DALTON, Ga. — Growing up in Cartersville, Georgia, Lisa Nash saw what happens to communities when factory jobs disappear. It was the 1980s and corporations were offshoring production to reduce costs and raise profits. The jobs that remained in this northwest corner of the state were typically lower-paying ones that didn’t offer the same ladder to the middle class.

“My parents and grandparents were in manufacturing, and they were the ones saying, ​‘Don’t do it,’” Nash recalled.

Nash disregarded their advice, embarking instead on a long career in manufacturing — first in textiles, followed by stints in aviation, automotive, and steel. Now she’s helping to bring higher-tech, higher-paying factory work back to the corridor between Atlanta and Chattanooga. 

Nash is the general manager of the Qcells solar panel factory in Dalton, a town of 34,000 located 50 miles up I-75 from her hometown. It opened in January 2019, after the Trump administration imposed a fresh round of tariffs on Chinese-made panels. The Korean conglomerate Hanwha owns Qcells, and initially planned to hire several hundred people at the site, Nash told me on a recent visit to the factory. By the end of 2019, it employed more than 800. 

Then, in 2020, Georgia helped elect President Joe Biden and sent two Democrats to the Senate, clinching a thin majority. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock got to work crafting detailed policies to promote domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies, which China had dominated for years; they wanted solar panels and batteries made in America — specifically Georgia — instead of in China, a geopolitical rival.

Those measures made it into the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in August 2022 — two years ago this week. The legislation created the nation’s first comprehensive policies to support domestic clean energy manufacturing. Qcells broke ground on a second facility in Dalton in February 2023. Completed that August, the expansion added two football fields’ worth of manufacturing space with four new production lines — which produce 1.5 times more solar panels than the original three lines, thanks to technological advances. Now the whole complex employs 2,000 people full time and makes 5.1 gigawatts of solar panels a year, more than any other site in the U.S.

Politicians have been promising for decades to retrain American workers and revive long-lost manufacturing, with little to show for it. Now, though, the U.S. has entered a new era on trade: Leaders of both parties have rejected the long-standing free-trade consensus and its penchant for offshoring jobs. Biden married that reshoring impulse with a desire to boost clean energy production, to both stimulate the economy and fight climate change. 

This grand experiment remains in its infancy, and the success of the clean energy manufacturing revolution is by no means guaranteed. Cheap imports could outcompete even newly subsidized American products. 

And if Republicans win the presidency and retake Congress, they’ve threatened to stop subsidizing low-carbon energy resources and instead double down on fossil fuel production. House Republicans — including Dalton’s representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene — have voted repeatedly and unsuccessfully to repeal the domestic manufacturing incentives in the IRA. (Greene’s press office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

“Donald Trump and his Republican allies promised to gut the Inflation Reduction Act if he’s reelected, so there’s a lot at stake here,” Representative Nikema Williams, who leads the Georgia Democrats, told me.

Since the IRA passed, Georgia has received $23 billion in clean energy factory investment, much of it flowing to northwest Georgia. I wanted to see what impact this is having on communities formerly hit hard by industrial decline, so I followed the money trail to Dalton earlier this summer. 

I found a population that seems to like having advanced solar manufacturing in their backyard. Dalton’s solar jobs are boosting wages, invigorating the historic town center, and employing local high school graduates. Those benefits are starting to spread to nearby communities, where new solar factories are springing to life. In November, voters will weigh two very different visions of America’s energy future on the ballot, but Dalton is already reaping the rewards from slotting solar into its storied history of industrial production.

From carpets to solar

Both CSX and Norfolk Southern run Class I rail lines through Dalton, a testament to its industrial legacy, and freight trains bellow day and night.

That legacy harks back to 1900, according to local historians, when Catherine Evans Whitener sold a hand-tufted bedspread from her front porch for $2.50. The cottage industry took off in this land of forested ridges and stream-crossed valleys, and over time, local factories consolidated into global carpeting giants Shaw Industries and Mohawk Industries.

“The carpet industry was born here,” Carl Campbell, executive director of economic development at the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce, told me when I visited the Chamber. The New Georgia Encyclopedia states that 80 percent of America’s tufted carpet production happens within 100 miles of Dalton.

The conference room where we spoke sported large-format aerial photographs of the major factories nearby: the largest Shaw site, 650,000 square feet; and the new Engineered Floors colossus, 2.8 million square feet. 

“You feel like there’s enough carpet in that building to cover the whole world,” said Campbell, who grew up in Dalton. 

Dalton employment numbers peaked at 80,200 in 2006, per the Chattanooga Times Free Press. But the Great Recession crushed the homebuilding industry, cratering demand for Dalton’s carpeting products. 

Dalton ​“was a ghost town in 2011, nothing going on because everybody was hurting,” Campbell added. From June 2011 to June 2012, Dalton notched the dubious distinction of most jobs lost of all 372 metro areas surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By that point, one-quarter of Dalton’s pre-recession jobs had vanished, and unemployment surged to 12.3 percent. 

Since then, the industry has recovered somewhat. Engineered Floors, Mohawk, and Shaw still dominate local employment, with some 14,000 jobs among them, Campbell said. Those companies have had to adapt to evolving consumer tastes, shifting from wall-to-wall carpets to hardwood and other flooring materials. They’ve also automated aspects of production, reducing the number of workers needed.

In the wake of the Great Recession, local leaders sought to diversify Dalton’s industry. The county acquired an undeveloped lot south of town, and Campbell later pushed to clear and level the site, so it was shovel-ready for some future tenant. When Trump’s solar tariffs kicked in, Campbell’s counterparts at Georgia’s Department of Economic Development sent Qcells his way. 

Qcells showed up in February 2018, looking to spin up its first American solar-panel factory in less than a year. ​“Suddenly, we had exactly what they needed,” Campbell said.

Thus Dalton managed to bring in new industry to balance out its base of carpets and flooring. Qcells originally promised to invest $130 million and hire 525 people within five years, Campbell said. 

“They did it in three months,” he added. ​“In terms of an economic development project, they check all the boxes: Everything they said they would do, they did it faster than they said they would do it.”

Domestic solar manufacturing, by humans and robots

When I asked folks around town what they thought of Qcells, they kept mentioning the dozens of air-conditioning units arrayed on the factory roof, like a field of doghouses, easily visible from I-75. I later learned that Qcells brought in helicopters to install those units, which made for a bit of small-town spectacle. Still, it struck me as a surprising detail to dwell on for a business that somehow turns the sun’s rays into cheap, emissions-free electricity. 

Once I crossed Qcells’ sizzling parking lot and stepped indoors, it started to make sense. Georgia gets hot, and carpet factories get hot, but the vast floors of the twin solar factories are quite literally cool places to work. 

The climate control is not unique to assembling solar panels, but it is required for the sensitive, precisely calibrated product. The air conditioners are but one sign that high-tech manufacturing has arrived, and that it makes for pretty comfortable work.

I met my two tour guides, Wayne Lock and Alan Rodriguez, in the factory lobby, and they quickly confirmed the physical appeal of Qcells jobs. Lock, now a quality engineer at Qcells, previously worked in carpet manufacturing; he had to wear special heat-resistant gear to handle carpeting materials that would otherwise deliver third-degree burns. Rodriguez, an engineering supervisor at Qcells, used to apply the coating material underneath carpets.

“You’re sandwiched between the steamer and the oven, so it gets quite hot,” Rodriguez told me. Attending to those machines exposed him to temperatures that could exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Even more than Qcells’ air conditioning, though, people I spoke to kept bringing up the pay.

By offering more for zero-skill, entry-level positions than the other factories in town, Qcells started attracting workers and pushed up wages across Dalton, Campbell said: ​“Competition brings everybody, so everybody’s had to kind of equalize to keep employees.” 

Now Qcells hourly wages for non-experienced hires start at $17.50 to $22 — that amounts to $36,400 to $45,760 a year for full-time work. Workers with experience in robotics and manufacturing can take home much more than that. Employees can raise their pay through a variety of on-the-job training, most of which involves handling and troubleshooting the in-house fleet of robots.

Lock, Rodriguez, and I walked into the newest factory, past meeting rooms with names like Naboo and Mandalore, Star Wars locales where quirky robots coexist with all manner of creatures. As we strolled across the floor, squat wheeled autonomous vehicles rolled past us down pathways marked by tape on the smooth floor, ferrying bales of materials or hauling out hulking boxes of finished panels.

“We try to stay out of their way, and if we don’t, they yell at us,” said Lock. ​“It’s fun.”

As we stood talking, I noticed that one such robo-buggy was waiting for us to move. Barely discernible over the background drone of machines, a female voice intoned, ​“Robot is moving. Please look out.” When humans hold up more time-sensitive deliveries, Lock explained, the voice switches to male and gets louder. 

Other robots remain fixed in place, carrying out repetitive precision tasks. I stared, mesmerized, at one machine that split wafer-thin silicon cells in half, first scoring them with a laser, then slicing them with a concentrated jet of water. A taller machine grabbed nearly 8-foot metal frames and sliced them through the air like a master swordsman in a Kurosawa film, to slot them around glassed-in silicon panels. 

Throughout the process, cameras scan cells and use artificial intelligence to shunt defective items off the line for manual correction. 

In the 2019-era factory next door, humans carry out many of these tasks. Lock, though, didn’t see the robots as competitors — he said they were taking on more physically demanding jobs so the humans could step into higher-skilled roles tending to robots.

“The ergonomics are better for you,” he said, and the new lines are more productive. 

Hiring local, spending local

When Qcells was first staffing up, it relied on Quick Start, a Georgia state program that funds worker training for new factories before they open — a major draw for executives deciding where to locate their factories.

Qcells still recruits to meet ongoing staffing needs, and it has been paying special attention to high schoolers who are graduating and looking for employment. Nash speaks passionately about Qcells’ recruitment efforts; she’s seen the civic fallout from decades when local families encouraged kids to avoid manufacturing.

“Small communities cannot thrive with kids graduating and leaving those communities to live elsewhere, to get high-paying technical jobs,” Nash said. ​“That’s what’s happening across the country. Bringing manufacturing back, and bringing highly automated manufacturing, is offering job opportunities where now these students are staying here.”

Some 56 percent of Dalton-area students enroll in postsecondary education within 16 months of graduating high school, said Stephani Womack, director of education and workforce development for the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce. For the remainder, the chamber wants to make sure family-supporting jobs are available.

For two weeks in June, Womack helped run Project Purpose, a crash course in how to start and navigate careers that pay living wages. Recent high school graduates prepped for interviews, shopped for professional clothes, and toured housing options and downtown hotspots — the kinds of places they could frequent once they join the workforce. 

But the centerpiece of the program amounted to professional speed dating, as Dalton’s major employers offered tours and entry-level jobs. Last year, Dalton’s first time running Project Purpose, seven young adults completed the program, and Qcells hired one of them. This time, 18 finished, and Qcells hired 12 of them to start on July 1.

“Next year, we hope to double that, or more,” Nash said. 

Several participants came in knowing about Qcells, betting that the intensive crash course would increase their odds of landing good roles there, Womack told me over a table at Garmony House, a downtown coffee shop that draws lines for its statuesque strawberry cupcakes and coffee-glazed cinnamon rolls.

“Qcells is providing a diverse set of options for our students who need to go to work but want to stay in our community,” Womack said. ​“They see a climate-controlled facility with entry-level opportunities — that’s exciting for them. … Manufacturing isn’t what it used to be.”

For younger people to stay in town and build a life, Dalton needs more housing, and now it’s getting its first large apartment complex in over two decades, Campbell said. In total, 900 apartment units are slated to come online from last August through this November — not enough to catch up on a long-running housing deficit, but a step in the right direction.

That renewed real estate activity is reflected in downtown Dalton’s bustling core. 

Locals pack the booths at the Oakwood Cafe, perhaps the only place in America that sells a platter of egg, sausage, toast, and grits for just $3.65. Multiple microbreweries beckon, as does a plush cocktail bar, the Gallant Goat, which stocks fresh mint by the fistful to garnish its drinks. Down the road, diners can sample ceviche of shrimp shipped in from coastal Mexico, succulent chicken wings, and high-end Southern cuisine. 

This spring, the plush Carpentry Hotel opened across from the Oakwood Cafe, decked out with vibrant textile art to commemorate the town’s carpeting heritage.

“That’s been big for us, getting that hotel in downtown. That’s indicative of a robust local economy that people are coming to participate in,” local real estate agent Beau Patton told me as the late afternoon sun streamed into the Gallant Goat. Patton works with Qcells employees who want to buy homes in the area. He sees the factory’s decision to locate there as ​“very mutually beneficial” for Qcells and Whitfield County: ​“What you hope is Whitfield County grows with it, and it grows with Whitfield County.” 

From Dalton to towns across Georgia

Dalton got in early on the national clean-energy factory revival, and has already seen its solar factory push up wages, enable high school graduates to stay and start careers, and inject money into a reinvigorated downtown. Many more communities in Georgia are following close behind with their own cleantech factories, seeking a similar economic jolt.

“There is a palpable and intense sense of excitement across the state about how these manufacturing and infrastructure policies are supercharging Georgia’s economic development,” said Senator Jon Ossoff, the Georgia Democrat who authored the IRA manufacturing incentives that Qcells is tapping into. ​“And I would add, it’s not just the primary industrial facilities; it’s all of the secondary and tertiary suppliers and vendors and service companies and the financial services firms needed to support them.”

Qcells is building an even bigger factory compound down in Cartersville, which won a conditional $1.45 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy on August 8. This facility will take advantage of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits to onshore more steps of the solar supply chain: slicing silicon wafers, carving them into solar cells, and assembling finished modules with even newer robots than the ones I saw in Dalton. Until now, those high-value precursors to solar panels were shipped in from overseas. Workers in Dalton complete just the last step: assembling modules. Cartersville promises to bring the dream of American-made solar a bit closer to reality.

To achieve that dream, the industry has a few other challenges to confront. For one, 97 percent of the glass that encloses solar panels comes from China. Besides the geopolitical implications of that dependence, glass is so fragile and heavy that its shipping costs make domestic production enticing both economically and environmentally. 

“We need domestic glass to have an efficient supply chain,” said Suvi Sharma, founder and CEO of solar recycling startup Solarcycle. His company is breaking ground on a combination solar-panel recycling facility and solar-glass factory in Cedartown, some 70 miles southwest of Dalton. Sharma expects to invest $344 million in the community and hire 600 full-time employees.

Compared with Dalton and Cartersville, ​“Cedartown is more off the beaten path — this would be the first large-scale factory going up there,” said Sharma. After years in which the population declined and young people looked elsewhere for jobs, ​“this enables them to keep people and bring in more people. There’s a cascading impact.”

Solarcycle will use its rail spur to ship in low-iron silica from a mine in Georgia, plus soda ash and limestone. Over time, it will supplement those raw ingredients with increasing amounts of glass the company will pull from decommissioned solar panels, including those made by Qcells. The goal is to produce enough glass for 5 gigawatts of panels per year; Solarcycle will ship the glass to nearby customers. At that point, workers in northwest Georgia will have a hand in all the major steps of solar-module production except the processing of raw polysilicon. Hanwha recently became the largest shareholder in REC Silicon to secure access to domestic polysilicon from the Pacific Northwest. 

Georgia also nabbed a hefty chunk of the electric-vehicle factory buildout catalyzed by IRA incentives. Hyundai is dropping nearly $1 billion on its ​“Metaplant” near the deepwater port of Savannah and building an adjacent $4.3 billion battery plant with LG. Kia erected a new EV9 SUV manufacturing line at its plant in West Point, about halfway down Georgia’s border with Alabama. The first EV9 rolled off the line in June — less than two years after the IRA was signed into law.

Dalton, then, is a leading indicator of the industrial invigoration that clean energy factories are bringing to cities and towns across Georgia. People broadly appreciate it — if not for the role in combating climate change or countering China’s industrial might, then for high starting wages, comfortable working conditions, and opportunities for advancement. 

But for this nascent factory boom to endure, the policies that triggered it need to stay in effect. The people of Georgia played a decisive role in spurring this manufacturing revival; this November, they’ll have an outsize role in deciding if it continues.

How Dalton, Georgia, went from Carpet Capital to Solartown, USA is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership with WABE and Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

In a case that could impact other lawsuits on voting rights, Black voters who sued over Georgia’s elections for key utility regulators are appealing their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Those elections for the Georgia Public Service Commission, or PSC, have been on hold for years and while last week a federal appeals court lifted an injunction blocking the elections from taking place, there is little chance the elections will happen this year. 

Public Service Commissioners have enormous sway over greenhouse gas emissions because they approve how electric utilities get their power. They also set the rates consumers pay for electricity. 

In Georgia, the commissioners have to live in specific districts. But unlike members of Congress who are only elected by residents of their district, the Georgia commissioners are elected by a statewide, at-large vote. A group of Black voters in Atlanta argued in a lawsuit that this violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it dilutes their votes, preventing them from sending the candidate of their choice to the commission.

In one example the plaintiffs cited, the former commissioner for District 3, which covers Metro Atlanta, “was elected to three terms on the PSC without ever winning a single county in District 3.”

That commissioner — along with four of the five current commissioners — is a white Republican. Georgia’s population is one-third Black, with a much higher proportion in District 3. Georgia voters elected Democrat Joe Biden and two Democratic U.S. Senators in 2020, and Atlanta voters tend to choose Democrats for seats ranging from mayor and city council to U.S. Congress.

A federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs in 2022 and suspended PSC elections until the state legislature could devise a new system. However, in November 2023, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision.

The appeals court ruling took issue with the proposed fix of single-member district elections, arguing a federal court can’t overrule the state’s choice to hold at-large elections because it would violate the “principles of federalism.”

“It’s kind of an upside-down view,” said Bryan Sells, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs. “What the 11th Circuit’s ruling says is that Georgia is allowed to discriminate against Black voters.”

The plaintiffs are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court decision, though there’s no guarantee the Supreme Court will take up the case.

In their petition for Supreme Court consideration, the plaintiffs argue that if it’s upheld, the appeals court decision “would upend decades of settled law and have a cascading effect far beyond the reach of this case.”

“[The appeals court panel] simply decided that whatever rationales Georgia might tender for the at-large scheme…automatically trump any amount of racial vote dilution, no matter how severe,” the petition argues. “If a State’s interest can prevail in this case, there is no case in which it won’t.”

The Georgia secretary of state’s office declined to comment on the appeal.

In the meantime, PSC elections have been on hold since 2022, when the federal judge who found for the plaintiffs imposed an injunction blocking the secretary of state from holding or certifying those elections. The 11th Circuit issued an order last week lifting the injunction, though its effect was not immediately clear.

Sells and a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office both said they were reviewing the order. In a text message, Sells also expressed surprise at what he called “the court’s unilateral action that no one asked for.”

Under the injunction, elections for two PSC seats that were scheduled for November 2022 were canceled. Despite not facing voters, those commissioners continue to serve and vote on PSC decisions, including rate increases and the three new fossil fuel-powered turbines the commission just approved. 

PSC elections are also not on the 2024 ballot. A third commissioner’s term will expire at the end of the year.   

A bill that passed the Georgia General Assembly before the Supreme Court appeal was filed or the injunction was lifted lays out a schedule for elections to resume, still following the current model of statewide voting. Governor Brian Kemp signed it into law last week.

The law schedules those elections to begin in 2025.

How should Georgia elect its utility regulators? The U.S. Supreme Court is asked to weigh in is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This article was originally published by the Georgia Recorder

A push to expand community solar in Georgia is running into opposition from the state’s largest electric utility, which has been under pressure in recent years to increase rooftop solar.

Proposals filed in both chambers have sparked interest at the committee level, with those talks set to continue this week. But a key deadline for legislation to pass out of at least one chamber is quickly approaching. 

“Let’s show the rest of the world why Georgia is still the No. 1 place to do business, and we simply can’t do that without more affordable energy,” one of the sponsors, Dallas Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte, said to his colleagues.

A similar House version is getting attention, too, and is back up for discussion this week.

The House bill’s sponsor, Concord Republican Rep. Beth Camp, said large-scale solar operations are not appealing in her district, but small-scale projects like what is envisioned under the bill are.

“There are people that want to do this,” she said.  

The proposals would allow developers to participate in a community solar program under the state Public Service Commission and let them build small solar arrays on Georgia Power’s turf. Utility customers would be able to subscribe for a portion of the generation output and receive a credit on their electricity bill.

Proponents argue the program would drive down rates overall at a time when the cost of being a Georgia Power customer is on the rise while boosting clean energy access to more Georgians.

“Real community solar is an essential part of the solar-for-all puzzle in Georgia,” said Jennette Gayer, who is state director for advocacy group Environment Georgia. “So many people in Georgia miss out on solar’s benefits because they are renters or their roof is too shady.”

The Environment Georgia Research and Policy Center released a report last week that says Georgia now produces enough energy from small- and medium- sized rooftop scale solar arrays to power about 36,000 homes. But the state is running in the middle of the pack when it comes to growth of small-scale solar over the last decade.

Georgia Power has a popular “net metering” rooftop solar program that is limited to 5,000 households.

Supporters of the so-called “homegrown solar act” also cite Georgia Power’s disclosure last year that the utility expects an energy shortfall as the state continues to roll out economic development projects. The utility has proposed generating much of the power needed through fossil fuel sources.

“We’re trying to help with the energy crisis, candidly,” said Steve Butler, a spokesman for the Georgia Solar Energy Industries Association. “This is something our state could use right now and as quick as possible, but we understand that there’s going to be traditional things that we’re kind of infringing upon. And that’s really the problem. This has worked extremely well all over the country. It’s really tradition that we’re fighting here today.”

But representatives from Georgia Power countered that the proposal would shift costs to other users.

“This is a solution in search of a problem. Our renewable growth is the envy of the United States,” said Wilson Mallard, director of renewable development at Georgia Power. Mallard said the utility is “adamantly opposed to this bill.”

A representative of the Public Service Commission also says the regulatory body also has concerns and says the program is likely to cause confusion among ratepayers.

“When first discussed this bill only included nonprofits, churches and government entities, but as written it potentially includes almost 2.8 million Georgia Power customers,” said Reece McAlister, the commission’s executive director.

But Bob Sherrier, staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said there would be safeguards in place to prevent costs from shifting. The Public Service Commission, which regulates Georgia Power, would set the bill credit amount for customers, as it regularly does in rate cases.

“If Georgia Power can show with evidence in a hearing in front of the commission that there is some shifting of costs between customer classes, then this permits them to impose fees for that actual cost,” Sherrier said. 

Crossover Day, when a bill must clear at least one chamber to have a smooth path to the governor’s desk, is Feb. 29. 

Republican-backed community solar bills face pushback from Georgia utility is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by David Kyler. Kyler is director and co-founder of the Center for a Sustainable Coast, a nonprofit organization formed in 1997 that advocates responsible decisions to sustain coastal Georgia environment and quality of life. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

Three years ago elected officials at the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) voted to approve the largest-ever rate increase of over $1 billion, far more than any other utility in the nation. That Georgia Power rate boost was stunning in its size, approximating the total rate increases of the country’s next 10 utilities combined. In fact, the average state rise in U.S. utility rates in 2019 was only $26 million, less than 3% of the Georgia Power increase.

Georgia PSC officials also voted to provide Georgia Power high profits, about 10% greater than the national average. These 2019 PSC approvals were shocking to many who closely follow the energy industry. Since then, every one of Georgia Power’s 2.7 million residential customers, on average, has paid $278 a year in utility fees to cover the company’s excess profits, at a time when enormous cost overruns on Plant Vogtle have been in the billions of dollars.

Why would the elected officials at a publicly funded state agency, with a mission to ensure “just and reasonable rates,” approve this lavish bailout to benefit a private-sector corporation?

By allowing Georgia Power to shield its profits by shifting costs onto customers, the PSC has enabled the company to protect stockholders from the financial consequences of failing to competently deliver the Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion as promised, on time and within budget. Burying the cost overruns in customer billing also protects the commissioners from overdue accountability for their decision to continue the project in 2017, when there was a prime opportunity to terminate it.

Five years ago Plant Vogtle was already billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule, when the key contractor for the reactor units, Westinghouse, went bankrupt. By voting to continue the mismanaged project, the PSC made Plant Vogtle’s expansion the most expensive power plant ever built on earth at $34 billion — nearly two-and-a-half times the authorized cost.

However, undeserved company profits approved by the PSC in 2019 have become even more egregious since then — construction costs for Plant Vogtle have burned through $200 million per month for the past nine months, and between $100 and $150 million a month for years.

So, on June 24, 2022, Georgia Power filed a request with the PSC for a stunning $2.9 billion increase in revenues. Georgia Power is again asking for increased profit. This new rate increase, if approved along with other adjustments, is projected to increase Georgia Power bills by an additional $55-$60 a month. This hefty increase in residential electric bills will unfairly burden millions of Georgians already suffering other rising costs due to worldwide inflation.

Huge rate increases aren’t the only requests Georgia Power is asking of elected officials. To protect their own monopoly profits, they are also asking the PSC to block rooftop and community solar from taking root in Georgia. Yet, by diversifying and decentralizing power generation, rooftop solar is among the most vital tools for fighting climate change, essential to the rapid reduction in heat-trapping emissions needed to avoid the worst climate impacts.

Large-scale solar is important and Georgia is performing well in that arena. But these capital-intensive “solar farms” are profitable for Georgia Power, while rooftop solar is not. Likewise, community solar, along with rooftop solar, is one of the most important tools enabling low- and moderate-income Georgians to benefit from participating in crucial emission reductions while also limiting their ongoing electric costs. But developing this alternative threatens profit-making goals at the heart of the PSC’s obligations to Georgia Power.

Due to a series of PSC decisions, Georgia is now 40th in state rankings for rooftop solar, despite being the 14th sunniest state in the nation. And the $1 billion rate increase of 2019 made Georgia the 5th highest state in electric-bill rankings.

By stifling timely implementation of the rooftop solar sector, the PSC is ensuring that residential ratepayers will continue suffering unfair rate increases to cover the substantial capital costs of Georgia Power’s solar farms. Moreover, in doing so, the PSC will deprive Georgians of stability and resiliency benefits provided by a well-developed network of substations powered by a multitude of rooftop installations, on-site battery storage, and the clean-energy conversion that is imperative to controlling climate impacts.

It is the explicit job of elected officials at the Georgia PSC to help consumers control the cost of electricity and responsibly guide the Georgia Power monopoly, since normal competitive market forces that would otherwise do that are absent. Instead, if the PSC gives Georgia Power what it wants by approving the fees requested in the June rate proposal, rooftop solar installations will be further deterred, subverting cost controls and the means to rapidly reduce heat-trapping emissions.

On Dec. 20, Georgia’s public service commissioners have an opportunity to change directions and help the people of Georgia make the urgently needed transition to clean energy. But they will do so only if enough Georgians voice their well-founded concerns, compelling PSC members to prioritize the public interest instead of Georgia Power’s bottom line.

It must be noted that Georgia’s public service commissioners control more money than any state authority except the governor, and they shape our state’s energy future, vital to economic stability, environmental conditions, and quality of life.

Will Georgia’s power be clean and affordable? Will customers participate in key decisions about power generation or be unfairly excluded?

To properly resolve these profoundly critical issues, the PSC and other elected officials must understand that the public is paying attention and that Georgians are demanding fundamental reforms in the state’s energy policy.

Commentary: Policy reforms urgently needed for Georgia’s energy future is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This story is part of a 12-part investigation by the Chicago Investigative Project in the graduate program at the Medill School at Northwestern University.

A hulking coal plant on the southern coast of Puerto Rico provides a substantial chunk of the island’s power. It burns coal that has crossed the Caribbean from a vast strip mine in Colombia.

Along with power, the plant produces 300,000 tons of toxic coal ash each year. The ash has wreaked havoc in the region, contaminating groundwater in the Puerto Rican town of Guayama, possibly contributing to cancers and other illnesses among locals.

Coal ash flooded agricultural fields during Hurricane Maria and it’s an ongoing concern in a hurricane-prone region where Hurricane Fiona is inundating the island with heavy rainfall, causing mudslides and immense damage.

The ash was also shipped to the Dominican Republic, where it was dumped and used as building material until residents of the Arroyo Barril neighborhood saw increasing cancer and plummeting birth rates, and the Dominican government banned the importation.

Through laws passed in 2017 and 2019, the Puerto Rican government essentially prohibited the storage of coal ash on the island.

So now, barges take the ash across 1,300 miles of ocean to a private port terminal in Jacksonville, Florida, and then on to a landfill in Georgia. Last year a barge spilled toxic ash into the coastal waters, and local authorities and environmentalists say that’s just a preview of the havoc the ash could cause, especially in a hurricane-prone area. They want the coal ash barred from their waterways and roads, but their hands are largely tied by lack of jurisdiction over the private port, Keystone Terminal. They have trouble even obtaining information about coal ash shipments and the environmental and health risks they might pose. 

Applied Energy Service (AES), which owns and operates the power plant, holds a contract with Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority until 2027, meaning Jacksonville will likely see coal ash coming in for at least five more years. In Guayama, AES piles about 602,000 tons of coal ash in an unenclosed staging area, exposed to Caribbean storms. Inhalation of and exposure to coal ash can cause health problems including heart and lung disease, cancer, and risks to fertility. It has been well documented that fugitive dust from coal ash piles has blown onto schools and residential areas during storms in Puerto Rico. Keystone Terminal similarly holds the coal ash in an uncontained storage site.

Since the coal ash staging area of Keystone sits near the St. Johns River, if a hurricane were to rip through Jacksonville, river pollution is almost certain, advocates and local officials say. 

“Why are we taking this toxic waste from Puerto Rico that is outlawed?” said Jacksonville Waterways Commissioner Marc Hardesty.

Futile opposition 

Coal ash from Puerto Rico has been coming through Jacksonville since at least 2016. 

When shipments arrive at Keystone Terminal in Jacksonville’s port, the ash is moved by a crane to the open-air storage pile until it is picked up by commercial trucks. In the distance, crane jibs loom above the St. Johns River, shipping containers stack tall and piles of aggregate construction materials look like mountains. When the sun hits just right, shadows stretch onto the bustling waterway. The scene conveys the industrial strength of Jacksonville — a city built upon the shoulders of its maritime infrastructure.

This industry has caused plenty of pollution over the years, but the coal ash represents a confounding threat — similar to ones faced by other towns as companies and regulators struggle to figure out how to handle almost a billion tons of coal ash stored nationwide. 

On March 22, 2021, a 418-foot barge carrying coal ash crashed into jetties at the mouth of the St. Johns River amid stormy seas. For roughly two months it stayed there while emergency response teams assessed the damage and conducted tests. Then in mid-May, after the barge’s position shifted during bad weather, hatches covering the cargo blew off, spilling an estimated 9,300 tons of coal ash into the ocean.

The Jacksonville Port Authority, or Jaxport, called for banning coal ash from moving through publicly owned ports on the St. Johns River. But it found its hands largely tied, since the authority has little jurisdiction over the private port tenants — like Keystone Terminal — that occupy the port. 

The port authority knows coal ash is being imported, but it’s hard for the authority to get information about it from AES or Keystone. Neither entity is required to submit transport manifests about what material they bring in or ship out, nor does Jaxport keep a list of commercial users of the harbor.

“The lack of knowledge of what was passing through our waters is, to me, a major problem,” said Ellen Glasser, mayor of nearby Atlantic Beach and a former FBI agent. 

After the 2021 spill, Atlantic Beach passed a resolution banning coal ash, and Hardesty proposed the Jacksonville Waterways Commission should do the same. 

It took over a year for the commission to receive an incident report from the U.S. Coast Guard. Meanwhile, the report remains confidential, so the public and even local officials still don’t know the extent of the pollution caused by the spill. 

Robert Birtalan, chair of the waterways commission’s incident review committee, was provided the unredacted report by the U.S. Coast Guard. Birtalan said during a May 26 waterways commission meeting that “every single page of that report was stamped” with a notice banning it from public release. 

“So basically, ‘Here is everything you want to know, but you can’t talk about,’” he said. 

“I found that to be nothing less than extremely concerning and certainly questionable at best,” said Hardesty.

The lack of transparency only exacerbated local officials’ and environmental leaders’ concerns about coal ash being shipped through their waterways and communities. The St. Johns River Keepers, Surfrider Foundation and Sierra Club are circulating a petition demanding the Jacksonville City Council pass an ordinance to protect the health of community waterways.

“We are seeing this relocation of pollution, putting not only our river at risk, but putting citizens at risk,” said Lisa Rinamin, the St. Johns Riverkeeper, “whether it’s for their jobs or their quality of life or health, or their food.”

A journey across the Caribbean 

The open source database MarineTraffic shows that between July 7, 2021, and Aug. 24, 2022, five tug boats — the Baltimore, Mary Ann Moran, Allie B, Helen and Marion Moran — have guided 30 barges from Guayama to Jacksonville. While the database does not specify what the barges are carrying, local environmental advocates say the Guayama port has long been used to export AES’s coal ash, and it is the only material shipped out of the port.

Collectively these barges are capable of carrying hundreds of thousands of tons of ash, and it is unknown exactly how much has been transported over the years. MarineTraffic operates as a paid subscription service — it is not cheap. Accessing up to a year’s worth of historical data can cost hundreds of dollars. 

The MarineTraffic data — collected from transponders on vessels — shows that the vast majority of vessels leaving Guayama go either to other ports in Puerto Rico, Jacksonville, or Santa Marta, Colombia. Puerto Rican investigative journalist Omar Alfonso, who has reported on the coal ash transport for years for La Perla del Sur and Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, said he’s determined that the barges are traveling empty back to Santa Marta to pick up more coal from Colombia. Coal ash cannot be stored elsewhere in Puerto Rico, so that would indicate that all the coal ash from the Guayama AES plant is headed to Florida. 

As of 2021, Keystone receives roughly a quarter of its annual revenue from importing coal ash from AES, a clear financial incentive to keep bringing in the toxic material. For 17 years the private terminal — now spanning 180 acres — has operated in the heavily industrialized section of Jacksonville known as Talleyrand. 

Pollution from the Keystone Terminal presents a risk to residents living in the Talleyrand area. The facility brings in millions of tons of bulk materials including wood chips, gypsum, limestone and coal ash each year, said Bill Harris, a representative for Keystone Properties, during a Jacksonville Waterways Commission meeting in November 2021. 

There are no enclosed facilities on Keystone’s property, and when driving past the private terminal one can see piles of aggregate material that stand hundreds of feet high, ready to be blown away by strong winds or spread by rain. 

“Any stormwater … any rainfall that hits that pad goes into a vault,” promised Harris during the 2021 waterway meeting. “There is an overflow lined pond — that if we had a 100-year storm or more — then that same water that would touch the coal ash would go to that vault and also the overflow from a lined pond.”

Keystone has not responded to requests for comment about the current status of coal ash storage or the run-off vault, nor about the safety equipment — if any — provided to employees or contractors handling the coal ash on a daily basis.

Although Keystone claims it wants to get rid of the ash as fast as possible — Harris describes the terminal as a “mere pass-through” for the material — it can remain in piles for months.

During a public waterways meeting, Keystone said it sprays imported materials with water to tamp down dust, but it is not always successful as seen in videos taken by Hardesty. This reporter saw plumes of gray dust billowing out of a clamshell crane as it transported the ash, drifting in the wind across the private terminal and into the river. 

Trucking to Georgia 

Not only is coal ash sitting in an uncovered pile on Keystone’s grounds, but the immense number of heavy trucks each day that ferry coal ash 50 miles to Georgia’s Chesser Island Road landfill expose locals to dangerous diesel emissions. 

On a balmy spring day, this reporter watched plumes of diesel exhaust spew from the trucks barreling through an industrial stretch of the city where unpruned trees shade distressed homes, boarded-up businesses, and wooden marinas weathered by time and salty Atlantic water. The trucks were dusted in a powdery film of gray particulate that accumulated in small piles on their bumpers, which at times fell off when the trucks reached rural highways. Although these vehicles are supposed to be fully covered when in transit, some were not.

Rural residents along the trucking route are concerned. In Callahan, a northern Florida town with less than 1,500 people, 60-year-old Doug Hewitt has seen firsthand the problems that these trucks and their cargo create. A former water operator for Jacksonville Electric Authority, he has lived in Callahan for nearly his entire life. 

“For about the last four years, five years, we had hundreds [of trucks] a day coming right in front of my house,” Hewitt said. “It was at least six days a week. I mean nonstop … I don’t know how the landfill’s not full.”

He said that even though the trucks are required to be covered, he’s seen partially covered ones with chunks of material flying out on the road.

“It falls out all the time all over the place,” Hewitt said.

When asked how he knew what he was looking at was coal ash, Hewitt said, “I just know … from what I’ve seen in those trucks, it all appears to be the same color, kind of a grayish color.”

How coal ash funds a small county in Georgia

For every ton of coal ash that enters Chesser Island Road Landfill, Charlton County receives compensation that goes to its annual general operating budget. In 2019, the landfill received 839,669 tons of coal ash, according to an annual report. 

According to Charlton County’s projected revenue report for 2021, the town’s total annual revenue was expected to be just over $12 million. Waste Management, the operators of Chesser Island Road Landfill, paid the county $2.8 million, about 23% of its entire general fund.

Hampton Raulerson, the Charlton County administrator, said residents are not pleased with the presence of the landfill nor the coal ash entering the county limits, but “when they realize the economic benefit that it provides to them and the county, they’re not quite as upset.” The county has 12,766 people, and the median household income is $42,743. 

The St. Mary’s River runs less than 2 miles away from the landfill, and stretches roughly 130 miles through southeastern Georgia and Northeastern Florida.

Emily Floore, the St. Mary’s Riverkeeper, is as concerned as her St. Johns River colleagues about coal ash contamination in the waterways.

“Coal ash has a lot of heavy metals that come with it, so as Riverkeeper, we just want to make sure that it’s not making it into the tributaries into the St. Mary’s River, [and] it’s not impacting the residents that are downstream of those tributaries,” Floore said. 

On a typical afternoon back on the St. Johns River, fishing lines cast off bridges into the St. Johns River, jet skiers launch off small wakes of recreational boats and children cling eagerly to inflatable tubes, waiting for open water, while tugboats navigate behemoths full of toxic material beside them. 

These activities are at risk of being suspended if a coal ash spill were to occur directly in the waterway. It could involve overlapping circumstances: another Florida hurricane, a drowsy tugboat operator, a miscalculated nautical judgment, or a combination of all three. If coal ash continues to come into Jacksonville, it is not if another spill or disaster occurs, as many see it, it is when.

“There is a reason I would assume that Puerto Rico said, ‘We don’t want it anymore,’” Hardesty said. “It’s bad stuff.”

How Puerto Rico’s banned coal ash winds up in rural Georgia is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.