Tag: Georgia

PBS News Is Wrong, Climate Change Is Not Causing Georgia’s Drought

A recent PBS News report, “Farmers struggle with crops as climate change makes weather less predictable,” claims that droughts and flooding in parts of the United States, particularly the Southeast, are due to climate change, and are becoming more frequent and extreme. This is false, particularly for Georgia, the area PBS highlights in the story.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent PBS News report, “Farmers struggle with crops as climate change makes weather less predictable,” claims that droughts and flooding in parts of the United States, particularly the Southeast, are due to climate change, and are becoming more frequent and extreme. This is false, particularly for Georgia, the area PBS highlights in the story.

PBS reports:

“More than half of the continental U.S. is facing drought conditions. But other parts of the country are facing the opposite problem. Extreme weather conditions can have major impacts on farmers and their crops at a time when they’re already facing high production costs. Paul Solman recently traveled to southern Georgia to hear from some of those farmers. “

Extreme weather being different, and even alternating, in different parts of the country is not unusual or new. The “weather whiplash” phenomena is an artifact of news coverage, not a real thing. Flooding often follows after a period of drought dries and hardens or compacts the soil, preventing water from soaking into the soil as a result making runoff more severe. This is a known, natural feature of recovery from drought that PBS vaguely admits later in the coverage.

The state that PBS focuses on in the piece is Georgia. Their reporter, Paul Solman, interviews farmers who supposedly lived on their land for generations, and each of them insists that this year’s drought conditions are unprecedented.

In answer to Solman’s question about whether one farmer has ever experienced drought like this year’s before, the farmer said that he hadn’t in his entire lifetime, and that he “never heard of stories of a drought this bad either.”

Another farmer says her crops suffered when rain finally came, and asserts that “we’re seeing wetter wets and drier dries.”

A climate scientist is interviewed next, who asserts that “[c]limate change is making these [droughts and deluge cycles] more frequent,” making it harder for farmers to predict when to plant crops.

Data disagree with both farmers as well as the climate scientist.

Drought data from the NOAA National Centers for Environmental information show that not only is the current drought in Georgia not unprecedented, but major prolonged droughts that were even more severe have occurred in the state several times in just the past few decades, as well as much longer ago. Drought conditions in 2011-2012 and the mid-1950s were worse than today. The most severe drought occurred in 1925, more than 100 years of global warming ago, when temperatures and carbon dioxide levels were lower. (See figure below).

Figure 1: NOAA National Centers for Environmental information, Climate at a Glance: Statewide Time Series, published June 2026, retrieved on June 26, 2026 from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/statewide/time-series

Data show the particular county that the first and second farmers interviewed by PBS are from, Long County, saw a bad drought as recently as the summer of 2012, when the entire county suffered D3 “extreme drought” conditions. The 2010-2012 drought was far more severe than this one and lasted longer. Other worse and more prolonged droughts occurred in 2007, 2002, 1990, 1981, 1954, and further back, with the worst sustained drought occurring in the 1930s. (See figure below)

The figure above also shows the periods of wet conditions. It is clear that there are many years going back to 1900 that saw even more severe swings to overabundance of rain.

Data show no long term trend towards an increase in extreme short-term precipitation events in Georgia, either. (See figure below).

Figure 2: Chart source: Frankson, R., K.E. Kunkel, L.E. Stevens, B.C. Stewart, W. Sweet, B. Murphey, and S. Rayne, 2022: Georgia State Climate Summary 2022. NOAA Technical Report NESDIS 150-GA. NOAA/NESDIS, Silver Spring, MD, 5 pp.

One should not blame the farmers for feeling like this year was particularly bad for drought in Georgia. The news, for one, has been claiming as much, as discussed in the post “Sorry, Los Angeles Times, Climate Change Isn’t Driving Georgia’s Wildfires,” where the media were trying to blame some wildfires this summer on the same conditions, falsely linked to climate trends. Human beings are pretty bad at recalling the full context of past years’ weather conditions off the top of their heads, we often tend to feel that nothing was ever worse than what we are currently experiencing, unless the difference was really stark.

