Three years ago, one of the country’s largest electric utilities, Southern Company, made a splash when it announced it would retire most of its coal-fired power plants in the coming years, a major step toward the company’s stated goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Southern’s subsidiary utilities — the companies that actually run the coal plants to provide electricity to homes and businesses — backed up the announcement by seeking and obtaining approval to close coal plants from the powerful state regulators who oversee them.
But now the utilities are backtracking. They say they need to meet an extraordinary spike in demand for electricity, mostly from the large facilities packed with computer servers that enable intensive online activity like generative AI and cryptocurrency, known as data centers.
In its latest integrated resource plan, or IRP, Southern Company subsidiary Georgia Power forecasts that demand will go up by 8,200 megawatts (MW) by the winter of 2030-31, more than three times the output of the new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, the first new nuclear reactors in the U.S. in decades, which Georgia Power and other utilities just spent more than $30 billion to build. To meet that growth, the company is requesting a range of resources, including upgrades to existing nuclear plants, more renewable energy, and improvements to the overall power grid — but it’s also asking to extend the life of heavily-polluting coal plants that were previously slated for retirement.
This move is part of a national trend. The data center industry is booming all over, from Virginia to Texas to Oregon, and utilities across the country are responding by building new fossil fuel resources or delaying retirements, all at a time when scientists agree that cutting fossil fuel emissions is more urgent than ever. More than 9,000 MW of fossil fuel generation slated for closure has been delayed or is at risk of delay, and more than 10,800 MW of new fossil fuel generation has been planned, according to the sustainability research and policy center Frontier Group.
The backslide into fossil fuels is alarming to environmental and consumer advocates, and not only because it stands to slow down climate action and extend the harmful effects of fossil fuel use. Some also question the purported growth in demand — meaning utilities could be doubling down on climate-warming coal and gas to meet energy demand that won’t actually materialize.
When Georgia Power requested permission to retire most of its coal plants by 2028, the decision wasn’t directly about reducing emissions. Rather, the utility had deemed the plants “uneconomic” — it would no longer make economic sense to keep running them. A key factor in that calculus was the cost of bringing old plants into compliance with new federal emissions restrictions. The future of that rule is now uncertain. The Supreme Court last fall ordered that the emissions rule could go into effect while legal challenges from states and power companies proceed. As a candidate, President Donald Trump promised to repeal the rule.
Regardless of the motive, environmental groups and large companies with their own emissions targets to hit applauded the move to close the coal plants.
So Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney Jennifer Whitfield called Georgia Power’s request to renege on some coal closures an “odd choice.”
