Why should you care about a utility commission race in Georgia? Because it’s a national bellwether, a sign of how voters are going to react to skyrocketing power prices and a test of whether Democrats can get their act together. I talk with candidate Peter Hubbard and activist Brionté McCorkle about the state’s Public Service Commission, its coziness with utilities, and what reform would look like.
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David Roberts
All right. Hello, everyone, this is Volts for October 8, 2025 “Pay attention to the most important political race of 2025.” I am your host, David Roberts. The most important political race of the year is happening next month in Georgia. Two of the members of the state’s five-member Public Service Commission — Georgia’s utility regulator, responsible for Georgia Power, the state’s big investor-owned electric utility — are up for re-election. All the seats are currently held by Republicans; two Democrats, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson, are challenging.
Why is this election so important? Three reasons.
First, the issue at the center of this election — rising electricity prices — is going to be the sleeper issue of several key gubernatorial elections next year, and the midterm elections. It could not be more important for supporters of clean energy to be proactive on this, not reactive. The five Republican commissioners on the PSC have approved six Georgia Power rate increases since 2023, as ratepayers have seen their bills spike by an average of more than $500 a year. Those same commissioners — none of whom, incidentally, is a customer of Georgia Power — have not faced voters in five years.
This is an early chance for Democrats to champion reform and accountability — and to bring some relief to Georgia ratepayers.
Second, this year marks the first time ever that a PSC election will be at the top of the voter ballot in Georgia. There are no other statewide races pulling attention and funding away. This election will be all and only about the PSC.
Utility regulators are receiving increasing attention in the clean energy world, which is very much to the good, but you will not be surprised to hear that most Georgians know nothing about them. They barely know the PSC exists or that it has control over the utilities that are raising their rates. Turnout in the June primary was an abysmal 3%, although Democrats outnumbered Republicans in that turnout by 2 to 1, and even 1 in 4 Republicans voted against the incumbents.
This election might as well have been designed in a lab to test whether the national climate movement can rally attention and support around a key state race.
Third, this race is not only a preview of how the fight over electricity prices will play out, it is also a bellwether of broader political trends. Politico wrote of the race: “Republicans are hoping to use the election as a way to tamp down any Democratic optimism ahead of 2026.” As a state GOP strategist told the outlet: “For Republican voters, it is important to turn out because a win by Democrats will tell Democrats nationally that there’s blood in the water.”
Let me just repeat that. That is a GOP strategist saying “A win by Democrats will tell Democrats nationally that there’s blood in the water.”
And Republicans know that voters are angry about prices. They know that sentiment is not on their side. They would very much prefer that turnout remain low. Incumbent commissioner Tim Echols, who is fighting to keep his seat, is blunt: “I am also praying for torrential rain that day. Hail would be even better.”
Precisely because turnout is expected to be so low, a little bit of national attention and money could make a huge difference. Voters are largely unaware of the race or its stakes, so 501(c)(3) groups can help by engaging in educational campaigns, simply raising awareness, while 501(c)(4) groups work to get out the vote. Every bit of engagement and attention will raise turnout.
Climate got kicked in the teeth in last year’s elections and everyone is still a little dazed. But this is a test of whether the movement can get up and dust itself off — whether it can be smart and strategic enough to put a meaningful victory on the board for once.
Alright, with that uncharacteristically long and windy introduction out of the way, I am very pleased to introduce today’s guests. Peter Hubbard is running for PSC. He is a longtime energy analyst, modeler, consultant, expert witness, advocate, project developer, general man about town in the Georgia energy space.
Brionté McCorkle is the executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters and a longtime community organizer and activist, recognized by, among others, my old friends at Grist on their 50 Fixers list.
Without further ado, Peter Hubbard, Brionté McCorkle, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Peter Hubbard
Thank you, David.
Brionté McCorkle
Thank you for having us.
David Roberts
So, Brionté, I want to spend most of our time here today discussing the sort of substantive issues at stake in this election. But because I went on and on about the politics in my intro, maybe let’s just start with you and you can just do a little scene-setting for us. You’re on the ground. You’re working on this race. You’re talking to voters. How are voters feeling? And perhaps more importantly, are they connecting their feelings to this race?
Brionté McCorkle
Yes, I think this is really a very important election for us here in Georgia because it’s an opportunity for people to take something that they’ve been experiencing, put words to it, connect the dots behind the decisions that are being made that are causing this feeling, and being able to actually go out and do something as simple as voting for it. And so the feeling that I’m talking about is the increased crunch that Georgia families are experiencing because of the affordability crisis that we’re all living through right now. You know, overall living expenses are going up. We know rents are increasing, food prices are increasing, and, of course, now energy costs are increasing.
And so everywhere we turn, somebody’s asking us for more money. And it’s really putting households who have not seen any meaningful increases in the money they’re bringing home, in their incomes and their salaries, you know, having to make choices that are more extreme than in the past about what gets paid and what doesn’t, what gets left on the table when they’re having such a limited pool of funds to spread around. The affordability crisis — I work specifically on the energy issues, so I’m going to stay focused on that piece of it, specifically Georgia Power customers.
Georgia Power customers are paying about $43 more per month now on average compared to 2022. And that’s an extra $516 annually for the average user. That might not sound like a lot for a lot of people, but for people who are living on extremely low incomes, fixed incomes, that is an exorbitant amount of money. Georgia Power used to regularly say, their executives used to regularly say, and the commissioners would regularly say, that 40% of Georgia Power customers make less than $40,000 a year. They’ve stopped saying that as publicly because I think they understand that when you’re raising bills another $500 a year on people who are already in extreme poverty, it doesn’t make the company look good.
David Roberts
Maybe Volts listeners already know this, but, you know, sort of rates are legendarily regressive. They hit the lower end of the income distribution harder. Poor people pay a larger percentage of their take-home pay on energy. So this is not hitting everyone equally.