The PBS “journalists” should be ashamed of the slant of this coverage. They offered no pushback whatsoever on the suggestion that Georgia’s drought was unprecedented or part of a pattern of worsening drought, which it is not. The data are publicly available and easily found for any intrepid reporter to discover. It seems that PBS was far more interested in using a tough year for farmers as part of a larger climate alarmist narrative push, than actually digging into the truth.

Sorry, Los Angeles Times, Climate Change Isn’t Driving Georgia’s Wildfires

A recent article at the Los Angeles Times (LAT) titled, “Georgia blaze shows how climate change has led to more wildfires in the East,” claims that the Eastern United States is suffering from more extreme and frequent wildfires due to climate change. This is false. Data show no trend in an increase in fires, though it is not unreasonable to be concerned about fire fuel buildup from hurricane damage.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article at the Los Angeles Times (LAT) titled, “Georgia blaze shows how climate change has led to more wildfires in the East,” claims that the Eastern United States is suffering from more extreme and frequent wildfires due to climate change. This is false. Data show no trend in an increase in fires, though it is not unreasonable to be concerned about fire fuel buildup from hurricane damage.

The LAT writes that “wildfires are becoming more intense, frequent and damaging in the East, such as last week’s blaze that destroyed dozens of homes in Georgia, fire scientists said.”

The fire scientists attribute the fires to “climate change causing fuel to dry out and be more flammable, a record drought, tens of millions of tons of dead trees from Hurricane Helene, and the vast area where dense forests and high numbers of people try to coexist,” with the article really emphasizing the climate angle.

There are a few parts to this claim: are wildfires getting worse in Georgia, and are climate conditions in Georgia becoming more conducive to fire outbreaks, and is this because of global climate change?

In support of its claim the LAT article relies on a 2023 study, “Increasing Large Wildfire in the Eastern United States,” published in Geophysical Research Letters by fire ecologists from the University of Florida.

The study, especially for the state of Georgia in particular, uses a seriously flawed methodology.

Their data were taken from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity Database (MTBS) a joint project of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey. In particular, it uses the MTBS’ “burned area boundary product” to account for wildfire perimeter data combined with the USDA’s Fire Program Analysis Fire Occurrence Database for information on how the fires were started (human or lightning).

The study specifically targets what they define as “large” wildfires, relying entirely on statistical analysis rather than a straightforward mapping of the number of fires in a region and totaling up the acreage burned across time.

Statistical modeling and analysis can be reasonable, when data are sparce or incomplete, but is unnecessary for measurements like this when straightforward measured data exist. Relying on p-values and tau can sometimes “find” a trend where there really isn’t one, especially if a year has “freak” wildfires that really are not indicative of any long-term trend.

The study looks not at particular states but EPA determined “ecoregions,” and Georgia is crossed by three of their listed regions that span very long longitudinal (North-South) areas, designated as the “Piedmont” region, “Southeastern Plains,” and “Southern Coastal Plain,” the latter two making up most of the state. With a wildfire count of three, the Southern Coastal Plain has the highest total wildfire of all the ecoregions examined.

An examination of the MTBS data using their exploration tool to chart the annual burn severity for Georgia shows this as an output:

Figure 1: MTBS Burn Severity for Georgia, from 1985-2024. From https://lcms-viewer.fs2c.usda.gov/mtbs.html

There are a few years in that dataset that show spikes in burn areas, all of which correspond to periods of extended multi-year droughts combined with known heavy fuel loads.

Long periods of drought are a natural part of Georgia’s climate, especially in the coastal plains, because of a periodic and known pressure system offshore called “The Bermuda High.” When it comes closer to shore and extends into the Southeast and is combined with La Niña years, severe drought follows. There is no particular long-term trend of extended periods of drought in the state, with the driest years in state history occurred in the 1930s, 50s, and 80s, decades of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming ago.

Looking closer at more on-the-ground wildfire reporting, the National Interagency Fire Center keeps state by state wildfire data. From 2006 to 2025 there is again no particular trend in fires in Georgia. In fact, the number of fires seem to have declined over the past 20 years.

Figure 2: NIFC data on Georgia wildfires, 2006-2025. From https://www.nifc.gov/nicc/predictive-services/intelligence

This is unsurprising since data from NASA and the European Space Agency both show a marked decline in wildfire globally over the past few decades. Georgia is part of the larger trend of less severe, less frequent wildfires across the planet.

