by Dave Williams | Jun 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia Power and Mitsubishi Power have successfully completed a second trial blending hydrogen and natural gas fuels at Plant McDonough-Atkinson in Smyrna, the two companies announced Monday.
The demonstration project is the first to validate a blend of 50% hydrogen fuel and the largest test of this kind in the world to date. The 50% blend resulted in a 22% decrease in carbon-dioxide emissions compared to 100% natural gas.
A first test at the plant was completed in 2022 using a 20% hydrogen blend.
Natural gas currently provides 40% of Georgia Power’s annual energy generation.
“Natural gas serves a critical role in our generation mix, providing flexibility, baseload power and quick response to customer demand,” said Rick Anderson, senior vice president and senior production officer for Georgia Power. “(It) will continue to be an important fuel as we plan to meet the energy needs of a growing Georgia through a diverse portfolio of generation resources.”
The 2025 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) Georgia Power submitted to the state Public Service Commission (PSC) earlier this year calls for the construction of three new Mitsubishi Power gas turbines capable of using hydrogen at the utility’s Plant Yates in Coweta County.
“It has been a privilege to partner with Georgia Power on this landmark project,” Mark Bissonnette, executive vice president and chief operating officer of power generation at Mitsubishi Power Americas, said of the hydrogen fuel test. “This is a significant milestone for both companies to help Georgia Power reduce carbon emissions across its generation fleet.”
The continued use of natural gas as well as coal is a sticking point with environmental groups that oppose that portion of the proposed IRP. The PSC is scheduled to vote on the plan July 15.
by Dave Williams | Jun 16, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Eleven people have been arrested on drug, gun, and other charges following an investigation into gang-related criminal activities in Middle Georgia.
The Bibb County Sheriff’s Office launched Operation “Westside Wakeup” in January, with Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s Gang Prosecution Unit joining a short time later. The unit, which Carr launched nearly three years ago, has been expanded to include a new regional prosecutor and an investigator based in Macon.
“We’re working each day to disrupt and dismantle the growing gang networks that are terrorizing our communities, and those who engage in violent crime will be held accountable,” Carr said.
“This operation illustrates how the illicit drug trade reaches from the cell block to the city street,” Bibb County Sheriff David J. Davis added.
In addition to the 11 arrests, the law enforcement agencies recovered about 17 pounds of marijuana, 1.28 pounds of powder and crack cocaine, three ounces of Ecstasy, 1 ounce of fentanyl, an array of firearms, and about $110,000 in U.S. currency.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and the FBI aided in the investigation.
by Dave Williams | Jun 13, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Elections for state and federal offices usually take place only in even years.
But this year, Georgia voters will head to the polls to fill two seats on the five-member state Public Service Commission, starting this Tuesday with Republican and Democratic primaries.
Incumbent Republican Commissioner Tim Echols faces a challenger for the GOP nomination in PSC District 2, which includes eastern Georgia from Atlanta’s eastern and southeastern suburbs to Savannah. Democratic Primary voters will decide which of three candidates takes on incumbent Republican Commissioner Fitz Johnson in November in District 3, which covers the metro counties of Fulton, Clayton, and DeKalb.
The odd-year election stems from a 2022 lawsuit that challenged the way members of the PSC are elected. Four Black Fulton County residents and their lawyers argued that electing commissioners statewide instead of by district dilutes Black voting strength in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act, making it harder for Black voters to elect a candidate of their choice.
A lower federal court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, but the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned that decision and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal. The ongoing case resulted in the postponement of both the 2022 and 2024 PSC elections.
District 2 Republicans
Lee Muns, a former member of the Columbia County Board of Education who ran unsuccessfully for the Columbia County Commission, is up against veteran Commissioner Tim Echols in District 2. It’s unusual for an incumbent to draw a primary challenge, and Muns said he wouldn’t run if he thought his opponent was doing a good job.
“We’ve seen the cost overruns at (nuclear Plant) Vogtle and the lack of looking forward to the future,” Muns said. “(Voters) are concerned about the oversight of the current commission.”
Muns has more than 35 years of experience in industrial construction, having founded multiple successful businesses. Before going into business on his own, he helped build Units 1 and 2 at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle in the late 1980s.
“I’m a business owner,” he said. “I understand budgets. I understand supply-chain issues. … I understand how much overhead you need to run an operation.”
