Last year, I retired as chief financial officer of Equifax Inc. after a career of over 30 years in business leadership and strategy consulting. Equifax, based here in Atlanta, is a world-class company that gathers and maintains information on over 220 million American consumers and millions more around the world.
In my eight years with Equifax, we built a platform for sustained growth by seeking out new opportunities while managing risks in an ever-evolving global economy. My job included continually anticipating how markets were changing and how we and our customers could adapt to come out ahead. Nothing was more challenging in recent years than navigating the company through the Great Recession and subsequent changes in financial markets — while ensuring we emerged better and stronger. And we did.
Now our economy faces an even greater challenge: climate change.
A major report was released last year by the Risky Business Project, co-chaired by Michael R. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City; Henry Paulson, former U.S. secretary of the Treasury, and Tom Steyer, a successful investor. The report quantifies the real and potential economic impacts of a changing climate, focusing on the clearest and most economically significant of these risks: impacts to property and infrastructure, labor productivity and public health.
According to the report, climate change-related storms along our shoreline are likely to increase losses by $118 million per year, on average, by 2030. By mid-century, heat-related labor productivity declines across all sectors in Georgia may cost the state economy up to $2 billion each year.
The report’s key finding was that we can significantly reduce these risks if policymakers and business leaders act now to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to a changing climate. The recently announced Clean Power Plan from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will help us do just that.
The Clean Power Plan sets the nation’s first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants, the largest source of the pollution driving climate change. The plan is both ambitious and pragmatic. It requires our state to reduce power plant carbon emissions by 34 percent over 15 years, with the flexibility to develop and implement a plan that mitigates climate risks and addresses the specific needs of Georgia families and businesses.
The good news is, we’re already well positioned to meet our state’s carbon reduction target. Significant reductions are already under way as a result of planned coal plant retirements in the state, renewable energy investments, and the $17 billion expansion at Plant Vogtle.
Clean Power Plan opponents warn about its price tag, but hitting Georgia’s carbon-reduction target will only cost more if Georgia chooses a compliance strategy that relies too heavily on nuclear power — the most expensive, complicated way to generate electricity.
Georgia’s changing energy landscape already shows our path to success is through renewable technologies and better efficiency. By taking advantage of these resources, Georgia will be able to reduce costs and improve reliability, while giving consumers more energy choices.
Wind and solar power, driven by improving technology and declining costs, are increasingly being adopted by utilities to reduce costs and rates compared to other sources of power, and energy efficiency is almost always the lowest-cost way to meet new electricity needs. Utilizing these affordable clean energy options will reduce carbon emissions, and also means relying less on expensive and dirty fossil fuels like coal and gas.
What happens when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine? We’ve got a long way to go before that should stop us. Iowa is getting 40 percent of its electricity from wind. Yet despite our progress, Georgia gets less than 1 percent of our electricity from renewable power.
My business experience tells me investing in a modernized electricity system will create new jobs and drive more economic growth. Georgia is home to the fastest-growing solar market in the nation, and we’re well positioned to one day make renewable energy a pillar of our state economy. There are already more than 173 solar companies at work in Georgia, investing $189 million to install solar on homes and businesses.
Establishing carbon pollution protections will kickstart the essential work of cleaning up and modernizing the way we power our country. Georgians should embrace the opportunity presented in the Clean Power Plan to continue to lead the way to a clean energy economy and a more stable economic future.
Lee Adrean is the retired CFO of Equifax and a former strategy consultant with Bain & Company.
About the Author