Also, fires that burn larger areas are not necessarily because of conditions resulting from climate change, but are heavily influenced by land-use changes and, as the paper acknowledges, human encroachment on wild areas and an excess of burnable material. This is particularly a problem for Georgia right now, as the LAT article explains “13,954 square miles of forest land was hit by Hurricane Helene, downing more than 26 million tons of pine and 30 million tons of hardwood,” which an interviewed scientist called “a ticking time bomb.” This is especially true in drought conditions. But this is a problem that can be fixed with the clearing of that burnable material. It is a local, politically induced environmental problem, not a climate problem. The timber could have been recovered and used. Instead, Georgia officials decided to let nature take its course.

As this post is written, two wildfires are burning in Georgia that are very severe. They have already destroyed more than 100 homes and tens of thousands of acres of land. The fact of the matter is that wildfires are massively influenced by land use and management, and they can get out of control when conditions are right. High winds and drought have considerably added to the spread of these fires, similar to the conditions in 2007. But since there is no long-term trend in worsening drought in Georgia, rather just a couple of bad years similar to dozens recorded historically, and there is no evidence climate change is changing wind speeds in Georgia or elsewhere, climate change can’t be blamed for the present fire conditions.

There is no need to focus on climate change when discussing these natural disasters, especially when it is the supposed villain in the climate discussion – petroleum products—which make it possible to fight these fires in the first place by fueling aircraft and vehicles, and delivering fast reliable power to aid efforts and disaster cleanup. Perhaps, when reporting on disasters, especially disasters out of state, the Los Angeles Times should do a little research, rather than referencing a single, flawed study to claim a climate induced disaster is happening. Real-world data trumps both theory and statistical analyses and its time the LAT acknowledged that.

Trump should keep the UN out of Okefenokee swamp

There is an uninvited guest poised to take up permanent residence in southeast Georgia’s fabled Okefenokee Swamp, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum should send the intruder packing.

One month before leaving office, the Biden administration’s Interior Department – without consulting local officials or residents – nominated the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge to be designated as a World Heritage Site under the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Seven months later, in July 2025, the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from UNESCO, a step that goes into effect on Dec. 31, 2026.

From CFACT

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

There is an uninvited guest poised to take up permanent residence in southeast Georgia’s fabled Okefenokee Swamp, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum should send the intruder packing.

One month before leaving office, the Biden administration’s Interior Department – without consulting local officials or residents – nominated the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge to be designated as a World Heritage Site under the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Seven months later, in July 2025, the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from UNESCO, a step that goes into effect on Dec. 31, 2026.

“Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the national interest of the United States,” the State Department said in announcing the withdrawal. “UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.”

If exiting UNESCO is such a good idea, and it is, precisely for the reasons the State Department stated, then why hasn’t the Okefenokee’s nomination to become a World Heritage Site been yanked by the Trump Interior Department?

Covering over 407,000 acres on the Georgia-Florida border, the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is North America’s largest intact freshwater ecosystem. The Okefenokee features thousands of alligators, along with black bears, deer, waterfowl, cypress forests, and peat (decayed vegetation)-based floating islands known as “trembling earth.”

The Biden administration sought to assure the public that World Heritage Site status would not impinge on U.S. sovereignty over the Okefenokee. “UNESCO only monitors the current conditions and potential threats to the designated properties,” it said in a statement. “The Refuge would continue to be wholly owned and managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”

But monitoring “potential threats” to the swamp by an U.N.-affiliated organization notably hostile to the United States is exactly what locals fear. While the wildlife refuge itself would still be managed by the FWS, what is to keep surrounding areas from being declared “buffer zones” to better “protect” the swamp?

All three Georgia counties surrounding the swamp – Charlton, Ware, and Clinch – have adopted ordinances opposing the UNESCO bid. “I don’t like any organization I would consider an entangling alliance,” Charlton County Commissioner Drew Jones told CFACT policy analyst Gabriella Hoffman. “There could be concerns about the property adjacent to the swamp. They could come along and say no hunting, no clearcutting, no herbiciding outside the refuge boundary.  They could say, ’Oh, we need a buffer zone.’”

Those suspicions were raised last fall, when the swamp was visited by a delegation from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a global coalition of government agencies, academic institutions, and other agencies. The IUCN is an official adviser to the World Heritage Committee, the body that will decide whether the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge becomes a World Heritage Site, if the Trump administration allows the nomination to go forward.

