Southern Company extends life of coal plants to power data centers, appears to abandon net zero goal. New filings in Mississippi and Georgia show Southern Company’s utility subsidiaries in those states are seeking to extend the life of three coal-fired power plants, jeopardizing the …

Jul 18, 2024 · While many Americans saw their energy bills go up substantially in the past year, investor-owned electric and gas utilities and the country’s largest publicly owned utility paid their CEOs over $647 million in 2023, an increase of 9 percent over 2022, an analysis by the Energy and Policy Institute has found.

The Energy and Policy Institute is a watchdog organization that exposes attacks on renewable energy and counters misinformation by fossil fuel and utility interests.

We need to power the economy with clean energy to address the climate crisis, and we have the tools to do that right now: renewable energy sources like wind and solar power are less expensive than fossil fuels; energy efficiency technologies save customers money and will hasten the transition to clean energy.

14 hours ago · The new EPI analysis reconfirms what we first reported in 2019: the nation’s largest utilities planned to slow down their pace between 2020 and 2030, leaving the brunt of emissions reductions to 2030 through 2050. Data and sources are available at the hyperlinked Google sheet.. FirstEnergy abandons interim emissions reduction goal

Reports from the Energy and Policy Institute. Power Trip: How utilities use customer money to fund lobbying, corporate branding, and luxury lifestyle expenses, December 2024. Duke Energy Knew: Documenting the Utility’s Early Knowledge and Ongoing

Sep 22, 2020 · Utility executive pay continues to increase as customers face disconnection during COVID-19 crisis. Investor-owned utilities have argued publicly and to policymakers that they must continue disconnecting customers who have been unable to pay their electric or gas bills during the COVID-19 crisis. If they don’t have the threat of disconnections, the utilities say, they will have to …

Feb 28, 2025 · Gas and electric customers in Connecticut have been spared from footing the bill for up to $10 million of their utilities’ political spending on lobbying, advocacy, and advertising activities since the state passed a law prohibiting recovery of such costs. The legislation, which went into effect ...

Powerless in the United States: the third installment in the Powerless in the Pandemic series. Utility companies have disconnected U.S. households more than 5.7 million times since 2020 while shelling out billions to shareholders and top executives, according to Powerless in the U.S., a new report from EPI, Center for Biological Diversity, and BailoutWatch.

Feb 28, 2025 · TVA Documents Reveal New Details About How America’s Major Utilities Fight Clean Air Regulations. Over the last two years, an obscure group of utilities called the Power Generators Air Coalition (PGen) has quietly opposed numerous environmental protections proposed by the Biden administration, including rules...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) has been working for more than ten years to research and document how fossil fuel interests are fighting to block new wind and solar farms by spreading disinformation about clean energy to try to undermine the strong, bipartisan support for renewable energy that exists among the public.

Aug 2, 2023 · Representative Kathy Castor (D-FL) introduced legislation last week that directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to prohibit utilities from recovering political expenses from ratepayers. Representatives Sean Casten (D-IL) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) cosponsored the legislation. Each of the legislators has had utilities in their home state involved in political scandals, with some ...

Utilities, through the largely customer funded Edison Electric Institute and Electric Power Research Institute, sponsored cutting edge climate research during the 1970s and 1980s.During the 1980s, EPRI funded research by influential scientist Charles Keeling and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography that documented “virtually all that we knew at the time from measurements of atmospheric ...

Dec 11, 2024 · As state lawmakers prepare to convene for their 2025 legislative sessions, they have a clear opportunity to rein in a common practice by monopoly utilities to charge their customers for inappropriate and unnecessary expenses, according to a new report from the Energy and Policy Institute.. The report includes real-world examples showing how the nation’s most prominent investor-owned ...

TVA Documents Reveal New Details About How America’s Major Utilities Fight Clean Air Regulations. Over the last two years, an obscure group of utilities called the Power Generators Air Coalition (PGen) has quietly opposed numerous environmental protections proposed by the Biden administration, including rules...

Staff. Dave Anderson, Policy and Communications Manager. Dave Anderson is the Policy and Communications Manager for the Energy and Policy Institute.. Dave has been working at the nexus of clean energy and public policy since 2008. Prior to joining the Energy and Policy Institute, he was an outreach coordinator for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Since 2023, 17 states* have filed legislative proposals to prohibit investor-owned utilities from using customer funds to support political activities. Three states enacted the provisions in 2023 - Colorado, Connecticut, and Maine. In Colorado, Xcel Energy gas customers will save at …

David Pomerantz Executive Director. David Pomerantz has been the executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute since 2016. Under David’s leadership, EPI has become a leading organization at uncovering the ways that electric and gas utilities have blocked or slowed down the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, and the ways that they have harmed communities and customers.

Dec 1, 2020 · When Xcel Energy became the first major investor-owned utility two years ago to commit to going carbon-free by 2050, it also set a goal to reduce carbon emissions 80% by 2030 from a 2005 baseline in the eight states it serves. The utility is currently on a pathway that would reduce carbon emissions by an average of 5.91% per year from 2019 through 2030, according to …

Jan 17, 2024 · A Virginia lawmaker introduced a bill last week that, if passed, would prohibit the utilities Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power from charging customers for many of their political activities.