Listen to the folks who run some of our biggest electric utilities:
Tom Fanning, chief of Southern Company, in 2016 about its nuclear project in Georgia, which is years behind schedule: “It has gone beautifully. And we’re on schedule.”
Kevin Marsh, CEO of SCANA, in 2016 about South Carolina’s V.C. Summer nuclear project a few months before it collapsed: “We’re excited about where we are.”
Lewis Hay, CEO of Florida Power & Light, in 2011 about nuclear upgrades that cost twice as much as promised: “Our customers should greatly benefit.”
And Fanning again in 2015, this time about his company’s clean coal project in Mississippi, which isn’t burning coal or cleaning it:
“We’re on a real winning streak right now.
They should have said "thank you," because money they torched on these and other power plants wasn’t theirs.
It was yours.
Over the past decade, state legislatures across the country rewrote rule books for how power companies pay for new power plants, shifting financial risks away from electric companies to you and everyone else.
This rule change ignited a bonfire of risky spending — $40 billion so far on new power plants and upgrades, a Post and Courier investigation found.
Flush with your cash, utilities tried to build plants with unproven technology; they launched projects with unfinished designs and unrealistic budgets; they misled regulators and the public with schedules that promised bogus completion dates; they hid damning reports from investors and the public; they tried to silence critics and whistleblowers.
Then, when delays and cost overruns couldn’t be ignored, they asked state regulators to charge you more for their failures.
The result is a tale about power — political and electric. It’s about how an industry helped change rules so it could make big bets with your money.
These bets include the now well-documented boondoggle in South Carolina — the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion — $9 billion sunk into two abandoned reactors that may never produce enough juice to run a nightlight.
But they also involve bets on clean coal plants in Mississippi and Indiana.
And nuclear reactors in Georgia.
And projects in Florida and North Carolina that never got off the ground but still cost customers billions of dollars.
Behind the scenes, Southern Company and Mississippi politicians had orchestrated a complex but potentially lucrative trade — courtesy of federal taxpayers. Southern Company and a Florida utility had been working on a government-subsidized “clean coal” project near Orlando, one that had fizzled. A Department of Energy memo acknowledged the plant was not “technically or economically feasible” in Florida.
Enter former Southern Company lobbyist Haley Barbour, the avuncular Republican Party stalwart. Elected governor of Mississippi in 2004, Barbour and Southern Company persuaded the Department of Energy to move the foundering project and its $270 million in federal grants from Orlando to Kemper County — and then make it much bigger, more expensive and pin costs mostly on federal taxpayers and Mississippi customers.
more
https://www.postandcourier.com/news...cle_434e8778-c880-11e7-9691-e7b11f5b3381.html
Tom Fanning, chief of Southern Company, in 2016 about its nuclear project in Georgia, which is years behind schedule: “It has gone beautifully. And we’re on schedule.”
Kevin Marsh, CEO of SCANA, in 2016 about South Carolina’s V.C. Summer nuclear project a few months before it collapsed: “We’re excited about where we are.”
Lewis Hay, CEO of Florida Power & Light, in 2011 about nuclear upgrades that cost twice as much as promised: “Our customers should greatly benefit.”
And Fanning again in 2015, this time about his company’s clean coal project in Mississippi, which isn’t burning coal or cleaning it:
“We’re on a real winning streak right now.
They should have said "thank you," because money they torched on these and other power plants wasn’t theirs.
It was yours.
Over the past decade, state legislatures across the country rewrote rule books for how power companies pay for new power plants, shifting financial risks away from electric companies to you and everyone else.
This rule change ignited a bonfire of risky spending — $40 billion so far on new power plants and upgrades, a Post and Courier investigation found.
Flush with your cash, utilities tried to build plants with unproven technology; they launched projects with unfinished designs and unrealistic budgets; they misled regulators and the public with schedules that promised bogus completion dates; they hid damning reports from investors and the public; they tried to silence critics and whistleblowers.
Then, when delays and cost overruns couldn’t be ignored, they asked state regulators to charge you more for their failures.
The result is a tale about power — political and electric. It’s about how an industry helped change rules so it could make big bets with your money.
These bets include the now well-documented boondoggle in South Carolina — the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion — $9 billion sunk into two abandoned reactors that may never produce enough juice to run a nightlight.
But they also involve bets on clean coal plants in Mississippi and Indiana.
And nuclear reactors in Georgia.
And projects in Florida and North Carolina that never got off the ground but still cost customers billions of dollars.
Behind the scenes, Southern Company and Mississippi politicians had orchestrated a complex but potentially lucrative trade — courtesy of federal taxpayers. Southern Company and a Florida utility had been working on a government-subsidized “clean coal” project near Orlando, one that had fizzled. A Department of Energy memo acknowledged the plant was not “technically or economically feasible” in Florida.
Enter former Southern Company lobbyist Haley Barbour, the avuncular Republican Party stalwart. Elected governor of Mississippi in 2004, Barbour and Southern Company persuaded the Department of Energy to move the foundering project and its $270 million in federal grants from Orlando to Kemper County — and then make it much bigger, more expensive and pin costs mostly on federal taxpayers and Mississippi customers.
more
https://www.postandcourier.com/news...cle_434e8778-c880-11e7-9691-e7b11f5b3381.html
