Clean energy program for businesses, data center campuses gets green light

Renewable energy advocates and Georgia Power have hashed out a way to let large companies add their own clean energy to the power grid — in a way that could reduce the need for more power plants and lower utility bills for everyone.

A concept known as “bring your own clean energy,” or BYONCE, lets commercial and industrial companies bypass working with Georgia Power and contract directly with renewable energy developers to deliver clean energy to the entire power grid. Those companies will pay Georgia Power a monthly tariff in exchange for a renewable energy credit. If there are excess credits, a portion of that will be shared with other customers.

The Georgia Public Service Commission signed off on what’s called the Customer Identified Resource program at a meeting on Tuesday. Clean energy business leaders are hoping this new system will encourage companies to put cheap, carbon-free electricity on Georgia Power’s grid at a time when the utility is starting a historic expansion of its generation fleet to meet unprecedented energy demand from data centers.

“We need battery and solar together that can provide long duration power to the grid,” said Katie Southworth of the Corporate Energy Buyers Association.

Officials with CEBA, a trade group that includes Coca-Cola, IBM, Netflix and hyperscalers such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft that build large data center campuses, saw an opportunity when Georgia Power pledged to procure up to 4,000 megawatts of renewable energy sources by 2035. It and other renewable energy advocates started working with Georgia Power to develop the CIR, which the utility included in its 2025 Integrated Resource Plan.

Until this point, large companies — especially ones with clean energy goals — had to rely on Georgia Power adding solar and other renewable energy to the power grid or buy clean energy electrons from another state.

Under the CIR program, businesses work directly with developers, put up their own capital and the electrons flow onto Georgia Power’s entire system. This lessens the demand for other, fossil fuel-based power plants at a time when the state is facing significant electricity demand to meet the needs of data centers, and carbon-free electricity is cheaper than gas or coal.

“This is not going to solve this entire load growth problem on its own, but it is a solution that goes toward helping this load growth problem,” said Southworth in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month.

In December, utility regulators gave Georgia Power the green light to add 10,000 megawatts to its power grid in just five years. The electricity will come mostly from gas-fired power plants and a mix of solar and battery storage.

Most of the electricity will go to serve data centers, large computer-filled warehouses that have cropped up all over the state to power artificial intelligence, video streaming services and the digital economy. Consumer and clean energy advocates have criticized the decision, arguing it will worsen climate change and drive up customer bills, even with guardrails put in place.

The CIR program will help diversify Georgia Power’s electricity mix, a company spokesperson said in a statement emailed to the AJC.

“The new Customer Identified Resource Process (CIR) will allow for the procurement of additional renewable resources to meet customer needs. We expect these projects will provide energy and capacity benefits to the system value for all Georgia Power customers,” the statement said.