{"id":3567,"date":"2013-05-24T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3567"},"modified":"2013-05-23T12:04:13","modified_gmt":"2013-05-23T16:04:13","slug":"profits-also-link-vogtle-nukes-and-kemper-coal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/profits-also-link-vogtle-nukes-and-kemper-coal.html","title":{"rendered":"Profits also link Vogtle nukes and Kemper coal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSouthern Company gets substantial profits from utility customers paying in advance\r\nfor “clean coal” in Kemper County, MS and for new nukes at Plant Vogtle\r\non the Savannah River in Georgia.\r\nAs long as SO can keep raking in those profits, it has incentive\r\nnot to get on with distributed solar power.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nKristi E. Swartz wrote for the AJC 27 July 2011,\r\n\r\nSouthern Co.’s profits up on nuke finance fees<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nA fee added to Georgia Power bills to help finance a planned nuclear\r\nplant expansion also helped parent Southern Co. post an 18 percent\r\nprofit gain in the second quarter.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe $3.73 monthly fee offsets financing costs for two proposed\r\nnuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAtlanta-based Southern cited it as one of the factors lifting net\r\nincome to $603.3 million, or 71 cents a share, in the April-June\r\nquarter compared with $510.2 million, or 62 cents a share a year\r\nearlier. Profits were also helped by a hot early summer, the company\r\nsaid.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nBack then SO CEO Tom Fanning said,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\u201cThe whole issue is to preserve schedule and costs,\u201d Fanning said.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWell, that failed, didn’t it, with\r\n\r\nthe Vogtle project now 19 months behind and around a billion over budget<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nAnd also this back in 2011:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fanning also\r\nsaid the technology used in a new coal-fired power plant in\r\nMississippi could some day make coal plants in Georgia roughly as\r\nclean as natural gas power stations. The plant will use technology\r\nthat converts coal to gas, stripping about 65 percent of the carbon\r\nemissions from it. Fanning said the company wants to expand the\r\ntechnology so it can be used on older coal plants.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWith that\r\n\r\n$540 million writeoff of extra costs<\/a>,\r\nKemper Coal also isn’t going quite as planned.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nMaybe\r\n\r\nBetty Liu of Bloomberg was right to ask<\/a>:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThis project along with the Vogtle project… has some investors\r\nwondering maybe Southern Company has stretched itself too thin, with\r\nthese two major projects you’ve got under way….\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nMaybe SO should get on with distributed solar, which can be built\r\non time, on budget, and doesn’t require any\r\n\r\nfederal or state loan guarantees, Construction Work in Progress (CWIP)\r\nratepayer hikes, or cost overrun passthroughs to customers<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAs long as SO profits from the Kemper “clean coal” and Vogtle nuke\r\nboondoggles, it has incentive not<\/em> to get on with distributed\r\nsolar, or wind or efficiency or conservation, for that matter.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 […]","protected":false},"author":3,"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":[141,216,142,14,16,18,104,24],"tags":[8745,8753,8746,8704,8706,8701,8708,8702,12,7,8737,8714,6,8716],"class_list":["post-3567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-co2","category-coal","category-cwip","category-economy","category-environment","category-georgia-power","category-nuclear","category-solar","tag-co2","tag-coal","tag-cwip","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-nuclear","tag-solar","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Vx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3567"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3571,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567\/revisions\/3571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}