Southern often has pointed to this as an industrial recruitment tool and one reason why the region has enjoyed so much growth in recent years.
Of course, there are drawbacks to cheap energy. For one thing, a large percentage of power generated at utility plants in the South comes from coal, not the cleanest of the fossil fuels. It’s true as well that cheap energy makes you lazy. Not in the couch-potato way, but in being less inclined to seek out and develop new forms of energy, such as renewables.
That’s not to say Southern and other companies aren’t exploring those avenues. Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern, recently announced the conversion of a coal-fired plant in Albany to biomass. If it all works out, the plant could produce close to 100 megawatts, about enough juice to power 12,000 homes.
Southern — including that other subsidiary, Alabama Power — is also looking closer at wind and solar and more exotic possibilities such as harnessing landfill gas.
Still, we live in the land of cheap energy, relatively speaking anyway. So there’s a tendency, with customers as well as the producers, to be less concerned about conservation and efficiency.
But what if we started being more careful with our energy consumption and the power companies started stressing it even more than they already do?
If we actually took it seriously, the benefits to the entire region could be staggering.
That’s the finding of a recent joint study conducted by Georgia Tech and Duke University.
The study, released in mid-April, found that if we adopted what it described as aggressive energy efficiency programs, we would see our power bills drop by $41 billion by 2020.
That alone is enough to get you thinking about it. But check this out: The study also found that going the energy efficiency route can also create some 380,000 new jobs. Anyone interested?
According to the study, the South uses more energy per capita than the rest of the nation, and, by some measures, the South also consumes close to 50 percent of the energy needed for industrial production.
At the same time, the study says, we also spend less on energy efficiency than other states.
What’s good about this is that the Southeast Energy Efficiency Study found that it doesn’t take much to turn things around in a big way.
For residential customers, for example, the study spelled out simple changes such as changing building codes, harmonizing appliance standards and increasing subsidies for weatherization.
The commercial sector, it said, would benefit tremendously from standardizing codes and updating and retrofitting air and heating systems. And the utility industry could do its part, the study concluded, by upgrading its plants.
In fact, the writers of the study found, we wouldn’t need as many plants, not nearly as many, if we started making some of these changes. Many old and dirty coal-fired plants could be retired (saving the region billions of gallons of water each year), while many expensive new ones would not even have to be built.
The roots of the Southern Company are deep in the Southeast and the company’s history, under various names, reaches back to the 1920s. We are not necessarily tied to the future of Southern and, to borrow another cliché, what is good for Southern isn’t necessarily good for the Southeast.
But we have to acknowledge the natural leadership role Southern can play in a region as dynamic as ours, with the potential to lead the nation for once.
So, it’s good to know that Southern’s chairman, president and CEO, David Ratcliffe, has long seen the practical side of conservation and energy efficiency.
In a speech more than a year ago, he spelled out how the company would continue to meet demand, and energy efficiency programs were top of the list.
As he noted in mid-2008, “Between 1989 and 2005, [energy efficiency programs] saved enough electricity to power 74 million average U.S. homes for one year.
“The effort helped Southern Company avoid building more than 3,000 megawatts of peaking capacity since the 1990s, which is enough energy to power nearly half a million homes.”
Maybe, just maybe, Southern and other utilities will implement the Georgia Tech/Duke study.
New on Noble
There is still plenty of vacant space on Noble Street, but things are beginning to move a little and word is, a number of prospects are inquiring about leasing or buying buildings downtown.
One recent development is the Snooty Fox, an upscale consignment shop at 1224 Noble St. The invention of owner Nakeshia Duncan, the Fox will only take name-brand items from consigners. Duncan’s business specializes in women’s and children’s clothing.
The Noble Street address in the past few years has been home to (in reverse order) an eclectic used furniture store, a baby clothing store and a martial arts training studio. A facelifting has brought out classic details in the architecture of the facade.
