This post contains Dr. Anne’s written comments submitted to the Public Service Commission (PSC) about the current Georgia Power request. Georgia Power wants to build a lot of new power plants using gas and to keep operating coal plants longer. There are many reasons why both coal and gas power plants are bad for health. Please keep reading to see why.
Also this morning, before the PSC had even started its official public hearings to take public comments on the proposal, the PSC staff announced that they had reached an agreement with Georgia Power. The agreement pretty much gives Georgia Power everything they asked for, and they did this before they heard any public comments.
Here are Dr Anne’s written comments:
“I am a pediatrician and specialist in environmental health, which is the specialty that looks at how people and our health are affected by environmental exposures. It includes both natural and manmade exposures.
I am writing to ask the PSC to listen to its staff – to only approve some of the plan for power, and then to only do the rest for data centers that have actual binding contracts. I am also writing to ask that the PSC require Georgia Power to include far more electricity sources that are good for human health. Both coal and natural gas create air pollution that is very damaging to our health, and especially coal creates LOTS of harmful air pollution.
In addition, the PSC should really delay this vote until the newly elected commissioners have been sworn in. This is not the sort of plan that should be considered in a lame duck session.
Here are some facts about coal power plants that show how damaging they are to human health:
In California, when coal power plants closed, the rate of premature births went down by almost 25%, from 7.0 to 5.1%. That is a huge health impact, and it really helps children’s health to not be born too early. Reducing premature births is also a huge cost savings, because premature babies are more likely to have special needs as they grow older and are in school, they are also more likely to need therapies such as speech, occupational therapy, and physical therapy.
Also in California, when coal plants closed, fertility rates went up – people who wanted to have babies were able to get pregnant and have babies more easily.
In Chicago, when coal plants closed, the rate of pediatric asthma Emergency Department visits among children who lived near the coal plants went down by 12-18%. Again, that is a huge health benefit from closing the coal plants. That means many children not sick, not needing medicine, they were able to breathe easily, they spent more time in school and their parents didn’t have to take time off work to care for a sick child. Most importantly, it reduces suffering because when children can’t breathe, it is very scary and they suffer a lot. (If you want to see what it’s like to have asthma, try to breathe through a straw for 5 minutes. Walk around your home some of the time, to see what it’s really like.)
Also in Chicago, when coal plants closed, school absences went down by 6%. This is a huge impact on both the children’s lives and the country as a whole. When children are in school more, they do better, they are less likely to drop out, and they are more likely to have lifetime higher earnings. And for the country, having more children do well in school means more productive and more creative workers in the future, which benefits all of us and builds our economy.
In China, when coal plants closed, the rate of developmental delay in 2 year olds went down from 15% to 5%. That is a really huge difference. It is really good for the children who had improved health, and it is also really good for everyone to have healthy children. (Note: the current administration has removed all issues of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives from its website. Here is another study about the same town and coal plant closure.)
As far as natural gas goes, there is an entire article in the prestigious medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, that is titled “The False Promise of Natural Gas.” It enumerates all the health damage that comes from natural/methane gas, from production to pipelines, processing and refining, and end use. Georgia Power is an end user, and the gas they burn creates all kinds of health problems. Burning methane or coal creates PM2.5, which damages us from before we are born until we are seniors. It causes premature birth, low birth weight, it impairs children’s neurodevelopment, it causes asthma and other respiratory diseases, it makes people of all ages more susceptible to respiratory infections such as influenza, covid, and RSV. It affects mental health in both children and adults. In adults it causes lung disease, heart disease, heart failure, strokes, dementia, and increases risk for diabetes and obesity.
Additionally, most of the planned coal and additional methane centers are near major population centers in Georgia: metro Atlanta, Macon, Warner Robbins, Athens, and Savannah. That means that these very health damaging power sources will expose many people, impacting the health in our state even more.
In addition to all the health damage, continuing to operate existing coal plants costs more than building new solar with storage. Building new gas turbines is in the same price range as solar with storage. Given that gas prices fluctuate so much and that gas right now is at the lower end of historical prices, adding gas power plants could force extra costs on ratepayers if/when gas prices go up. So it doesn’t make economic or business sense either.
It is quite clear from a health standpoint that both coal and methane are NOT SAFE. The PSC is supposed to ensure we have reliable, safe, and reasonable cost sources, and neither coal nor methane are safe or reasonable cost.
Therefore I urge the PSC to follow its staff recommendations, and to also require Georgia Power to include far more healthy energy: solar or wind with storage, and also energy conservation measures which instantly provide health benefits.
Thank you for considering my comments.
12/10/2025 AKMB