Brionté McCorkle
Absolutely not. And what we’re seeing is that in some parts of Georgia, people are reporting really catastrophic bills — $700, $800, even over $1,200. We’ve seen some really, really high bills. And you know, they’ll call the power company. They’re trying to understand, “Why is the bill so high? It’s never been this high.” The power company pretty much gaslights them. Like, “Hey, well, maybe you’re just not being efficient enough.” I mean, I’m serious. They suggest all these different ways for people to cut costs, like turning off the air conditioner. I mean, it’s Georgia, it’s hot. Turning off the air conditioner can be very dangerous for many households.
So they’re calling and trying to figure out what’s going on. And this is an opportunity to help them understand that there are decision makers that they elect who are literally approving these rate increases left, right, and sideways. And they need some accountability. They can’t keep getting away with it. And so it’s a good opportunity while there’s nothing going on — well, there’s a lot going on, but —
David Roberts
There’s always a lot going on.
Brionté McCorkle
There’s always a lot. But this is the biggest election in town. It’s the only statewide election in Georgia. So it gives us a unique opportunity to have voters’ full attention on this issue.
David Roberts
Awesome. Well, Peter, let’s just skip the preliminaries and jump straight into some meat and potatoes here, because there’s a lot of meat and potatoes to be covered here. But let’s just start with this. Georgia Power’s latest IRP, their Integrated Resource Plan, which is sort of their big plan for what to generate and what to buy over the next three years, is out. It’s in the news. It’s controversial. The main striking thing about it is they project an enormous amount of load growth from data centers: 8,200 megawatts by 2030, that’s what the IRP says.
And, you know, because of this skyrocketing demand that they project, they want to build a bunch more gas plants. They want to keep a bunch of coal plants open. They’re sort of using this as kind of like “We need to go into emergency mode and do everything we can.” So I have two questions about this. One is, how do you feel about those projections of demand growth? Because we sure are getting ready to throw a lot of money around based on those projections. So I’m just curious, as a kind of someone with, you know, experience in energy modeling and projection, how you feel about those projections?
And number two, another very big topic: How do you feel the costs imposed by new data centers ought to be shared? There’s a bill before the legislature right now, SB34, which would put the full cost on data centers. I’m curious whether you support that. So let’s take it one at a time. Let’s start with the projections.
Peter Hubbard
Those are excellent questions. And you’re right. In the 2025 Integrated Resource Plan that was approved earlier this year, in the summertime, they’ve actually extended it. Now I think it’s up to 8,500 megawatts of projected load growth. So they continue to add to it. Now, only 4.6 gigawatts of that is contracted at this present time. And virtually all of that is for data centers. And so I’ll loop back to that for the second part of your question. But the way that I feel about this load forecast is: I want to step back and invite you to go back to 2008, 2009, when the load projections were basically angled up at a 45-degree angle.
David Roberts
And that was about data centers that time too, wasn’t it?
Peter Hubbard
Yeah, I believe so. And also other, you know, warehouses and other growth specific to Georgia. But at that time, load forecast was angled up to infinity and beyond. And that was the justification for building a first-of-a-kind nuclear power plant, the AP1000.
David Roberts
Ah, yes.
Peter Hubbard
And frankly, I see — well, and then to conclude, over the next decade and a half, since that was proposed, and in the time it took to construct Vogtle, the load growth basically was flat because of energy efficiency and because of other things. And frankly, I see the same thing happening today with the data centers.
David Roberts
I mean, you could go back a few more decades, back to the sort of ‘70s when they were projecting demand off the charts. And that was what justified the sort of original round of nuclear hype in the ‘70s. They were going to build hundreds of nuclear plants to satisfy all this demand. And once again, that demand also didn’t show up.
Peter Hubbard
“Too cheap to meter.” That’s right.
Brionté McCorkle
I would say this is like a regular game. The power company is constantly over-projecting demand. They have a long history of doing this in IRPs.
David Roberts
Yeah. And it’s like, “Why wouldn’t they?” The bigger the demand is, the more money they’re allowed to spend, and the more money they’re allowed to spend, the more money they make. And as far as I know, there’s no corresponding incentive pushing the other way, pushing them to be realistic or to tamp down projections. So why wouldn’t they just go nuts?
Peter Hubbard
Right. Not only that, but I would say there’s a strong incentive to see overages because they make their return on equity, their profit metric, even on mismanaged projects and budgets that are well over what was projected. So there’s a strong incentive to have expensive projects like Vogtle.
David Roberts
But it’s one thing to say that these projections are probably overdone just based on past experience, which I think a lot of people will accept. But it’s another thing to sort of figure out like, “Well, where will they?” Like, you got to build for something. How do you approach that? If this is too high, what’s right?
Peter Hubbard
Well, exactly. So the large-load pipeline, I mean, the entire universe of every single customer that is considering Georgia is 51 gigawatts on a system where there’s 16 gigawatts of generation in Georgia. Now only 4.6 gigawatts is contracted and 3.7 gigawatts has broken ground. So, you know, you have to take it with a strong measure of salt. But even so, you know, a lot of these data centers — I think a lot of your listeners will be familiar with the idea of curtailment-enabled headroom and the idea that data centers can have just 1 or 2% flexibility.
There’s a lot of headroom in this existing infrastructure, the grid we have that we’re using less than half of to its maximum. So that’s where I come down on the demand request and the load from data centers. And then in terms of whether the cost should be shared, you’re right: there was a bill that was put forward to, “make data centers pay their fair share.” That bill was tamped down because the Public Service Commission, what they did was say in January of this year, “Okay, we’re going to pass a rule in the commission. From now on, data centers will pay their fair share.”
That’s a rule, mind you, that can change in 30 days. Now, two things with that. One is it implies that before that rule was updated, they weren’t paying their fair share. And secondly, when you read that rule, it leaves the discretion to decide what is fair and just for data centers to pay to Georgia Power Company. And that’s the fundamental problem — is that we are passing the buck when the onus is on the Public Service Commission to be that regulatory watchdog, and they’re just not doing it.
