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State senator pushes bill to protect Georgia Power customers from rate hikes fueled by data centers • Georgia Recorder

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georgiarecorder.com – Stanley Dunlap – 2025-02-10 00:00:00

State senator pushes bill to protect Georgia Power customers from rate hikes fueled by data centers

by Stanley Dunlap, Georgia Recorder
February 10, 2025

Georgia Power, a national data center association, and clean energy groups are divided over the need for legislation that would prevent state-regulated utilities from raising electricity rates to cover the costs of energy-guzzling data centers.  

Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, a Rome Republican, said he filed Senate Bill 34 in order to protect residential and commercial ratepayers from getting hit with higher utility bills because of large-scale utility company investments to meet the energy demands of artificial intelligence. 

The Senate Committee on Regulated Industries and Utilities held a hearing last week on a measure that prohibits the Georgia Public Service Commission from changing any utility rates because of costs incurred providing electric services to commercial data centers. 

Georgia Power executives have said that 80% of its projected increased energy demands over the next decade is tied to prospective data centers opening in the state. Georgia Power is projecting electrical load growth will increase by 8,200 megawatts by 2030, representing an increase of 2,200 megawatts compared to its forecast in the 2023 Integrated Resource Plan update.

Representatives with Georgia Power and the Data Center Coalition said they oppose the way SB 34 gives the state Legislature control over a ratemaking process that is typically handled by the five-member PSC. Supporters of the measure give credit to the PSC for passing a new rule in January creating new protections for Georgia Power ratepayers against the influx of energy-hungry data centers, but push for more safeguards from the state.

Hufstetler said his bill provides more ironclad protections than the PSC rule.

“The two things I hear most from everybody right now are property taxes and electricity bills,” he said. “I know the PSC would like to keep the Legislature out of this, but I think this is just too huge of an issue for us not to make sure we’re taking care of the citizens.”

Following Thursday’s 90-minute Senate hearing, Sen. Bill Cowsert, an Athens Republican who chairs the committee, said further debate about about the proposal is needed before a decision is made on if it will advance in the Legislature.

“We’re really going into a new frontier,” he said. “You’ve had two mega data centers so far, you’ve got 10 more already on the books and it’s the wild, wild west going on as they’re exploding in growth.”

The new data center rule authorizes Georgia Power to enact contractual agreements with companies that will use 100 megawatts of power. It allows the utility company to “appropriately assign” to data centers the costs of providing them electric service. 

The rule also gives Georgia Power the ability to require data center companies to put up front-end collateral for energy costs over the lifetime of the contract. If the company abandons the project prior to the contract expiring, then Georgia Power would keep the remaining money owed.

The PSC is also requiring that it reviews new agreements with large load customers within 30 days of being signed.

The commission is set to vote in July on the investor-owned utility’s 2025 long-term roadmap of providing a mix of energy and infrastructure to serve 2.7 million customers and Georgia’s growing industrial base. 

Georgia Power is expected to file a new rate case with the PSC in 2025 asking to recover costs to serve its customers over the next three years. 

Environmental and consumer advocacy groups have raised alarms about Georgia Power’s long-term plan that would significantly expand its reliance on fossil fuels like coal, gas, and oil. They also express concerns about how potentially higher fuel costs and other expenses will further burden the typical Georgia Power household and small business owner.

Since 2023, the average Georgia Power residential customers is paying $43 more per month following a series of increase to base electric rates, to recover excess fuel expenses, and complete two of the newest nuclear power generators at Plant Vogtle.

Bob Sherrier, staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said Thursday one large data center can consume over 1,000 megawatts and the potential demand from the industry could potentially double the state’s current energy demand. 

Bob Sherrier, attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said during Thursday’s Senate regulated industries committee that SB 34 will hold data centers accountable for energy costs. Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder

He said the new PSC rule gives regulators more control over how Georgia Power recoups money spent on data centers. However, questions remain if it does enough to protect other customers. 

Sherrier said it’s going to be extremely expensive to bring the large data centers onto the power grid, with major investments in transmission and distribution lines and power plants, as well as increased energy fuel expenses.

“Did residents cause Georgia Power to file an emergency IRP a year ago that asked to add spend billions of dollars to build new power plants?” Sherrier said. “They didn’t. Is it because of small businesses that they require miles and miles of new, expensive transmission lines? No, I think that this bill sets an appropriate standard for making sure that they don’t have to pay for those costs.”

Aaron Mitchell, vice president of pricing and planning for Georgia Power, said that the proposal is unnecessary since the PSC rule requires data centers to bear the full cost of their energy consumption. 

Several dozen companies have expressed interest in building data centers inside the Peach State. 

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, data centers consume 10 to 50 times as much electricity as the average commercial building. 

A forthcoming report commissioned by the Data Center Coalition, a national membership association for industry, found that direct employment in the data center industry increased 7% from 2022-2023, going from 28,120 jobs to in 2022 to to 30,070 the following year, according to Khara Boender, senior manager of state policy for the coalition. 

