This coverage was achieved through a partnership between GRIS and DadNPR station in Atlanta.
Three years ago, Southern Company, one of the largest electrical facilities in the country, has formulated when it announced that it will retire from most of the coal power stations in the coming years, which is a big step towards the company’s goal announced for the net of the net greenhouse gases by 2050 .
Southern sub -aid tools – companies that already run coal factories to provide electricity to homes and companies – support the advertisement by seeking approval to close coal factories from Strong state organizations Those who supervise them.
But now the facilities are declining. They say they need to meet an unusual height in the demand for electricity, most of them are large facilities for computer servers that provide intense activity online such as obstetric intelligence and cryptocurrencies, known as data centers.
In the latest integrated resource plan, or IRP, the expectations of the company Southern Company will increase by 8,200 megawatts (MW) by the winter of 2030-1031, or more than three times the production of new nuclear reactors in Vogly, th The first new nuclear reactors in the United States decadesThe Georgia Power and other facilities spent more than $ 30 billion on construction. To meet this growth, the company requires a set of resources, including promotions to the current nuclear factories, renewable energy, and improvements on the total energy network-but it also requires the extension of the age of coal stations that were largely polluted and that were previously to retire.
This step is part of the national direction. The data center industry is thrived everywhere, from Virginia to Texas to Oregon, and facilities throughout the country respond by building new fossil fuel resources or delaying retirement, all at a time when scientists agree that cutting fossil fuel emissions is more urgent than any Meeting. More than 9000 megawatts were delayed from the generation of fossil fuels to be closed or exposed to the risk of delay, and more than 10,800 MW of new fossil fuel generation has been planned, according to Sustainability and border policy research group.
The retreat of fossil fuels raises anxiety for environmental preachers and consumers, not only because it stands to slow climate work and expand the harmful effects of the use of fossil fuels. Some also question the alleged growth in demand-which means that facilities can double the coal and gas that increases the climate temperature to meet the energy demand that will not be actually achieved.
When Georgia Power asked for the retirement of most coal factories by 2028, the decision was not about reducing emissions. Instead, the utility considered the plants “non -economic” – it is no longer the economic logical to continue operating it. One of the main factors in this differentiation and integration was the cost of bringing old plants to compliance with new federal emissions. The future of this rule is now inaccurate. The Supreme Court last fall I command The base of emissions can enter into force while legal challenges continue from states and energy companies. As a candidate, President Donald Trump I promised to cancel The rule.
Regardless of the motive and environmental groups Large companies that have their own emissions targets to strike Clap this step to close coal plants.
So, Jennifer Witfield’s Southern Law Law, Georgia Power, called for a “strange option”.
She said: “It is not only expensive fuel and dirty that Georgia Power did not have two years ago for some of these plants, but the data centers do not want it,” she said. “They want clean energy.”
Although it is controversial, the suggestion of delaying the closure of the coal factory is not completely surprising. Last year, the Georgia Public Service Committee agreed to the energy purchase deal between Georgia Power and its sister company, Mississippi Power, to do Keep the coal factory in Mississippi, open after the planned retirement date. The move, too, was aiming to cover the increasing demand that Georgia Power had mostly came from databases. Other facilities suggested delaying the closure of the charcoal unit in Virginia and West Virginia, according to the analysis of the border group.
Environmental defenders have applauded coal retirement, and are now forming repercussions, due to many negative effects of burning coal for electricity. Along with air -air pollution that can harm people and contribute to climate change, the burning of coal creates remaining substances known as the name cinder This raises serious health risks if it leaks into groundwater. Often, the costs of cleaning and storing coal ash for customers are transferred.
“Expanding the life of non -economic coal factories, especially if they are linked to energy -related data centers, are meaningless when the best investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency are clearly available.”
Although data centers are definitely not new – computing and the Internet requires data servers, and our digital lives increasingly require data processing ability at all – the last explosion and policy makers have taken.
Georgia Power’s layout is a good evidence for this: In 2023, the unusual utility of the IRP update has taken its regular plans in 2022 and 2025. Georgia Power claimed that energy demand increases so much and to the point that the company needed Make and buy more energy immediately. The alleged request from large data centers appeared so quickly that the tool did not expect it less than two years ago and insisted that it is not possible to wait another year to address this problem.
With facilities stampede to meet the demand for the data center, which is alleged to be coming, legislators and organizers also play to catch up with rapid knee.
In Georgia, data centers have a sales tax exemption on the high -tech equipment they need to run, which were passed in 2018 and later renewed with a little bang. The state offers many of these tax incentives for economic development projects, which are part of the continuous effort to stay friends with the business that the ruler and other state leaders are often boasted.
But in 2024, as an unusual request for Georgia Power for more energy, he lights up highlighting the enormous energy requirements of data centers, re -viewed the legislature. Ultimately, legislators passed a draft law to stop the tax center for the data center during a study to evaluate the energy and water resources in the state. The ruler Brian Keteb has achieved the draft law. This year, the government parliament is Moving forward in the study Even as the tax collapse remains in place, large data centers still have to be announced.
“We want to make sure that we are looking at how much our energy production is sustainable and the use of our energy, and certainly our use of water,” said John Burns, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, the Georgia Public Service Committee has taken steps to address a great concern that appeared during the temporary IRP. The new energy generation and transition infrastructure is expensive, and consumers’ advocates and two years old who are concerned that ordinary customers will end up paying the costs created in the stampede to energy data centers. So in January, the committee agreed to new rules aimed at preventing costs from transferring them to others.
These rules are just a first step in dealing with a rapidly changing issue.
“We must be flexible in terms of maintaining an open mind in how we deal with this,” he said. “We also look at what other countries do, because Georgia grows faster than most of them, but we are not the only situation that deals with this.”
Politics makers elsewhere are already wrestling with these same concerns. In Virginia, the country that leads the boom of the data center, for legislators Fort a set of bills In data centers this year, it aims to track energy and water use, make sure that residents and other companies do not support their energy needs, and evaluate the impact of new data centers before approval. New York legislators and Oregon are Work on similar measures.
Although legislators and organizers reconsider the effects, the data center companies have tax exemptions in many states just as they do in Georgia. Data centers receive subsidies from a shape in 22 states, according to Modern report By Frontier Group, Beopy America and American Public Interest Research Group.
Although IRP 2025 depends on the direction of high demand predictions in other modern deposits of Georgia Power and indeed at the country level, some consumers defenders question the company’s expectations. Commissioners and defenders have questioned the expectations closely during the hearings last year because of Georgia Power’s urgent request for more energy in the IRP 2023 update.
“It is not just a mathematics exercise,” Jeffrey Group, Director of Resources Planning in Georgia Power, He said about expectations at that time. It depends on the facts. They are concrete projects. “
However, the employees of the Public Service Committee in charge of defending the public interest severely criticized how Georgia Power has clarified these projects in their expectations, on the pretext that the company has swamped the possibility that the new demand has already been achieved. Experts also questioned Georgia Power and other facilities because multiple countries are competing to attract data centers that lead demand growth.
“I think there is a real exaggeration of energy requirements throughout the southeast,” said Georgia Technology and Energy Expert Marilyn Brown at Grist last year. “[The data center companies are] Tourist countries are asking for the best deal that these countries can provide for clean electricity. So what I see … it is like a double count. “
If the company is considering building a data center in Georgia or Tennessee, for example, Brown said that auxiliary tools in both countries may be treated in the large energy requirements of this possible new customer – although in reality, only one data center will be built.
Even in the electrical facilities industry, the demand for databases’ demands are unconfirmed and vary widely, according to the Frontier Group report. One of the expectations by the Electric Energy Research Institute finds that the demand for the data center may grow by up to 29 percent or up to 166 percent by 2030. Industry expectations for the year 2030 varies in the report at amazing 200 hours in Terawatt, or 200. One million megawatts.
The same report also indicates the risks of enlarged expectations. In the fifties and sixties of the last century, it shows that the demand for electricity has become rapidly amid the economic boom after the war and the explosion of the new technology. The Electrical Trustees Council in North America expected this growth to continue for more than 7 percent annually, and to build resource facilities accordingly. But in reality, the mutation was launched. Projects have been canceled and facilities are retracted on bonds, according to the report.
The paper argues that the current moment can go in any of the two directions – and in large part it depends on choosing “whether the rapid growth of energy use of technologies such as Genai and Crypto Deps deserve pollution, disruption and costs they impose.”
