Tag Archives: CEO Thomas A. Fanning

Southern Company Annual Meeting @ SO 2016-05-25

Road trip to Callaway Gardens for the annual question time with Tom Fanning,
questions provided by environmentalists and Southern Company (SO) stockholders from at least four states.

This figure from page ii of the meeting Notice illustrates both the problem and the solution for Southern Company.
Natural gas has replaced coal as SO’s top energy source, and Nuclear is still
in there.
But renewables are up to 4%.
And over on the right of the same page:

Growth in Renewables

Approximately 3,800 megawatts of announced
or added renewable capacity since 2012. This
includes the development of what is expected to
be the largest voluntary solar portfolio in the U.S.
(at Georgia Power Company).

Interesting use of “voluntary”, but never mind that.
If SO keeps that up, it will Continue reading →

Slight changes at Southern Company @ SO 2014-05-28

Solar car charging station at the

Southern Company Stockholder Meeting:
that’s new.
Other solar changes were detectable, if you knew what to look for,
and with hints from

SO CEO Tom Fanning and

new R&D VP Larry Monroe
here are some, while we’re waiting on SO for video and transcript.

Two demonstration solar charging cars were on the lawn outside the breakfast tent: Continue reading →

Southern Company Stockholder Meeting @ SO 2014-05-28

If you owned Southern Company stock on 31 March 2014 (I did),
you should have gotten

a letter to Stockholders from SO CEO Tom Fanning:

You are invited to attend the 2014 Annual Meeting of Stockholders at
10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, May 28, 2014, at The Lodge Conference
Center at Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Georgia.

Tom Fanning is a most congenial host, always ready with an answer to any question, as you can see in these videos from the Continue reading →

SO’s plan to make the Southeast a net exporter of the energy from solar and wind? –John S. Quarterman @ SO 2013-05-22

SO CEO Tom Fanning didn’t budge from nuclear and coal,
but he did announce a tiger team to get on top of
distributed solar and wind through a smart grid,
headed by SO’s COO,
at the

22 May 2013 Southern Company Stockholder Meeting.

Mr. John S. Quarterman from Lowndes County, Georgia, and he holds
220 shares of Southern Company.

TF: Hello, John. Good to see you again this year.

jsq: Hi. I’ve come to compliment Tom Fanning and Paul Bowers. Last
year, Tom Fanning was so persuasive I ran out and bought $10,000
worth of stock.

TF: Bless you.
[Applause]

However,
apparently because of

SO’s admission a few minutes before in that same meeting
that it was going to have to eat Kemper Coal cost overruns,

SO stock tanked that same day,
causing my stock to stop out,
and Standard & Poor’s downgraded SO the following day
because of Kemper Coal, noting that if the same thing happened
with SO’s nuclear project at Plant Vogtle, S&P’s would probably Continue reading →

Does SO have a business model for energy conservation? –Dan Everett @ SO 2013-05-22

SO has done a lot about energy efficiency, but can it do more,
and how will it profit by doing so?
Prof. Dan Everett asked this
at the

22 May 2013 Southern Company Stockholder Meeting.

I have Mr. Dan Everett from Athens, Georgia, and he holds 11 shares of
Southern Company.

TF: Talked to Dan earlier today. Dan is a professor at the University of
Georgia, right?

DE: Right.

He’s
Daniel M. Everett,
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, UGA Athens.
The SO Annual Stockholders Meeting apparently doesn’t get many professors.

TF: Fantastic. Well, welcome.

DE: Oh, thank you very much. And as a guy who has some professional
interest in this stuff, I totally applaud the research that y’all
are doing on energy technologies and renewable
energies and efficiency technologies because it does take a while to
deploy those.

My specific question is about energy conservation.
I’ve noticed Continue reading →

Coal and natural gas cost effective vs. energy efficiency, wind, and solar power? –Stephanie Coffin @ SO 2013-05-22

SO CEO Tom Fanning is a true believer in “all of the above”,
yet a skeptic about natural gas.
However, he really doesn’t have much faith in renewables,
as he indicated at the

22 May 2013 Southern Company Stockholder Meeting
and even more strongly in the Wall Street Journal.

This question is from Stephanie Coffin of Atlanta, Georgia, and she
holds 18 shares of stock.

TF:
Hello, Stephanie.

SC:
How are you, Tom?

TF:
Dynamite. How are you?

SC:
Last year, I came to this meeting to ask a question and to listen to
the Southern Company reports. And so before I came I got to thinking
about what has changed since the last meeting. I think two things,
and then I’ll ask my question.