“We would like to stress that the data center industry is committed to paying for its full cost of service for electricity,” Boender said. “We do not want residential ratepayers subsidizing data center energy use.”

Boender said the Data Center Coalition opposes the bill.

“Since the PSC has taken action to ensure large load customers bear the cost of their energy use, we encourage the committee to resist advancing legislation that would duplicate those efforts being addressed in the regulatory environment where the rate setting has traditionally taken place,” she said. 

A report in December from real-estate firm CBRE found that Atlanta is among the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the nation for the construction of data centers. The amount of data center power capacity jumped by 74% during the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023.

Major companies like Meta, Microsoft, Google and X have either opened data centers or announced plans to open facilities in Atlanta. The state is attracting interest from tech companies with its state tax breaks, with companies primarily building in regions with high-speed fiber optic cable infrastructure that is able to transfer large volumes of data.

Georgia Power says data center growth will cause electricity demands to triple in next decade

Sen. Greg Dolezal, a Cumming Republican, asked Mitchell why the utility company’s growth projections from a couple of years ago were significantly lower than its current forecast. Dolezal also asked if there was any truth to a rumor the PSC is merely rubber stamping requests from Georgia Power that have led to rising bills for its customers. 

“The thing that stands out to me is looking 10 years out, your estimate three years ago for 2035 will be is now 55% higher. That’s a massive change for three years. Help me understand what’s driving that change.”

Mitchell cited the state’s economic development boom that has attracted several auto manufacturing companies and auto suppliers to open new industrial sites and the surging artificial intelligence industry supported by data centers. 

Mitchell said that the PSC has consistently reduced the company’s initial requests in rates cases and resource planning.

Sen. Frank Ginn, Danielsville Republican, said his biggest concern about rapidly building up  infrastructure for data centers is the potential downfall should the demand be replaced by new AI technology that consumes drastically less energy. 

Georgia Power also has the ability to adjust its plans for building out its electric system should the market dynamics shift in a different direction, Mitchell said.

Mitchell said the new PSC rule locking in larger industrial customers into minimum 15-year contracts means that companies that fail to stay in operation for the entire length of a contract will “owe the remainder of the term of costs for that contract, so that other customers are not stuck with or have to bear the brunt of those costs.”

“We’ll be establishing minimum bills while electricity usage may fluctuate,” Mitchell said. “We wanted to ensure that the revenue coming in from these large customers was sufficient to cover our cost”

Mitchell said Georgia Power would be in a unique position as a utility company if it needed to get approval from the General Assembly to adjust its rates based on large data centers usage. 

“We believe that the tools provided by the laws you’ve already enacted, and under the rules of the Public Service Commission, provide us all tools necessary to ensure that we can continue to keep Georgia growing but protect all customers at the same time,” he said.

Several members of the Senate committee, including Republican Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, expressed their support of new data centers opening in Georgia since they can add a substantial infusion of dollars to the local property tax digest. 

Hufstetler said he’s in favor of the economic development benefits that come from new data centers. His district is home to a Switch data Center in Cartersville and in Rome, Microsoft has agreed to upfront 100% of their property taxes for a new data center. 

“I think we’re all – Georgia Power, the Public Service Commission, the data centers, myself – I think we all are kind of looking at the same goals,” Hufstetler said. “It’s just making sure that we’ve got everything tightened up to where we do protect the consumers of Georgia.”

Environment Georgia state director Jennette Gayer raised concerns about the environmental impact of new power plants and transmission lines required to support data centers rather than Georgia Power relying more on building up renewable energy sources like solar power. 

Gayer, a senior advisor for consumer watchdog Georgia Public Interest Research Group, said that the bill better ensures that data centers companies pay their fair share of energy costs.

“We absolutely do not think that the cost of supplying energy to data centers should be imposed on the environment or on consumers,” she said.

Julian Bene speaks about SB 34 at the Feb. 6 Senate regulated industries committee.

Julian Bene, a former board member of Atlanta’s economic development agency Invest Atlanta, said the rapidly changing AI landscape includes a Chinese entrepreneurial group that developed a substitute for the technology proliferating across the U.S. It can operate at a fraction of the power that’s in use widespread domestically, he said.

Bene said that if Georgia Power has an actual “take or pay” agreement then it’ll allow the company to recoup their investment without coming at the expense of residential and small business customers. 

“If you’re saying it’s all fixed, what’s your objection to Sen. Hufstetler’s bill?” Bene said. “Let’s do belt and braces and have both. You’re saying it’s all fixed, what’s your objection?”

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Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

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Lithuanian president honors 4 fallen Fort Stewart soldiers

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www.wsav.com – Natasha Young – 2025-07-10 22:57:00

SUMMARY: Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda posthumously awarded the Order of the Cross of Vytis to four 3rd Infantry Division soldiers who died in Lithuania during a mission earlier this year. Staff Sergeants Jose Duenez Jr., Edvin F. Franco, Troy S. Knutson-Collins, and Pfc. Dante D. Taitano were found deceased near Pabradė after repairing and towing an immobilized armored vehicle. Their M88A2 Hercules was recovered from a peat bog. The ceremony honored their sacrifice during NATO exercises, highlighting U.S.-Lithuania partnership and commitment to freedom. The soldiers were deployed for Operation Atlantic Resolve but stationed at Fort Stewart.

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History voter purge in Georgia: What you need to know | FOX 5 News

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www.youtube.com – FOX 5 Atlanta – 2025-07-10 22:48:03

SUMMARY: Georgia is canceling nearly half a million voter registrations as part of a routine cleanup to maintain accurate voter rolls. The Secretary of State’s office began mailing letters to 478,000 inactive voters, who have 40 days to respond or risk removal. This is required by federal and state law and targets those inactive for over four years due to reasons like moving out of state or returned mail. Voting rights groups, including the ACLU, call it a purge, warning it could disenfranchise eligible voters, particularly younger, lower-income, or mobile residents. Georgia currently has about 8.25 million registered voters.

Nearly half a million voter registrations in Georgia are about to be cancelled. The Georgia Secretary of the state’s office began mailing out letters to hundreds of thousands of voters. If you get one the clock is ticking to stay on the voter rolls. It’s one of the largest cancellations of voter registrations in history.

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Georgia lags far behind other states in the number of journalists, says new report 

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georgiarecorder.com – Amber Roldan – 2025-07-10 20:05:00


A new report from Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack reveals a 75% decline in local journalists nationwide since 2002. The study introduces Local Journalist Equivalents (LJEs) to measure local journalism strength, showing a drop from about 40 to 8.2 journalists per 100,000 people nationally. Georgia ranks 46th with 5.8 LJEs per 100,000, below the national average, while Vermont leads with 27.5. The decline affects both rural and growing urban areas. Experts warn this erosion threatens democracy, citing shrinking ad revenue and social media’s rise. Nonprofit news models like The Current and Macon Melody may offer solutions.

by Amber Roldan, Georgia Recorder
July 10, 2025

The decline of local news continues on the national level and here at home in Georgia. A new local journalism report from Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack reveals a 75% decline in local journalists across the country since 2002. 

“The goals of this new report and project is to try to create a measure of journalists per population and an index that could be recreated each year down to the county level,” Rebuild Local Journalism Founder Steve Waldman said during a webinar Thursday. “The reason that we all felt that that was important is that at the heart of the local news crisis is the lack of coverage and the lack of reporters in communities.”

The report, which was released Thursday, found that the shortage of local journalists is both severe and widespread. This shortage is measured by a new metric called Local Journalist Equivalents (LJEs), which uses a formula to evaluate the strength of local journalism. LJEs were determined by outlet types, verifiable bylines and reporting capacity based on factors like publishing frequency. This data was then used to show nationwide trends and state specific metrics.

In 2002, there was a national average of about 40 local journalists per 100,000 people. Today, that figure has dropped to an average of 8.2 Local Journalist Equivalents. Georgia’s average currently sits well below that number, landing Georgia at No. 46 on this year’s ranking.

With a statewide population of 11 million people, Georgia has an average of 5.8 Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 people. This average was significantly less than the No. 1 ranked state of Vermont that has an average of 27.5. Nevada trailed four places behind Georgia with the lowest ranked average of 4.8 local journalists.

While the decline of local news is not a new phenomenon, the report confirms that rural areas are not the only communities underserved by local news. Many fast growing areas including Los Angeles and Las Vegas also scored below the national average.

Richard T. Griffiths, a retired reporter and president emeritus of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, said continued decline of local journalism goes beyond local journalists.

“It’s not the industry that is the future casualty of this, it’s democracy itself,” Griffiths said. “If you have a populace that doesn’t understand what’s going on in its community because there are no reporters able to go to the meetings to figure out what’s going on, then you have a collapse of the institutions that underpin our society and our democracy.”

Griffiths cited waning advertising dollars and the rise of social media as notable factors behind the demise of local news. In a world of subscriptions and paywalls, Griffiths said he believes that the business model of local journalism needs to be re-evaluated. He points to nonprofit models like The Current on the Georgia coast and The Macon Melody as potential ways to revitalize local news.

While the new report may not identify clear-cut solutions, the creators behind the report hope their findings can help improve the viability and sustainability of local journalism.

“We think we made a real significant contribution here, and that this really gives a very meaningful picture of the sort of journalistic horsepower in counties across America and will help all of us to better understand both the crisis and how to solve it,” Waldman said.

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Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jill Nolin for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The content presents a factual report on the decline of local journalism in the United States, particularly highlighting statistical data and expert commentary without partisan language or ideological framing. It focuses on the democratic importance of local news and explores potential nonprofit models as solutions, showing concern for community engagement and transparency. Given the balanced presentation of information and absence of overt political viewpoints, the content leans toward a centrist perspective.

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