Brionté McCorkle
I want to add in on that point because for the longest, the legislature did not feel like it should be talking about energy or regulating energy because the narrative had been that the Public Service Commission has it under control — “Nothing to see here. The PSC is there, they’re responsible for protecting consumers.” You said there’s like no incentive. The PSC is supposed to be that stalwart between the greed of the power company and, you know, what is actually fair for the customers who don’t have a choice in their utility provider. We have to pay these bills. I can’t choose to go to someone else because my bills are going up with this utility provider.
So the PSC is the only line of defense. They are the only entity that can really tell the commission, you know, to do something differently, or at least that’s what people have believed. The legislature does have a role. They can pass legislation. And if the Public Service Commission isn’t doing it, then the legislature should be stepping in and passing bills that actually have teeth that actually will serve what we want, which is that the data centers pick up their fair share.
David Roberts
Yeah. So what’s your sort of instinct on what is the fair share? How do you think about the balance of bringing economic development, jobs, et cetera, versus straining the electricity grid? Sort of, how do you view that trade-off?
Peter Hubbard
It is certainly a balance. There is a benefit to having new customers come to Georgia and pay their fair share and then spreading the costs of generation and transmission across a greater pool of paying customers. And so there is a benefit; that economy of scale, if calibrated correctly, can work in our favor. But the problem is it’s disproportionately favoring the data centers, who pay about five times less than what a residential customer pays for the same energy. Shouldn’t it be exactly the same, right?
David Roberts
No kidding.
Peter Hubbard
Yes. Data centers, if you’re a large load data center of 100 megawatts or larger, you pay 4.2 cents per kilowatt-hour. And on the regular standard residential tariff in the summer, we pay about 21 cents a kilowatt-hour. It’s a fivefold difference.
David Roberts
All right, so we’re not even talking about whether to penalize data centers, really. We’re just talking about whether to bring their treatment up somewhere closer to what residential already pays?
Peter Hubbard
Yeah. Now it shouldn’t be exactly the same. They’re mostly using generation and transmission, whereas, you know, residential customers, we have to account for wires and poles, but it should not be a fivefold difference.
David Roberts
Right, right, right. Okay, let’s turn to the other, I think, probably big thing on most Georgia ratepayers’ minds and largely the explanation for those six rate increases, namely the Vogtle nuclear plant. Obviously, this is a big deal in the state. A lot of opinions about it flying around the state, you know, to some extent is sort of done and in the past. But I’m just sort of curious, looking back on it, what do you take away, Peter, from the whole Vogtle experience? Was trying to build a giant nuclear plant a mistake? Was the structuring of the financing a mistake?
The reason I ask about all this is because there are proposals, including from some members of the PSC, to build more nuclear in Georgia. So this is relevant, forward-looking. So I’m curious what your backward-looking assessment of the Vogtle experience was.
Peter Hubbard
Sure. And I’ll start by saying with my 15 years of energy industry experience and then also six years as a clean energy advocate and just watching the small modular nuclear space, you know, they’ve been promising SMRs for 10 years. They’re 10 years out. I’ve been waiting for 15 years and I’m still waiting. So I’m —
David Roberts
The press releases grow ever more elaborate, Peter. If you just are following the press releases, the sector is booming.
Peter Hubbard
But that said, I would love to see SMRs succeed, and even Vogtle — there was a benefit to it coming online. It’s carbon-free energy and capacity, and so it pushed a lot of coal and gas off the dispatch stack and cleaned up our emissions in Georgia. I just wish that there had been much stronger clawback mechanisms. We went into this as really is a first of a kind because we hadn’t built an AP1000 or even a nuclear reactor in decades. And so there were far too many risks. The $14 billion as proposed, it came in at $36 billion ultimately and 15 years of construction work in progress.
So if you happen to live in Georgia and then move out of state after, say, year 12, you paid for 12 years without seeing any energy. I just think it was — again, I talked about the load forecast right from the beginning. There were a number of flaws right from the start, and so obviously greater regulatory scrutiny would have been great. And there were also chances to off-ramp as well. When the VC Summer plant in South Carolina hit the stop at $9 billion, I believe is what it was, we kept going and it cost us $36 billion.
David Roberts
Would you, in retrospect, have pulled the emergency brake at some point or do you think it was the right thing to do, to see it through?
Peter Hubbard
Sunk cost fallacy. I’m always cautious about that. But what I can say is just I wouldn’t have made that decision. I would not have put myself in that first place because already at the time, solar would have been a better — even in 2009, 2010 costs, it would have been a better deal.
David Roberts
So if someone comes along and proposes a new nuclear plant next week in Georgia, what sort of protections would you like to see in place that were not in place this time? Maybe listeners already know this, but like, sort of the outrageous thing about all this is that all those overages, all that over on the cost and time, ratepayers pay for all that. And a lot of ratepayers think, perhaps not unreasonably, “Hey, maybe Georgia Power stakeholders, our shareholders, should have coughed up a little bit for this, for this overrun.” Instead, they just get all profits and all the risk and all the costs go to ratepayers.
So I’m curious how you would structure — because Tim Echols, who is defending his seat this year, has said, “I won’t do it again unless I have a hard federal guarantee that the feds will come in and pay the overages.” How would you like to see a deal structured if they’re going to do more nuclear?
Peter Hubbard
It would have to have some kind of federal backstop. I think the Loans Program Office is no longer there to help provide —
David Roberts
It would have been great.
Peter Hubbard
Yeah, that would have been one of those backstops we could have relied on. But the rug was pulled out from under LPO. Also, Westinghouse went bankrupt midstream. And I don’t know how to protect against that because that’s a loophole. Chapter 11 or 13 bankruptcy, there probably would have to be some kind of backstop or bonding or something. But it’s such a large project. I just think the risks are very, very large. I would just like to see the risks borne not by the ratepayer, but by shareholders, first and foremost, at Southern Company. And then there could be a federal backstop as well.
David Roberts
So let’s talk about then, generally, the subject of high rates. There’s long-term, mid-term, short-term, a lot of ways to think about high rates. I’m curious, sort of on the front end — and I’d love to hear from you on this too, Brionté — which is that Governor Kemp has put a rate freeze in place from 2026 to 2028, basically freezing rates in place. Peter, you first. Is that a good idea? Do you support that? Do you think that’s a good way to address the rate crisis?
Peter Hubbard
In a word, no. And David, I am old enough to remember last year when the 2023 Integrated Resource Plan update — that was the first emergency IRP, when all of the data center load growth was coming to Georgia — at the conclusion of that, just last year, we were promised a $3 decrease on our bills during this 2025 IRP — I’m old enough to remember that. And that was swept under the rug. And we don’t even get the chance for that measly $3 discount.
Furthermore, when they say “We’re freezing rates, that’s only roughly half of your bill.” The other half, like fuel costs, the coal ash cleanup costs — you know, fuel costs can still go up if there’s, God forbid, another — they spiked in 2022 with Ukraine, Russia, five times, and we’re still paying that off, frankly. So it’s disingenuous in an election year after six rate hikes, which frankly is more like $600 a year because the average customer is more than 1,000 kilowatt-hours.
That’s a subtle thing that is often not caught, that the average customer is more like 1,100 kilowatt-hours. And you get into the highest tier here in those last hundred kilowatt-hours. So the average bill’s actually larger than what many say.
David Roberts
Do you think it’s just an election thing? Brionté, how do you feel about this rate freeze? Do you think it’s just a — this is like an election year gimmick, basically, or do you support — I mean, it is a freeze. It is some relief. How do you feel about it?
Brionté McCorkle
This was very much an election year gimmick, in my opinion. I’ve been deeply engaged in the Public Service Commission for a long time. I do feel like I need to make this point about the cost overruns from Vogtle going to customer bills. You know, this question of who picks up the tab. It’s important to contextualize that Georgia Power’s return on equity is incredibly high. The 2025 rate freeze locked in an ROE between 9.5% and 11.9%. And that’s significantly above the national average for utilities.
David Roberts
And the national average is already too high. This is subject for a whole different pod — rates of return — but arguably the national average, it’s already wildly too high. So this is high relative even to that.
Brionté McCorkle
Exactly. So when we’re talking about, you know, fair share, who pays the cost? You’re literally taking this money out of the pockets of low-income customers and using it to pad the power company’s profits. Right. And so if they’re going to make a big investment like Vogtle, I do think it’s fair for the shareholders to pay, pick up some of that cost. That doesn’t mean that the power company can’t make a profit. It just means it can’t make an exorbitant profit, which, again, is the whole point of the Public Service Commission — to make sure the company is able to operate, make a reasonable profit, but not at the expense of its customer base.
David Roberts
Well, the idea is you’re supposed to give them a rate of return that is just enough to induce them to invest. And is Georgia Power trying to tell us that they’ll, like, make investments at a 10% rate of return and they won’t at an 8% rate of return? That’s just like, come on, is just implausible.
Brionté McCorkle
So this rate freeze, it locks in those really high, you know, percentages for return on equity. It does lock in these existing high rates. And as Peter pointed out, it doesn’t stop bills from being increased later for fuel cost recovery, storm cost recovery. And so the minute that this particular freeze happened, we were in the middle of the Integrated Resource Plan process, right? So the power company was putting forward its demand projections and its plan for meeting that demand. It was talking about, you know, expanding gas, expanding coal. And we were making the case as an advocacy community and, you know, working with politicians, working with the community, working with the press and media to be really clear that, you know, this decision is going to result in bills going up even higher, and they’ve already been increased.
So this narrative, they were starting to feel the pressure on it. We had patch-through calls running during the IRP where basically we were calling voters and telling them, “Hey, you want to talk to somebody about your bills going up? Let’s talk to the commission.” And so they were receiving hundreds and hundreds of calls from people across Georgia saying, “Yeah, my bills are high. Please stop raising them.” And so then all of a sudden we get this announcement, a special announcement from the Governor and Bubba McDonald and Jason Shaw, who were the commissioners who were receiving those calls, and they get up and they announce this rate freeze business and to appear as if they’re responding to people’s concerns that the bills are too high.
But as we’ve explained, it’s just pulling the wool over people’s eyes because it’s locking in rates that are already high and then also guaranteeing that the bills will still go up in other ways.
David Roberts
It doesn’t address any of the structural reasons that bills are going up. So all those structural reasons are still going to be operating in the background while the freeze is underway. So when you unfreeze, why wouldn’t you just expect bills to just jump up to where they would have been anyway? You know what I mean? The whole thing seems kind of silly. So, Peter, then if a rate freeze is a silly election year gimmick, what are some good ideas for how to bring down rates? Because, I mean, there are lots of structural things going on. There is lots of demand growth happening.
That’s real. You know, the prices of power plants are going up. That’s real. That’s not something that’s in Georgia Power’s control. The price of T&D is high. You know, so, like, there are real reasons that rates are high and rising. So what are some good tools to bring them under control or reduce them?
Peter Hubbard
Great question. And there’s a number of things, and it’s helpful to think sometimes in buckets of short-term, medium, long-term, and what you can pragmatically and realistically do on a commission where we will — I feel very strongly that we will have two new voices on the commission come this November and then a third the following November. But even before then, there’s many things that could be done. I’ll tick off three, and one is, you know, this will require a majority, but that return on equity that Brionté just mentioned, that 11.9%, it can go higher than that and frequently does.
There’s some cost sharing, but Georgia Power gets 40% of anything that goes over that 11.9%. If we just adjusted that ROE, that return on equity, down to where the rest of competitive electric utilities are, which is around 9.5%, that unlocks a pool of $700 million that could lower power bills right away.
David Roberts
Well, let me just tell you, Peter, my most beloved PUC commissioner in all the country, Marissa Gillett, was just run out of office in Connecticut because she tried to turn down some rate increase requests from utilities. So tread carefully. That’s all I’ll say.
Peter Hubbard
I mean, that’s a tough row to hoe, but you know, again, Georgia Power Company is getting very healthy profits. I believe it was $2.5 billion in 2024. Quite healthy on our backs. I would also just say two practical things, though, is just we only have about 7% solar here in Georgia, and almost all of that’s utility scale. It’s because the value of solar is locked up behind a monopoly utility. And if we can unlock that value, then we can embrace things like residential rooftop solar, community solar, and some of these other things that will absolutely start to bend the cost curve downward over time as we implement more of these very low-cost, reliable, sustainable options.
And once we start to add more of those distributed energy resources, those rooftop solar mini power plants and those batteries in garages, then we can start to aggregate them with software and turn them into virtual power plants, which can then allow us to meet the capacity needs of data centers without necessarily building a full brand-new power plant. Those are just a few of the things that can be done. There are many more.
David Roberts
I want to return to the VPP thing in one second, but first, Brionté, specifically — I mean, there’s ratepayers and then there’s like the hardest-hit ratepayers. Are there specific tools to relieve the burden on low-income ratepayers that you would like to see either used more or used at all? Are there sort of tools on the shelf that you think could bring some immediate relief to the hardest hit?
Brionté McCorkle
Yes. I’m really interested in what Peter’s going to say here about virtual power plants because I really think energy efficiency is a huge opportunity that specifically impacts lower-income customers. Right. They generally don’t have a lot of the money up front needed to make those improvements. A lot of them don’t own their houses, they’re renting. Right. And so they’re not really incentivized to make the improvement on the property. So I definitely think programs that help people reduce the amount of energy that they’re using to weatherize are going to be super important in reducing the impact on that community.
So specialized programs for low-income people, for renters, would be really awesome. There are lots of other existing programs like pay-as-you-save programs you’d like to see expanded. Georgia Power has some programs for low-income customers, you know, but you’ve got to qualify. You’ve got to be really extremely low income. Right. So I think they can expand the requirements for those programs within reason so that more people can get them. Some of their programs — actually, you know, there’s like a program where I forget the exact name of it, but you have to pay, it switches you to a point where you have to put money on the account to keep the power on.
Programs like that are counterproductive because it then creates an immediate cash crunch for somebody to constantly be putting money on their account to keep the bills open. So I think Georgia Power and the Public Service Commission need to take a look at the existing set of programs that they’re offering and figure out how they can expand them, fill gaps, and actually offer true programs like pay-as-you-save on the bills.
David Roberts
Yeah, Peter, then let’s talk about this. We’re all interested in this. So what’s happening in Georgia is they are actually doing pretty well for utility-scale solar. Not great, but what did you say, 7th in the nation for utility-scale solar? Fine. Nowhere on distributed solar, like completely anemic on household solar, distributed solar, distributed batteries, et cetera. Now, the obvious explanation for this, which Volts listeners will be so familiar with that they are probably already rolling their eyes, is that utilities make money by spending money. They want to spend money. That’s how they get a rate of return.
Distributed energy, demand-side work, anything that increases energy efficiency or increases behind-the-meter energy generation or energy storage or energy sharing reduces the need for big power plants and big T&D infrastructure. That mechanically, directly reduces the amount of money the utility makes. So the way the incentive is set up now, to the extent they support distributed energy, they literally are reducing their own profits. So you don’t even have to posit any particular greed or evil in this particular case to just say, “Well, like, of course they’re not — of course they’re not pursuing distributed energy. They would be reducing their own profits.” So I wonder when you think about how to induce more of that, get that going, start linking it together into VPPs, et cetera, how to do that given the incentive structure. Are you thinking about changing that basic incentive structure or is there something sort of more proximate and easier to do that could get this going?
Peter Hubbard
Yes, okay, so I think this is where it is helpful to have someone, again, with a lot of background and who can observe what has taken place in other places. I don’t even need to mention the state, but net energy metering has gone through an evolution, at least one other state, three different iterations, if you will.
David Roberts
Quite controversial.
Peter Hubbard
And the reason why that does need to evolve is that there are costs that can be attributed to a high level of solar penetration on distribution networks. I think we know this, but we’re far from it, right? We are 47th in the nation in terms of residential rooftop solar, and so we’re far from that. And also one of the things that we do need to do — I was mentioning in an earlier discussion that we have to unlock the value of solar. Right now, if you want to put solar on your rooftop and you weren’t one of the lucky first 5,000 customers in a pilot program that also has been swept under the rug.
They got full compensation for any solar they export to the grid. Now you get about 30% of that value. It’s about 7 or 8 cents per kilowatt-hour, the avoided cost — that can be changed with the flip of a switch with a commission at any point.
David Roberts
So just boosting net metering rates would be the one obvious first place to go?
Peter Hubbard
Yeah, that’ll certainly help. And it needs to be calibrated correctly. Again, it’s just like electric load-carrying capability. We also have to calibrate the compensation for rooftop solar as that penetration goes. But again, we’re nowhere near that. And also, I mean, when well calibrated, you’re really tapping into private capital. It tends to be richer folks that put that solar and those batteries on their houses. And so it’s really harnessing some of that private capital. So yeah, there’s many different ways to do that. I know that also, you know, Georgia Power Company does also have a pilot and approved funding for distributed energy resource management software, DERMS system.
What I’m concerned about is that we need to make sure that it moves quickly past the pilot phase. We already know that there are at least 60 commercially deployed and successful virtual power plants around the nation.
David Roberts
Utilities love them some pilots.
Peter Hubbard
We do not need to study this for another three, four, five years. Let’s get going.
David Roberts
Is there a VPP in Georgia? Is there anything going on in that sector?
Peter Hubbard
No, not that I’m aware of. I mean, there’s some customer-located DER-type tariffs that are being floated, but even there they’re only getting about 75% of Georgia Power’s forecast for capacity prices. It needs work.
David Roberts
And also, just to put this in your ear, just because I did a panel on it last week and a lot of people have been talking about some version of this, but you’ve got all these hyperscalers who want to get on your grid. They have a lot of money. They need grid capacity. One way to free up grid capacity is by doing efficiency and heat pumps and solar and storage at the residential level. That frees up capacity. So if you could somehow figure out a way for the hyperscalers, for the data centers, to pay for that, to pay for that efficiency, to pay for those solar and storage systems and get credit for that capacity —
You know, just throwing that out there, just putting that in your ear, Peter.
Peter Hubbard
Hey, there’s absolutely no reason why that can’t happen. We already, you know, contractually pass through things like Renewable Energy Credits. There’s just no reason why you can’t do that. With a little imagination and creativity, you can do a lot.
David Roberts
Let me just ask you just a flat yes or no question, which is, would you have voted against any of the Georgia Power rate hikes of the last two years? The six rate hikes that we’re discussing, would you have voted against one or all of those?
Peter Hubbard
Yeah, there were six rate hikes. Two of them were Vogtle, and about 25% of the overall 37% increase over those six rate hikes — you know, frankly, that one was baked into the cake. I mean, I certainly would have pushed back on that because too much of the costs were borne by ratepayers. And so certainly I would have pushed back there. Three of those rate hikes were just to maintain that almost 12% return on equity. And then one was a fuel cost adjustment, again for the spike in fuel prices in 2022. So, you know, those — what I would do there, that cost has to be borne.
But right now, 100% of fuel costs are passed through to residential ratepayers and other customers. There’s just simply no incentive to even hedge or trade and reduce that risk. So I would have pushed back in a number of ways.
David Roberts
Under what circumstances do you think a PSC should just say “no” and turn down a rate hike request? Because it seems to happen pretty rarely, I have to say.
Peter Hubbard
Well, it’s always easier to do it right from the beginning instead of trying to compensate for bad decisions like cost overruns or locking in fossil fuel infrastructure. If you’re just smarter right up front, you can avoid these dilemmas. But I just know that pushing back first and foremost on the bad decisions as well as the high profitability metric — those are some of the areas that are going to be fruitful and ripe for harvesting some gains for lowering power bills.
David Roberts
All right, let’s briefly talk about reforms of the PSC itself. Brionté, I want to talk to you. Again, this is another subject that could be a whole pod on its own, but the structure of how the commission gets voted for — Georgia has one of, I think, 11 in the nation elected PSCs. And you were recently the plaintiff in a lawsuit about how that voting goes. As I understand it, the complaint here is all these are statewide elections, which tends to dilute the power of particularly affected local communities. But I will let you tell us briefly what is that lawsuit and what is the problem with how the PSC is elected now?
Brionté McCorkle
Absolutely. So I filed a lawsuit. I was one of several plaintiffs in the Rose vs. Raffensperger case. It was filed in the 11th Circuit here in Georgia. And that particular case was about — it was challenging the at-large election method of public service commissioners. So at-large elections are typical in city councils or county commissions where you have districts, but then there are these at-large representatives that are elected by a broader set of that electorate. And this particular method has been identified as a method of voting that dilutes Black votes and therefore is unconstitutional according to the Voting Rights Act.
So the Voting Rights Act, Section 2, specifically protects voters against these at-large schemes because they knew that a white majority electorate could basically dilute the power of a majority Black district. Right. So the idea was to keep the majority of whatever body, a candidate that was supported by the white electorate, so that the Black folks would have less power.
David Roberts
So the remedy would be district elections, basically, or something like that?
Brionté McCorkle
Right. So we were challenging this at a statewide level. This is the first major case that was bringing an at-large claim for a statewide race. And what we were asking for was either the state makes these races truly statewide or they make them district-based. Either outcome would have been fine for us. The current configuration is confusing to voters. They’re often going to the polls and they’re saying, “Oh, well, I only live in District 3,” if they even know what the commission is. And then, so they won’t vote for the commissioner in the other district, even if that commissioner’s on their ballot, because they don’t believe they can, even though it’s on their ballot.
And so it’s confusing for voters. And even all this election year, I’m having to remind people, “Nope, you can vote. It doesn’t matter what district they’re in. They’re elected statewide.” And so it’s both confusing to voters. And it also is an election method really designed to make sure that most of Georgia Power customers don’t have a true representative on that commission. And this is a little complicated to explain, so I’ll try to do it as quickly as I can. But the Public Service Commission directly influences the rates that Georgia Power customers pay. Georgia Power customers are highly concentrated in the Democratic areas of the state, like metro Atlanta.
David Roberts
Going back to saying that none of the commissioners are customers of Georgia Power, that’s why.
Brionté McCorkle
Fitz Johnson would beg to differ. But let’s be clear: Fitz Johnson was appointed in the middle of this lawsuit because we were alleging that this District 3 area of mostly Black voters who are Georgia Power customers who have outsized impact from these rate increases, then rural Georgians in other parts of the state who are not paying Georgia Power bills, they cannot get a commissioner elected to truly represent them because they’re being diluted by those voters in other parts of the state that don’t pay these bills. Fitz Johnson was appointed in the middle of this lawsuit.
And I knew when that district seat was vacated that they were looking really hard for a Black Republican to say, “Hey, no, look, we’ve got representation. It’s a Black guy. Everything’s fine.”
David Roberts
Some of our best commissioners are Black, right?
Brionté McCorkle
No, exactly. So he gets appointed. And so there’s been a long-going conflict on whether or not he lives in the district. He insists that he lives in the district, but it’s like a one-bedroom apartment somewhere. He’s got a multimillion-dollar house outside of the district. I’m pretty sure this man does not live in the district. So he’ll say, “No, no, I’m a Georgia Power customer.” But we really feel like that’s just not sincere. But yeah, that’s basically the core of the case — is we were trying to get more representation.
David Roberts
Where is the case? Because when I hear we have a case based on the Civil Rights Act, I think about where that’s headed and who’s going to hear that at the end of the line. And my heart does not fill with optimism. What’s the state of that case?
Brionté McCorkle
We did win that first round, right? We had a hearing and the first judge, Judge Grimberg, actually sided with us. We were a little nervous because he was a Trump appointee. But, you know, when you heard the judge outright, all the arguments, we really made a very clear case that Black voters were being diluted, they were being denied fair representation, and that the election method needed to change. And the judge agreed with us. And that was the original ruling. And then the state, of course, appealed. They did not like that outcome. And it did go up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
And, you know, it was a little frustrating to watch that 11th Circuit Court of Appeals hearing unfold because I felt like the judges were very much like using the same talking points that the power company had been saying. And it was the same arguments coming from the utility executives and the power company. And then, of course, they found a technicality to sort of throw out our case, saying that it was the state of Georgia’s right to run the election the way they wanted to run the election. And I was very frustrated because the whole point of the Voting Rights Act is there to protect voters when a state wants to run a race in a way that denies representation specifically for Black people.
And so they couldn’t really defeat those claims. They really found technicalities and threw it out. And so we are still appealing. As I understand it, our attorney is working on refiling that case to try to address some of the arguments, but it’s not completely put to rest. It is still alive. We are still trying to make this change happen because every Georgian, not just Black Georgians, but every Georgian, deserves fair representation on the commission.
Energy is a major topic right now. It is reshaping — this conversation, and what we decide in this moment is going to shape what America looks like and potentially what the world looks like over the next several decades — maybe the next several hundred years. And so we’ve got to make sure that people have fair representation, that they’re able to trust that their commissioners are there making decisions with their specific lived experience in mind and that they’re accountable to those people. If they decide not to do what the folks are asking, then they need to be reasonably accountable, and right now the commission is not accountable to the people that they’re directly impacting the most.
David Roberts
Peter, are there other, aside from this particular reform that we’re discussing that the lawsuit is about, are there other procedural PSC reforms that you might support? For instance, several states now have passed laws basically saying that investor-owned utilities may not use ratepayer money to lobby politically, for instance. Are there other reforms like that that you might support?
Peter Hubbard
Absolutely. So one is we’ve got to get the political donations from folks that have business before the commission. I’m talking about the local lawyers representing Georgia Power. I’m talking about Gas South and other entities. There’s lots of entities with gas in their name that are donating to the Republican commissioners and who have business in front of them. Fitz Johnson, a recent tally, saw that 87% of his donations were from regulated entities. That’s got to stop.
David Roberts
Well, they’re the only ones paying attention, right? I mean, that’s part of the whole point of this podcast — is like they’ve designed this thing practically to be sheltered from public attention. So, of course, like the ones who care are the ones with money on the line, right?
Peter Hubbard
Because they can get away with it. They do it. Yep. And so certainly the lobbying — I can’t tell you how much it gets my goat every time I hear a commercial from Georgia Power, who is a monopoly, talking about their reliability or this, that, and the other when they’re frankly not. They have a history with, you know, poor reliability in certain areas. SAIDI and SAIFI, if you look at those, they’re not really all that great compared to other utilities. But the other thing I think probably most important is there’s this shell game that, again, I’ve been an intervener in integrated resource planning now for four different IRPs in Georgia for the last six years, all as a volunteer because this is important to me.
And what I see is a shell game taking place. So you have an IRP and “thou shalt not talk about rates” in the four corners of an IRP docket. And so you have to conclude that and then you can go over and talk about rates and — they’re intrinsically linked. Resource planning and rates —
David Roberts
Sure. I mean, the rates are to pay for what’s in the IRP. I mean, of course they’re linked.
Peter Hubbard
Right. But it’s very difficult to get in a word edgewise from the lawyers who will object, the commissioners won’t allow discussion. And so that’s also got to stop. Now that happens when you have one voice that is reasonable, at least two voices on the commission as we’ll have in November. But there are broader reforms that need to take place. And the last thing I would also say is that we used to have, and still have on the paper, but it has zero funding, an oversight commission, basically a utilities oversight commission that functions. Right now, we have a public interest advocacy staff at the Public Service Commission, but they’re not really independent.
What we need is that independent body that can also be an advocate for consumers, even when, you know, just as a second kind of watch in addition to Public Service commissioners.
David Roberts
Has anyone on the PSC raised or talked about performance-based rate making? This is, you know, very hot in other areas. It’s one way to overcome some of that incentive that we talked about, the incentive to spend money, the incentive to avoid electrification and distribution, you know, distributed energy. Some of that can be ameliorated by performance-based rate making. Is that on the radar in Georgia at all?
Peter Hubbard
I have heard one state representative, Beth Camp, talk about performance-based rate making, but no, I haven’t heard any of the commissioners, to my knowledge, talk about examples like Hawaii Electric Co. and how PBR was successful over there.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, I guess if I was just making money for existing and someone proposed instead paying me based on performance, I wouldn’t want to do that either. I would probably also oppose that. Here’s a big question, which obviously we can’t get completely into, but do you think the vertically integrated utility model is still the right model? Like, would you, like, in your heart of hearts, support breaking it up and putting generation into wholesale markets, deregulating the way other states have, or just participating in regional markets? Would you, if you had the power, go after the model itself, the sort of basic structural model of the utility itself?
Peter Hubbard
It’s a great question because really there is the vertically integrated model that we have here in the Southeast and much of the West, and then compare and contrast that to the seven regional transmission organizations, the wholesale markets we have. And those have been a work in progress over the last two and a half decades, with some revisiting the original intention of them versus, say, a third example, TVA or Bonneville Power, public power, and then of course, just sort of that more ephemeral one of just distributed energy resources out there, people reclaiming their own energy future. There’s different models out there and there’s good and bad to them. I think that the model that we have could work if we had regulators, overseers who frankly gave a damn.
And that’s not what we have right now. So it certainly could. But there’s just a lot of ways — I mean, you really, truly have to be a constant watchdog because the Georgia Power Company, their commitment is to their shareholders and they will find every single way to flow in every crack and crevice and extract as much wealth out of you in very subtle ways. The fact that solar is given 0% capacity credit in certain seasons, you know, there’s ways that they can influence the decisions and the outcomes to arrive at that predetermined conclusion. So without that oversight and someone who knows what they’re talking about and understands those subtle ways that things could be influenced, I think it’s a challenge.
And right now, none of the five commissioners really has any energy expertise. And that’s why we’re getting the bad decisions we are, I think.
David Roberts
Yeah, I guess that’s kind of both the advantage and the disadvantage of this model you have. Like, the advantage is there’s a central locus of decision making, so you can do big, sweeping things relatively quickly. But the downside is there’s a single locus of decision making, which means every bad actor has exactly one target for lobbying and et cetera, et cetera. So very much depends on an independent PSC. Okay, well, that’s a lot to cover on Georgia. There’s a lot on Georgia’s plate right now. Let’s conclude. I want to go back to you, Brionté.
So, traditionally, PSC elections pass by in obscurity. Mostly it’s the utilities that are lobbying and paying and funding races. And consequently, most of the people who are hired are beholden to utilities. It seems like, as we discussed at the outset, this is a very unique opportunity to kind of break that cycle, to bring some attention to this, to actually give voters who are angry about their bills a democratic mechanism to do something about it, an actual target that they can see. And as I said at the outset, this is also, I think, for very obvious reasons, a national bellwether, a very important sort of signal of things to come, whose coalition is awake and active.
You know, so all of that to say, how can people help here? Obviously, if you live in Georgia, pay attention, learn about the race, get out and vote. But if you don’t, what can people do? If they just recognize the importance of this race and want to engage, want to be helpful, what can people do?
Brionté McCorkle
Yeah, this is just a really exciting year. As you said, we have an opportunity to talk about energy, power bills, meet voters where they’re at, which is affordability, and connect the dots back to energy and climate change. And so I think this is just a really transformational year for us. I think if people want to help, definitely, if you live in Georgia, priority number one, go out and vote and talk to people that you know who can vote and bring them to the polls with you. I think it’s also important to invest in the candidates’ campaigns as well as to invest in groups like mine.
I do have an education fund, the 501(c)(3) GCV Education Fund. And then we have GCVR 501(c)(4) and GCV Action Fund, our PAC. And so we do have all three of these entities because we know that to make change we’ve got to be full cycle. We’ve got to meet them at the Public Service Commission. We’ve got to connect the dots, do grassroots organizing, bring people into those proceedings so they can see in real time how these decisions are being made. They can speak up. And then also we’ve got to make sure that they understand how to talk about it, what language to use.
And then we’ve got to be lobbying, we’ve got to be involved at the state Capitol, and we have to make sure that we’re out in the street supporting candidates who are doing the right things on this. This is multi-cycle work. And so supporting organizations like ours ensures that we don’t just get Peter elected in 2025 and Alicia elected in 2025, but that we are paving the road for 2026 where Peter will be back on the ballot in the event of a victory. And then we’ll also have District 5, and then 2028, we’ve got Districts 1 and 4.
Right. So this is a multi-year effort. And so we can’t treat this as a one-and-done opportunity. We need that long-term sustained investment in the work because, again, even if the election isn’t happening right away, we’ve got all of that regulatory stuff, which gives us an opportunity to be talking to voters, bringing them up to speed, and increasing the knowledge base in the electorate about how important this issue is and which candidates are really going to have their backs when it comes to affordability and also renewable energy expansion.
David Roberts
And just to reinforce something you said, it would be awesome. It would be great if our side this one time, rather than just dumping a bunch of campaign-specific money and demanding campaign-based metrics, and then wrapping it all up at the end of the campaign, it would be great if they built some infrastructure, put in place some groups and infrastructure and connections and organizations that could be deployed the next time something comes up. Which, as you say, is quite frequent in Georgia, not just in the electricity sector, but generally in politics. Georgia is a very important state.
All eyes are on it. So it would be great — like any infrastructure that gets built for this can be deployed for those things in the future. So just to be pedantic about it.
Brionté McCorkle
Well, you’re totally right. In 2026, Ossoff will be the only Democrat up for reelection. And this is our US Senator in a state where Trump won. Right. And so he doesn’t win 2026 with a whole bunch of money in September 2026. Right. We’ve got to start now. We’ve got to talk to voters across the state. We’ve got to build that infrastructure. We have infrastructure, but it does need to scale. So we’re already doing the work and —
David Roberts
This issue is going to be for sure part of that race.
Brionté McCorkle
Absolutely. Cost of living — every year that I’ve been involved in this work, which at this point is well over a decade, affordability, jobs, economy, cost of living, always at the top of voters’ minds. And so this is an issue where it’s just very case in point. And we have Democrats that are lined up and ready to do the right thing. But we can’t have that conversation with millions of voters one month before election day. Right. So we need that long-term sustained investment in all three of our orgs because all three of them are necessary at different times of the year.
David Roberts
All right, well, thank you both so much. This was awesome and amazing as I expected it would be. Very important race, everybody. Make some phone calls, give some money, tune in, talk about it, tweet about it, tell people about it. It’s a big deal. Thank you both for coming on and walking us through it. Any final comments? Peter, I’ll give you a last word.
Peter Hubbard
Yeah, thank you, David. I do want to emphasize that this is the moment. This is a golden opportunity for a part of the country that frankly has been neglected. The Southeast — you mentioned the energy burden of folks down here. The Southeast really does have it pretty bad. And this is a chance. This is an election, frankly, with national stakes because climate isn’t just constrained to just Georgia. Right. This is something that I think a lot of folks can get behind. This has been a long-term project. I’ve been doing this work for six years and we’ve got plenty of work to do over the next six.
But I know that we can do it. And it starts with a win with two seats in November. So yes, if you can, please visit peterforgeorgia.com and contribute. And please tell all your friends in Georgia to vote.
David Roberts
Well said. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Brionté. Thanks for coming on.
Brionté McCorkle
Thank you.
Peter Hubbard
Thank you, David.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I’ll see you next time.