The first is the chairperson’s salary
increased 34 percent, over $13 million a year. I’m sure the retirees
and stockholders in the room wonder about the $13 million salary and
see that as negative PR in the face of continuing recession. $13
million a year, most of us are on fixed income. I mean, your income

is fixed, too, but it’s very high. Mine is pretty low and we all
have to pay electric bills.

The second change, and then I’ll ask my
question, is that now 70 — 97 percent of all scientists
believe that climate change — that is, global warming —
is real and caused by human activity and this is a big shift. Last
year we were the climate deniers, we’re in control, and now 97
percent of all scientists say it’s real, it’s coming, you better get
ready.
In the face of this scientific consensus the Southern Company
has maintained its reliance on fossil fuels, mountaintop coal, old
coal plants and pushing nuclear power with huge wattage demands and
the dangers of nuclear wastes.

While I applaud the Southern
Company’s baby steps Continue reading →

Why are you gambling on nuclear instead of solar? –Gloria Tatum @ SO 2013-05-22

Why is SO gambling our health and dollars on Plant Vogtle
when Georgia Power could be getting on with solar power?
SO CEO Tom Fanning avoided the first part of Gloria Tatum’s question
by simply denying it, and danced around the second part by saying
the rate hike for Plant Vogtle’s cost overruns would only be
6 to 8 percent, not 12 percent.
Do you want to pay 6 or 8 percent more for a radioactive white elephant
when you could be getting power from the sun for less?

The floor person at the

22 May 2013 Southern Company Stockholder Meeting
introduced Gloria Tatum with 164 shares, representing Nuclear
Watch South, and the SO CEO insisted

TF: Call me Tom. Gee whiz.

GT: Tom. Hi,Tom. It’s great to be here on this beautiful day.

TF: Thank you. Yes ma’am.

GT: And I know Southern Company’s done many wonderful things, but I want
to point out a few things to you today.

First, you know, after the
Fukushima meltdown, TEPCO’s $50 billion nuclear complex became a
worthless liability. The deadly radiation still circles the planet,
polluting the earth and increasing cancer. Other countries have
abandoned their nuclear and they’re looking to renewable, but
Southern Company’s affiliate, Georgia Power, continues construction
on two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle. Now Shell Bluff is a
community down the stream from Plant Vogtle and it has experienced a
25 percent increase in cancer since Vogtle 1 and 2 have been built.

Another problem with Vogtle Continue reading →

Kemper Coal cost overruns at Southern Company Stockholder Meeting @ SO 2013-05-22

SO CEO Tom Fanning used Julia O’Neal’s question about cost overruns
to tout the alleged benefits of Kemper Coal,
which include selling CO₂ to oil companies to pump into the ground to
produce more oil.
He didn’t mention that oil is then burned to produce more CO₂.

And that Mississippi lignite coal he said would otherwise stay in the ground?
Yes it and its CO₂ would stay there if SO would get on with solar instead of coal.

Before her question, he had not said much about that project, mostly this about Major Projects, at
29 minutes and 28 seconds in

SO’s own video
of
the 22 May 2013 Southern Company Stockholder meeting.
You’ll have to skip there manually, because of the SO’s video format.

SO prohibited “unauthorized” videoing,
so we don’t have the usual LAKE video on YouTube.

I always call out Vogtle and Kemper County.
Both projects are going to serve our customers for decades to come.
We’ve had some challenges with Kemper.
We’ll probably talk about those later.
But when I think about the value that these projects will bring,
I think our customers, and the economy of the southeast,
will be benefited for decades.
And we’re very excited about the progress we’re making on both of those.

It’s curious he mentioned SO’s flagship coal and nuclear projects
without saying coal or nuclear.
And if by “progress” he means Continue reading →

Video of Southern Company shareholders meeting @ SO 2013-05-22

Here’s

Southern Company’s own video
of the
22 May 2013 shareholders meeting.
More detail will follow on the record number of questions,
and CEO Tom Fanning’s answers, in addition to this one already posted.

-jsq

Kemper Coal: SO’s bitter pill @ SO 2013-05-22

“Corporate responsiblity,” answered Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning
to questions about Kemper Coal from Linda St. Martin of Mississippians
For Affordable Energy.
I don’t think that word means what he thinks it means.

Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday,

Southern Co. CEO defends Miss. power project,

Continue reading →

On the LAKE front

Citizen dialog for transparent process by the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange