{"id":1795,"date":"2011-07-06T19:07:48","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T23:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/georgia-power-wants-taxpayers-to-take-profit-risk-for-new-nukes.html"},"modified":"2011-07-06T19:07:48","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T23:07:48","slug":"georgia-power-wants-taxpayers-to-take-profit-risk-for-new-nukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/georgia-power-wants-taxpayers-to-take-profit-risk-for-new-nukes.html","title":{"rendered":"Georgia Power wants taxpayers to take profit risk for new nukes"},"content":{"rendered":"After already hiking rates to pay for Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4,\nGeorgia Power now balks at taking any risk to its profit if costs\ngo above the projected budget.\n

\nKristi E. Swartz wrote in the AJC today,\n\nGeorgia Power trashes regulatory staff’s financial proposal for Vogtle cost overruns<\/a>:\n

\n\n<\/a>\nGeorgia Power officials told state regulators they never would have\nstarted to build a new multi-billion-dollar nuclear power plant if they\nknew the company might be on the hook for certain potential cost overruns.\n

\nThe company, they said, would be building a natural gas plant instead.\n

\nGeorgia Power, which is the largest stakeholder in a partnership building\ntwo new reactors at Plant Vogtle, is responsible for $6.1 billion of\nthe $14 billion project. The Georgia Public Service Commission\u2019s staff\nwants to cut into the utility\u2019s allowed profit margin if the project\nruns more than $300 million over budget. Profits would similarly get a\nboost if the reactors come in under budget by the same amount.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe PSC deal sounds fair to me, or actually rather generous.\n

\nBut not to the big-company socialists at Georgia Power:\n

\nAt a PSC hearing Wednesday, company executives said the proposal could\ndrive up financing costs of the project, potentially damage the ability\nto raise capital and eventually increase customer bills.\n

\n\u201cAs a member of the management team of the company, if this mechanism\nhad been part of the original certification, we very likely would have\nnot proceeded [with the project],” said Ann Daiss, Georgia Power\u2019s\ncomptroller.\n<\/blockquote>\nPrivatize the profits; socialize the risks!\nThat’s the ticket!\n

\nThey could spend less money building distributed solar farms\nand wind generators and get them built a lot faster with very little\nrisk of cost overruns.\nWhy isn’t Georgia Power interested in that?\n

\n\u201cEven under the most adverse outcomes, the units remain\nhighly profitable with very limited risk for investors,\u201d [PSC staff member Tom] Newsome\nsaid. \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking a lot about investors in this hearing and\nI think we need to be talking about [customers].\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nProfits paid for by customer rate hikes and taxes from you, the taxpayer.\nYou’d have a better deal if Georgia Power built solar and wind plants.\n

\n-jsq\n

\nPS: Owed to Mandy Hancock.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After already hiking rates to pay for Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4, Georgia Power now balks at taking any risk to its profit if costs go above the projected budget. Kristi E. Swartz wrote in the AJC today, Georgia Power trashes regulatory staff’s financial proposal for Vogtle cost overruns: Georgia Power officials told state […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[142,17,18,2,104],"tags":[28,8708,8737,380,218,2515,103,310,383],"class_list":["post-1795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cwip","category-ga-psc","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-nuclear","tag-cost","tag-georgia-power","tag-nuclear","tag-overrun","tag-profit","tag-psc","tag-public-service-commission","tag-risk","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-sX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}