Thread by @electronecon

There were two interesting stories that have come out in the past month that I haven't seen connected or contextualized very well so I thought I'd give it a try. It has to do with two different subsidiaries of Southern Company and two different federal agencies. Thread 1/8

About a month ago, DOE announced an increase to the loan guarantee for GAPower's Nuclear plant Vogtle. An additional $3.7 billion on top of the existing billions. @JackieTothDC from @MorningConsult wrote a great story on the subject you should read.
morningconsult.com/2019/04/08/doe… 2/8

In the story, @JackieTothDC does a great job contextualizing the Vogtle loan guarantee compared to other guarantees, like Solyndra which became a "scandal" upon collapse. The really great graph she includes is here. 3/ 8

Now, just this week, we learn that GAPower's sibling company MSPower is under investigation by DOJ. I recommend @UtilityDive's @TeamWetDog story here: utilitydive.com/news/doj-opens… 4/8

We have 2 subsidiaries of a SoCo making promises to deliver clean energy by making huge, ratepayer backed investments on megaprojects and the feds saying in one case, "go ahead, keep going." And in another case saying "wait, what did you just do?" 5/8

Now, let's put SoCo's investments in Nukes and CCS in context with their investments in RE... 6/8

Now, let's do the math. MS Power could have installed solar on every single one of the company's residential customers roofs, enough to offset those customers annual electric consumption, and still had savings left over to buy batteries. 7/8

GA Power will have to run the plant at above 100% CF in order to produce as much energy as what could have been produced by renewables. You know... Assuming the reactors ever come online. 8/8

@threadreaderapp, unroll, please!