Georgia is on a path to more robust economic growth based on cleaner and more affordable energy. Natural gas and nuclear power will provide most of the muscle.
There are three key factors for this promising energy situation: the huge increase in clean and inexpensive natural gas due to “fracking” technology; Georgia’s ongoing expansion of nuclear power facilities; and President Barack Obama’s new climate plan, which will require Georgia to reduce its carbon emissions by 44 percent by 2030.
An abundance of natural gas from hydraulic fracturing in underground shale formations, extending largely from the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states to the Gulf Coast, has improved America’s energy future. In less than a decade, America has gone from scarcity to the world’s largest gas producer.
The Southern Co., which owns Georgia Power, has been retiring aging coal plants and building new gas units. Natural gas has less than 50 percent of the carbon content of coal, so a switch to gas reduces Georgia’s greenhouse gas emissions significantly. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal’s share of Georgia’s electricity generating capacity has dropped from 55 to 33 percent since 2009, while the use of gas has more than doubled, from 16 percent to more than 35 percent. That trend is likely to continue.
Georgia may even become an exporter of liquefied natural gas, since the LNG import plant in Savannah has applied for a federal permit to export such gas. These profitable exports may help Europe fight the gas monopoly that allows Russia to dominate much of the region.
Georgia also has the advantage of nuclear power. Its expansion is crucial, because it can deliver large amounts of power without sending any carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The biggest reduction in such emissions will come from two large nuclear power plants under construction at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro. The Vogtle additions alone will account for more than a third of Georgia’s required carbon reductions under the president’s climate plan.
The need to invest in natural gas, nuclear power and renewable energy sources is more obvious than ever. Solar and wind energy have been neglected in the state; now their use is being promoted. We need to face the future with all of our energy tools.
Even coal, possibly with carbon capture and storage technology, may have a role to play. The Southern Co. has partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy to build the Kemper County Plant in Mississippi, which will gasify coal before it is burned and capture its carbon emissions. This is the first large-scale technology for carbon mitigation in coal generation to be demonstrated in the United States. It is expensive, given the relative price of natural gas, but the process is promising. It could even be beneficial in reducing carbon emissions in fast-growing economies overseas that rely heavily on coal.
Georgia’s nuclear and gas programs will present an opportunity to ensure a cleaner environment and greater energy security.
Win Porter is an energy and environment consultant based in Savannah.
