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
Tag Archives: Economy
Owners want out of uranium enrichment company
Maybe Southern Company and Georgia Power should listen to Urenco’s owners:
the nuclear industry is flatlining after Fukushima.
Stanley Reed wrote for Dealbook.Nytimes.com 27 May 2013,
Powerhouse of the Uranium Enrichment Industry Seeks an Exit,
The company that operates this uranium enrichment center, Urenco, is
the world leader in the field. It is also plumply profitable. So why
are its owners eager to sell it?The answer, as with many things involving nuclear power, is a
combination of economics, geopolitics and the Promethean prospect of
an energy source that is as potentially green and abundant as deadly
dangerous….
China carbon cap and Georgia Power
If China implements a carbon tax, will Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers
change his recent answer to a question about a carbon tax,
which was “why would anyone want that?”
In February
the Chinese Ministry of Finance (MoF) said China would soon tax
carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions,
and that’s getting closer in
the country whose capital Beijing has smog bad it’s literally off the charts.
Katie Valentine wrote for ThinkProgress 22 May 2013,
Bombshell: China May Be Close To Implementing A Cap On Carbon Pollution,
China is taking steps to tackle its huge
carbon output. Today, the country announced the
details of its first carbon trading program, which will begin
in the city of Shenzhen next month. The southern city is one of seven
cities and provinces, including Beijing, which will take part in
the pilot program, set to be completely implemented by 2014.
And according to one local news source, China could
implement an absolute, nation-wide cap on its carbon
emissions by 2016. China’s 21st Century Business Herald
reported this week that the country’s State Council still needs to
approve the carbon cap proposal submitted by the National Development
and Reform Commission, a government entity that controls much of the
Chinese economy. The proposal, which the State Council is reportedly likely
to support, would ensure China’s emissions would
not increase past the country’s target cap, regardless
of economic growth — though it’s still unclear what
that cap would be. The paper reported that the NDRC also predicts
China’s greenhouse gas emissions will peak in 2025, rather than 2030,
as earlier predictions stated.If the cap is adopted,
Monsanto rider came from south Georgia: Jack Kingston GA-01
Jack Kingston (GA-01) slipped the Monsanto rider into a recent law,
requiring “the Secretary of Agriculture to grant a temporary permit for
the planting or cultivation of a genetically engineered crop, even if a
federal court has ordered the planting be halted until an Environmental
Impact Statement is completed”.
Alexis Baden-Mayer wrote for AlterNet 8 July 2012,
The “Monsanto Rider”: Are Biotech Companies About to Gain Immunity From Federal Law?
Whom do we have to thank for this sneak attack on USDA safeguards?
The agricultural sub-committee chair Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) —
who not coincidentally was voted “legislator of the year for
2011-2012” by none other than the Biotechnology Industry
Organization, whose members include Monsanto and DuPont.
As reported by Mother Jones,
the Biotechnology Industry Organization
declared Kingston a “champion of America’s biotechnology industry”
who has
“helped to protect funding for programs essential to the survival of
biotechnology companies across the United States.”
The Biotechnology Industry Organization’s
PR about that award of 24 April 2012 says down at the bottom:
Photos of the award presentation are available upon request.
If that award is such an honor,
why are they hiding the pictures of Jack Kingston receiving it?
If Monsanto’s products are so great, why don’t they label them
so we can tell which they are?
Why did a French court
just uphold a conviction of Monsanto
for poisoning a French farmer?
Why does Monsanto
oppose independent GMO research?
And why did
hundreds of thousands of people just march against Monsanto?
Could it be because of
liver and kidney damage, cancer and birth defects, pollution of water and air,
systematic gaming of the patent system,
perversion of the regulatory system,
and corruption of the legislative system?
Speaking of corruption,
Kingston has put the survival of biotechnology companies above
the survival of farmers and the health of the American people.
Jack Kingston, voted Biotech “Legislator of the Year.” Responsible for adding the Monsanto Immunity Rider to the farm bill (H.R. 5973, Section 733). Tell him what you think!
www.facebook.coim/jackkingston/, 202-225-5821, 912-352-0101
-jsq
Profits also link Vogtle nukes and Kemper coal
Southern Company gets substantial profits from utility customers paying in advance
for “clean coal” in Kemper County, MS and for new nukes at Plant Vogtle
on the Savannah River in Georgia.