If elected, Muns said he would push to freeze any Georgia Power rate increases until the PSC requires full transparency and accountability for Georgia Power and other utilities the commission regulates.
Georgia Power agreed last month to freeze customer rates for the next three years. But an agreement the company reached last month with the PSC’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff nixed the next rate case Georgia Power had been due to file with the commission and the multiple rounds of public hearings that would have taken place.
Muns said the proposed rate freeze is a “political ploy” timed to coincide with this year’s elections.
“It’s trying to throw this out to voters and blind them,” he said. “Voters are smarter today than they used to be.”
Muns said he supports prohibiting Georgia Power from recovering from residential and small business customers the costs of supplying energy to the power-hungry data centers that are popping up across Georgia. Legislation that included such a requirement was introduced in the state Senate this year but failed to gain traction.
Echols said the PSC already has provided such a safeguard by approving a resolution last January forbidding Georgia Power from passing on the costs of serving new large-load customers – including data centers – to ratepayers.
“We have taken precautions to make sure large loads like data centers pay all incremental costs to generate and transmit their energy,” he said. “I feel good about the protections we have put in place for ratepayers.”
Echols, who grew up in Clayton County but lives in Hoschton near Athens, was elected to the PSC in 2010 and reelected in 2016. His term was supposed to be up in 2022 but was extended when the election was postponed.
After graduating from the University of Georgia with a bachelor’s degree and two masters degrees, Echols started a Christian nonprofit educational ministry for teens. He also is an enthusiastic supporter of electric vehicles and has owned one for years.
Echols embraces the wave of data centers moving to Georgia as good for the state’s economy.
“Georgia is poised to become the artificial intelligence capital of America – just like with fintech,” he said. “Data centers bring in seven-figure tax revenue for counties that land the projects – and that is attractive.”
Echols also supports the nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle that was completed last year, seven years behind schedule with massive cost overruns. Vogtle’s Units 3 and 4 were the first new nuclear reactors built in America in decades.
“Vogtle is an important milestone for Georgia Power and the entire state,” he said. “That said, to build more reactors we need some sort of financial backstop from the federal government.”
One thing Echols and Muns agree on is Georgia Power’s decision to continue relying on coal and natural gas as part of the utility’s portfolio of energy generation sources.
District 3 Democrats
The three Democrats seeking their party’s nomination in PSC District 3 beg to differ.
“We are supposed to transition out of coal,” said Robert Jones, a California native with a resume that includes working in software sales, as a technology executive, as a senior analyst at the California Public Utilities Commission, as an executive at Telecom Utility, and as a global business leader at Microsoft. “All the environmental evidence says we should do it.”
“Expanding fossil fuel infrastructure will lock Georgia into decades of reliance on oil, coal, methane gas, further contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, which we’ve seen in all these storms throughout the country,” added Keisha Sean Waites, a former member of the General Assembly and – more recently – the Atlanta City Council.
“You can’t meet that 2050 no net-carbon goal (set by Georgia Power parent Southern Co.) and build new fossil fuel plants,” said Peter Hubbard, a clean-energy advocate for a Georgia nonprofit. “Renewables could power the grid reliably, but there’s always been a headwind from the fossil fuels industry.”
Jones said he’s the only candidate – or sitting commissioner – with the extensive utility management experience needed to assess the impact power-generating financing proposals from utilities would have on business and residential customers.
“My background of having worked in utility regulation is particularly relevant to the challenge Georgia voters face at this time,” he said.
Waites brings extensive government experience to the race, having spent 15 years working for the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Waites is wary of the rapid growth of data centers in Georgia because of their impacts on both the environment and electric ratepayers.
“A data center uses the equivalent of a small town daily in water consumption and power,” she said. “I have to make sure we don’t use small businesses and residential customers as a financial backstop for Georgia Power.”
Waites also suggested that the use of solar energy could be expanded if the PSC would increase the cap on its rooftop solar initiative from the current 5,000 homeowners.
Hubbard has testified as an expert witness before the commission during the last four rounds of hearings on Georgia Power requests for additional electrical generating capacity. He said the utility is asking for more capacity than it needs.
“You can’t assume all these giant companies building data centers want to build them in Georgia,” he said. “(Georgia Power) is overestimating demand. … They use these forecasts to justify new projects. But the load demand isn’t there.”
The winner of the District 2 Republican primary between Echols and Muns will face Democrat Alicia Johnson in November, while the Democrat who wins the District 3 primary will take on GOP incumbent Fitz Johnson. Appointed to the PSC in 2021, this will be the first time Johnson has sought election to the post.
With early voting wrapping up on Friday, the polls across Georgia will be open on Tuesday from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.
by Dave Williams | Jun 12, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A student pilot has pleaded guilty in federal court in Macon to stealing a private plane from an airport in Perry and flying it to North Carolina and back.
Rufus Crane, 27, of Coconut Creek, Fla., faces up to 10 years in prison on one count of interstate transportation of stolen aircraft. He also could receive up to three years of supervised release following his prison term and a maximum fine of $250,000.
According to court documents and testimony, Crane stole a Bonanza A-36 aircraft and – without the required flying credentials – flew it to an airport in Waxhaw, N.C., last month. After stopping to refuel in South Carolina, he headed back toward Perry.
However, he could not land safely because fog in the area was too heavy for him to see the runway. Instead, he flew to an airport in Cochran, where he refueled before landing the stolen aircraft back in Perry. Because of the fog, Crane operated the aircraft using instruments and navigation aids instead of visual cues.
In addition to not having permission to fly the aircraft, Crane possessed only a student pilot certificate. During the flights, which took place in the middle of the night, he kept the plane’s transponder turned off, so the plane did not send signals to air traffic controllers to provide information on the aircraft’s location, altitude, and speed.
“The defendant put his own life and the lives of others at risk, despite not being fully trained or holding a pilot’s license,” Acting U.S. Attorney C. Shanelle Booker said Wednesday. “The regulations governing our nation’s airspace are designed to ensure the safety of everyone. Those who disregard federal law will be held accountable.”
The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Perry Police Department with assistance from the Federal Aviation Commission.
Crane is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 17.
by Dave Williams | Jun 11, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Recent changes in the adoptions process in Georgia are causing such extensive delays that the state is no longer considered “adoption-friendly,” several adoption lawyers said Wednesday.
But the owner of an adoption agency in Coastal Georgia and a birth mother defended Georgia’s process as ensuring that Peach State adoptions are safe and legal.
Before November 2023, Georgia requirements for both birth mothers and adoptive parents matched those of other states, the adoption lawyers told members of the state Senate Children and Families Committee. But since then, Georgia has imposed a host of additional burdensome requirements not found in other states, including changing its checklist of requirements six times, Norcross adoption lawyer Justin Hester testified.
“It’s open-ended,” he said. “It delays these people from getting home with a newborn.”
“We’ve got families spending thousands of dollars to stay in hotels and Airbnb’s with newborn babies,” added Sherriann Hicks, an adoption lawyer based in Lawrenceville. “These families are traumatized by this experience.”
While the additional requirements appear to be aimed at preventing human trafficking of mothers and/or babies, the adoption lawyers said they have never encountered instances of trafficking.
“We do not understand what rationale exists for the current requirements,” said Rhonda Fishbein, an adoption lawyer in Atlanta. “None of us have knowledge of sex trafficking with the adoptions we’ve been involved with.”
But Ashley Mitchell of Utah, who put her newborn up for adoption 19 years ago, said Georgia did the right thing by stiffening its adoption requirements because adoption has evolved with the advent of the internet and adoption consultants.
“This paperwork and these guideposts should move and should evolve with it,” she said.
“I am proud that we have stopped rubber stamping,” added Carrie Murray Nellis, who runs an adoption agency on St. Simons Island. “It has made me a better practitioner.”
Jacqui Jackson, an Atlanta adoptee and adoptive mother who runs a nonprofit that works with at-risk children, said adoption-related human trafficking is a reality that demands an intense level of regulation to prevent.
“There are bad actors and back-door channels of moving children,” she said. “There have been instances of children being transferred in Walmart parking lots with no oversight.”
Jackson said she supports model legislation that aims to address unregulated child custody transfers, where a parent or guardian transfers custody to another individual without court or agency oversight.
“There are currently eight states, four that have enacted (the Uniform Unregulated Child Custody Transfer Act), four that are considering,” she said. “I would love for Georgia to be the ninth.”