On Oct. 24, delegates from the IUCN met with residents for about an hour in nearby Folkston. According to Travis Sanctuary, co-founder of Americans for the Okefenokee, the meeting did not go as the IUCN had hoped. Reflecting the views of most of those present, State Representative John Corbett, whose district includes the Okefenokee, spoke out against the designation.

Indeed, the IUCN is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to setting global conservation priorities. On its website, the group posts a blog saying, “Over the past several years, IUCN Member EARTHDAY.ORG has led a campaign to embed climate education in countries’ [Nationally Determined Contributions], the core climate pledges under the Paris Agreement that guide policy, investment, and long-term planning.”  The Trump administration, it is worth remembering, has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.

“Climate change is now the biggest threat to some of the planet’s most beautiful locations: natural World Heritage sites,” UNESCO adds on its website. The IUCN, UNESCO, and their affiliated organizations should be seen by neighbors of the Okefenokee as akin to invasive species, determined to transform the local political ecosystem into a colony of just the kind of global elitism the Trump administration has so forcefully rejected.

That is why Interior Secretary Burgum should rescind the nomination and keep the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge safely within the America-First fold. This would align nicely not only with the exit from UNESCO; it would complement the Trump administration’s recent withdrawal from 66 international organizations, including the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Trump’s Board of Peace — originally created to oversee the American-mediated ceasefire in Gaza and since expanded to cover other conflicts the U.N. has failed to resolve — is further proof that alternatives to sclerotic, self-serving international bodies exist.

UNESCO is just such an outfit and should not be allowed anywhere near the majestic Okefenokee.

This article originally appeared at The Daily Caller

Wrong, Augusta Chronicle, Spread of Invasive Species in Georgia Isn’t Due to Climate Change

The August Chronicle published an article claiming climate change was causing the spread of invasive plant species. This is false. Data from Georgia does not show climactic changes, whether in temperatures or extreme weather, that would make the state more suitable than it already is for invasive plant species, which have, in fact, long been established there.

From ClimateRealism

By H. Sterling Burnett

The August Chronicle published an article claiming climate change was causing the spread of invasive plant species. This is false. Data from Georgia does not show climactic changes, whether in temperatures or extreme weather, that would make the state more suitable than it already is for invasive plant species, which have, in fact, long been established there.

The author of the August Chronicle story, “Symptoms of climate change in Southeast fuel increase in invasive plant species,” Erica Van Buren writes:

Symptoms of climate change include extreme heat, drought, and extreme weather, all of which can significantly impact plant species.

“It’s kind of hard to pin it down, because climate change is so complicated,” said Eamonn Leonard, senior wildlife biologist for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife Resources Division. “It changes so many different things. From storm frequency to moisture to drought in general. I think invasives are able to sort of capitalize on changes that our native plant species aren’t able to.”

There are multiple problems with this claim. First, contra Leonard, the “expert,” Van Buren quotes in her story there is no reason whatsoever to believe that invasive species which thrive in present conditions in Georgia will be any more adaptable or able to thrive there if those conditions change than native species will be. Invasive species, that is species from other regions or foreign countries that are introduced either intentionally or accidentally and cause unintended harms, thrive because the climate conditions where they are introduced are suitable for their flourishing. When they outcompete native species, it is not due to climate conditions but rather because the insects, plants, species, management practices, and conditions that keep them in check in their native lands don’t exist here. More or less rainfall, fewer or increased storms, won’t disadvantage native species in competition with invasive species.

More importantly, weather and temperature trends in Georgia show no discernable “symptoms of climate change.” Temperatures have not increased significantly, or become more extreme, and neither droughts nor other types or extreme weather have increased in Georgia. There is no way invasive species can be benefitted in competition with native species from a changing climate if it is not, in fact, changing that much

Concerning temperatures, the Georgia state summary from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) shows that the temperatures in Georgia have risen just 0.8℉ since 1900, half the average rise measured across the nation. As a result, present temperatures and the temperature trend do not advantage invasive species in competition with native species. The has been no increase in extreme temperatures in Georgia, according to the NCEI, which reports that “The highest number of extremely hot days occurred during the late 1920s, early 1930s, and early 1950s; however, since 1955, the number of these days has generally been near or below average.” (See the graph, below)

Nor, the NCEI reports, have precipitation trends changed substantially during the recent century and a half of modern warming.

The U.S. Geological Survey has recorded extended, sometimes severe droughts across different regions of Georgia since it began recording and reporting such data in the 1890s. There is no evidence that droughts have increased in number or severity in Georgia in recent decades, with data indicating droughts in the early part of the 20th century when temperatures were modestly cooler, were as severe, widespread, and frequent then as they are now. Streamflow has fallen in some areas in recent years beyond what might have been expected previously due to similar drought conditions but that is because the demands for water in Georgia have increased dramatically to supply intensive agriculture and to supply water for various uses to fast growing urban populations.

Hurricanes are a problem in for Georgia but not as big a problem as in other Atlantic and Gulf coast states, due, in part to a smaller coastline.

“The last system to make landfall in the state at hurricane intensity was Hurricane David in 1979,” Wikipedia reports. “Further, only three major hurricanes have struck Georgia, the most recent of which being in 1898.”

There has been no observable increase in the number or severity of hurricanes and tropical storms striking or passing through Georgia in recent decades during the period of slight warming.

So, since neither temperature, precipitation, drought, nor hurricane trends have changed much in Georgia, contrary to the Augusta Chronicle’s slant a “changing climate” can’t be behind any perceived or observed increase in the spread of invasive species. To the extent that invasive species are thriving or spreading, it is due entirely to same conditions or factors that made their growth here possible in the first place, human introduction, plant and pest management, and landscape modifications that have favored invasives compared to native species. Climate change is not an identifiable factor. No amount of spin or fearmongering from the Augusta Chronicle can change this one basic fact.

Georgia proves it: Stable electricity markets attract business and growth

When considering factors that spur a state’s economic development and growth, how a state regulates its utilities is too often overlooked. That could not be more important now that the needs of AI and data centers have created the highest power demand in a generation, requiring a buildout of at least $50 billion just for new generation and another $250 billion for data centers.

Fresh peaches growing on branches in garden outdoors, closeup. Space for text

From CFACT

By Kevin Doyle

When considering factors that spur a state’s economic development and growth, how a state regulates its utilities is too often overlooked. That could not be more important now that the needs of AI and data centers have created the highest power demand in a generation, requiring a buildout of at least $50 billion just for new generation and another $250 billion for data centers.

The states which can provide stability and predictability to utilities will be the winners in this race. Georgia proves it: Atlanta is already among the top 10 data center markets, and construction grew 76% year-over-year to 1,281 Megawatts in the first half of this year.

A big ingredient in this success is Georgia’s utility regulation structure and the advantages it affords Georgians, especially when compared to deregulated states in the Northeast. The Peach State’s well-regulated energy market not only ensures affordable rates and reliable service, but actively supports economic growth in ways that deregulated states struggle to match.

Georgia’s stability and predictability are a long-term competitive advantage in the eyes of businesses seeking sites for new plants or facilities across the country. In contrast, the deregulated energy markets in states like New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts usually face higher rates plus price volatility and reliability issues that are a big part of the equation guiding where businesses locate operations—especially large industrial consumers.

The proof is in the pudding. Georgia consistently ranks among the best states for business. Between July 1, 2023, and June 30 of this year, the Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Global Commerce team supported 429 facility expansions and new locations, resulting in more than $20.3 billion in investment and the commitment of 26,900 new, private sector jobs statewide.

Georgia’s Public Service Commission oversees the Peach State’s investor-owned utilities, while the state’s cooperatives and municipal utilities are regulated by their member-elected boards of directors and their citizen-elected city councils, respectively. This structure regulates utility rates and oversees infrastructure investments, ensuring energy prices remain affordable and predictable for families and businesses. This steady foundation allows businesses to forecast energy costs accurately, which makes for better-informed long-term investment decisions.

Data centers are not the only investments that result. Take the case of the Hyundai Motor Group’s recent decision to build a $5.5 billion electric vehicle plant in Bryan County. Highlighting the state’s appeal to major investors, the plant is expected to create 8,000 jobs and stimulate significant economic activity in the region.

Consider the case of Plant Vogtle, a nuclear joint venture among the state’s utilities. Vogtle Units 3 and 4, one of the largest construction projects in the United States, would not have been possible without Georgia’s regulatory framework. Plant Vogtle generated thousands of construction jobs and permanent positions and represents a significant investment in the state’s energy infrastructure, providing reliable, emissions-free electricity. That is an attractive option for employers that prioritize clean energy.

Georgia’s regulatory framework also supports sustainable economic growth by encouraging investments in renewable energy and clean technologies. Georgia ranks among the top seven states for solar capacity as a result of its rapid expansion of solar power.

This focus on sustainability not only addresses environmental concerns but also creates new economic opportunities. The growth of the universal solar industry in Georgia has led to the creation of numerous jobs and has attracted investments from major solar companies. In deregulated states, the fragmented approach to energy regulation can hinder the development of renewable energy projects, limiting both economic and environmental benefits.

As other states, especially those with deregulated energy markets, look to enhance their economic development efforts, Georgia’s approach provides valuable lessons. A focus on stability, infrastructure investment, and support for innovation drives economic growth, jobs and ensures affordable, reliable and ever-cleaner electricity for decades.

Georgia’s families and businesses are the winners, and that is a model to which every state should aspire.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Electricity Competition in Georgia

“While limited, customer choice and utility switching in Georgia has a large impact on the utility behavior and regulatory policies. Because of options, utilities try to treat customers like, well, customers. But it is time to promote markets in place of remaining governmental mandates and controls.”

From  Master Resource

By Jim Clarkson

“While limited, customer choice and utility switching in Georgia has a large impact on the utility behavior and regulatory policies. Because of options, utilities try to treat customers like, well, customers. But it is time to promote markets in place of remaining governmental mandates and controls.”

The prevailing goals sought by those seeking reform in the power market are mandated access and common carriage for state regulated utilities. However, this alternative is at odds with unleashing entrepreneurship in this power market. The far better development would be the spontaneous, voluntary, indigenous, bottom-up approach for the development of market relationships rather than government mandates.

The state of Georgia has a system that is near such a market. With a few changes, a truly liberalized market is possible. The ninety different utilities in the state share the high voltage system in common. There is active and vigorous competition for new customers with a connected load of 900 kilowatts or more in most of the territory. The changes needed are to drop any minimum load requirements and allow the choice of serving utility to be perpetual instead of a one-time choice.

This sharing of transmission facilities has precedent with petroleum pipelines. Oil companies are very competitive on the gasoline retail level but developed sharing arrangements long ago for intrastate and interstate pipelines. It was in their common interest to avoid duplicate, single-owner pipelines. This came about without regulation, in contrast to the natural gas pipelines that developed under regulation.

The development of the Georgia transmission sharing system has a unique history and shows how the lack of government interference allows beneficial market relationships to develop. By the 1970s, a consortium of electric membership cooperatives and municipal electric systems already had partial ownership in certain generating plants with Georgia Power.

Georgia Power began construction of a nuclear plant and soon ran into serious cost overruns. At that time the doctrine of “used and useful” was in effect for allowing capital recovery of new generating assets. Despite some efforts by the state regulatory agency to provide some relief, the utility faced bankruptcy. In a period when interest rates were high, Georgia Power sought partnerships with the EMCs and municipals that had access to low-interest borrowing to bailout their problem. The potential partners had some transmission assets and demanded that all transmission be accessible for all the owners of a common system.

This was a negotiated, not mandated, solution to the various problems and the interests of the parties. This agreement was not ordered by either the state regulatory agency or by a legislative directive. The sharing agreement happened in 1974 when the court-ordered breakup of AT&T included the common mandated carriage by non-owners of the AT&T and “Baby Bells” long-distance systems. Unfortunately, this mandated carriage with recovery of stranded assets model was followed in wholesale electricity market.

In Georgia there are 47 municipal power systems. Long ago these utilities attracted cautious big power users by agreeing to allow them to switch to the big investor-owned utility if they found municipal service was unsatisfactory. The 39 EMCs in the Georgia Power territory (there are three on TVA) have also make the switch option available to large new customers. In fact, a number of customers have indeed exercised this option. The Georgia Public Service Commission in recent years has declared, at Georgia Power’s urging, that such contract provisions are not allowed. However, the court case law which trumps the PSC has yet to be overturned.

Georgia Munies like Georgia Power have a strategy of going long on power generation in hopes of selling extra generation off-system. The wholesale group for Municipals has successfully sold their share of current very costly Vogtle nuclear capacity under construction to other utilities in Florida and Alabama for 20 years. This relieves them of collecting capital recovery for the nuclear plant and thereby can offer lower bids for competitive new customers.

Georgia Power meanwhile adopted a strategy of building more generation than they needed to sell into the wholesale market. The strategy included building cheaper combined-cycle gas-fired plants under their unregulated sister company while building risky nuclear capacity under almost certain recovery state regulation. However, the wholesale power market is turning to hourly-priced commodity exchanges, and the long run demand does not look good for Georgia Power who must now try to recover unneeded capacity cost from captive domestic customers.

Meanwhile the EMCs adopted a strategy of being short on capacity and being net buyers from the wholesale market. Unlike the high customer density of the Munies and Georgia Power, the EMCs still have room for growth and are gaining far more new customers than the land-locked, flat-growth competitors. EMCs buy from various wholesale suppliers. Individual EMCs are acting like marketers by, in effect, giving their customers access to the wholesale market which does not tolerate any nuclear surcharges. The EMCs can beat Georgia Power in competitive situations.

The enabling legislation for this sharing of transmission and serving customers in other distributor’s territories was sponsored by the utilities themselves and is a weaking of the exclusive franchisee policies in force throughout the rest of the country. This is a demonstration of what could be the polices of the future.

The proper aim of consumer groups and free market advocates should be not to force utilities to allow others to use their private property but to reduce the impediments to competition between existing and new suppliers. Franchisee territories should be completely abolished, and all customers should have the right to pick and change their electric utility. The government action needed is only to get out of the way and let a freed-up market develop. Abolish state and federal utility regulation along with the enabling legislation. Then going forward the best utility public policy is no public policy.

Some may worry about the old utility false warning concerning duplicate wiring. But it is in the mutual interest of the parties to share facilities, including the last mile distribution wiring. Let’s say a stubborn utility starts losing customers in a subdivision to a neighboring utility with better rates and policies. At first the aggressor will expand its wiring into the incumbent’s territory. The incumbent soon realizes stranded wiring is being created and realizes they can at least get some recovery by selling what would otherwise be abandoned wiring. Or they can agree to sharing as a means of getting partial revenue instead of nothing.

While limited, customer choice and utility switching in Georgia has a large impact on the utility behavior and regulatory policies. Because of options, utilities try to treat customers like, well, customers. But it is time to promote markets in place of remaining governmental mandates and controls.

Idalia Update

There have been suggestions that the rapid intensification of Idalia was somehow unprecedented.
This is nonsense.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/08/30/hurricane-idalia/

There have been suggestions that the rapid intensification of Idalia was somehow unprecedented.

This is nonsense.

Idalia went from a tropical storm, with winds of 60 kts (69 mph), to a Cat 3 hurricane at landfall, with winds of 125 mph, in the space of about 32 hours.

http://rammb-data.cira.colostate.edu/tc_realtime/storm.asp?storm_identifier=al102023

But that was nothing compared to the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, by far the strongest to hit the US. This went from a tropical storm to a Cat 5 , with winds of 185 mph, all in the space of less than two days.

We must also remember, of course, that we now have satellite updates every six hours, plus frequent hurricane hunter flights, to give us almost hourly data for these bigger storms.

In 1935, they had little idea what was happening out at sea, and so often had no idea how quickly storms intensified.

http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/1930s/LaborDay/

Trail of Destruction

Even the weakest hurricanes can be devastating to anybody in their path. But as the impacts from Idalia become clear, it seems that it was much less catastrophic than forecast, and certainly not in the same league as Ian last year.

Storm surge, according to Fox, never seems to have got much above 6 ft, much less than the 15 ft forecast before landfall. That however is still enough to inundate places like Cedar Key, a group of low lying islands which took the brunt of Idalia, and which are now more than a few feet above sea level for the most part.

Rainfall was not excessive either by hurricane standards. And as the storm tracked across Georgia, the expected catastrophic rainfall did not materialise – totals of up to in Georgia for example.

Fortunately it also appears that there have been no deaths identified so far, as a direct result of the storm.