As long as SO can keep raking in those profits, it has incentive
not to get on with distributed solar power.
Kristi E. Swartz wrote for the AJC 27 July 2011,
Southern Co.’s profits up on nuke finance fees,
A fee added to Georgia Power bills to help finance a planned nuclear
plant expansion also helped parent Southern Co. post an 18 percent
profit gain in the second quarter.The $3.73 monthly fee offsets financing costs for two proposed
nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.Atlanta-based Southern cited it as one of the factors lifting net
income to $603.3 million, or 71 cents a share, in the April-June
quarter compared with $510.2 million, or 62 cents a share a year
earlier. Profits were also helped by a hot early summer, the company
said.
Back then SO CEO Tom Fanning said,
“The whole issue is to preserve schedule and costs,” Fanning said.
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,
Sierra Club goes to Southern Company stockholder meeting
“Almost like a Berkshire-Hathaway meeting,”
remarked SO CEO Tom Fanning after
Sierra Club (and other) activists asked questions
at the
Southern Company stockholder meeting at Callaway Gardens yesterday,
as promised by the numerous news stories the previous day after the press conference organized by Georgia Sierra Club Director Colleen Kiernan.
As usual Fanning turned in a Class A CEO performance,
although he seemed bemused by the diversity and sometimes very positive
slant of the questions,
which nonetheless brought up numerous problems with SO’s coal and nuclear
agenda, lackluster renewable energy agenda, and
the impending disruption of distributed solar power.
New rule this year: no unauthorized video or flash photography,
posted on big signs outside the conference room door.
I asked Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers to authorize me,
but he said it was a shareholder meeting and thus a different level.
The person in charge of SO’s own videoing promised they’d
be available on the web soon after the meeting.
I told him I’d been checking since last year’s meeting, and those
still weren’t on the web.
He said they had been briefly; then they were taken down.
But he would make them available.
We’ll see….
Meanwhile, you only get this one picture of Tom Fanning
(he insists everyone call him Tom) as he compared SO’s stock price to the only more stable company:
Hormel.
That’s right, SO is almost as stable as Spam.
He looked at me rather pointedly as he announced that new rule.
And rather wryly later when I pointed out
that according to Edison Electric Institute
SO’s business model was due for disruption very soon.
More on that later,
along with other reports on Wednesday’s meeting.
Walter C. Jones wrote for Morris News Service 21 May 2013,
Southern Co. expects to face environmental challenges,
Nuclear reactor percent power from NRC data
Do nuclear reactors really deliver dependable baseload capacity?
I hear industry execs say 99.99% uptime.
The real average from seven years of NRC data for 104 reactors is 88.13%.
According to Power Reactor Status Reports
posted online by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
here are the actual percent power percentages over time
for the 104 listed nuclear power reactors.
The timeframe is 31 March 2006 through today, 21 May 2013.
(The NRC data appears to go back to 1999, but seven years
is a good sample to start with.)
The computation for each reactor is the sum of the uptime
percentages for each day divided by the number of days.
The total uptime is the sum of the reactor uptimes divided
by the number of reactors.
Here’s the list, sorted two ways:
Content in today’s Industrial Authority agenda! @ VLCIA 2013-05-21
Names of projects!
Lists of PR and marketing items!
Is this a new trend from our Industrial Authority?
Or will it be like
the last time I complimented them on an agenda with content
and was told later that one was an accident.
Here’s
the agenda.
Sure, the project names are codewords, but that’s how they talk to
prospective companies without revealing all their cards to the competition.
And this one has a name:
-
Georgia Power Company Advanced Solar Initiaitve (GPASI) Projects
Maybe we’ll hear more about those
two megawatts of solar power.
Maybe even more are scheduled for Lowndes County.
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda, Tuesday, May 21, 2013 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
Religious freedom and the neighbors @ LCC 2013-05-14
Apparently concern about a different religion is what it takes
to get a Lowndes County Commissioner to speak up for the majority
of the neighbors.
After Utilities Director Mike Allen outlined the case again
at the
Lowndes County Commission Regular Session 14 May 2013
Commissioner John Page
elaborated on his question of
the previous morning:
But the trust deed that we have in our notebook
says it’s for the Valdosta Islamic Center Corporation,
so this is a, uh,
I know they’re calling it the Mercy Community Center,
but isn’t this going to be a Muslim worship center
instead of a subdivision?
County Planner Jason Davenport responded: