quietly buy up ([link removed]) “$15 million for nearly 1,900 acres close to five of its 12 power plant sites” which “may allow the utility to forestall millions of dollars in cleanup costs outlined by the December 2014 regulations”.
Header image source: Sam Nash ([link removed])
Correction: A previous version of this story said two Mississippi Public Service Commissioners took office in 2025. Three new commissioners took office in 2024.
The post Southern Company extends life of coal plants to power data centers, appears to abandon net zero goal ([link removed]) appeared first on Energy and Policy Institute ([link removed]) .
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