Black voters could play a decisive role in a pair of Public Service Commission races on the Nov. 3 election ballot.
The five-member PSC is the regulatory board that decides whether monopolistic utility companies like Atlanta Gas Light and Georgia Power, which provides electricity to an estimated 2.8 million customers across the state, can increase how much they charge for energy services.
PSC elections have even greater implications for many Black Georgians, who tend to carry a higher energy cost burden due to having less energy efficient homes.
The PSC races will impact how much Georgia Power and Atlanta Gas Light customers pay for electricity and natural gas in the coming years. It will also determine whether residential customers, or tech giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta, bear the brunt of the cost for new energy infrastructure to power developing data centers.
Tax breaks helped make metro Atlanta the No. 1 market in America for new data center construction this year, according to a CBRE investment firm analysis.
Whoever wins this year’s PSC races will be in charge of ensuring the cost for building those plants and additional electric infrastructure aren’t passed on to residential consumers in the form of rate hikes.
The estimated 200-plus active, planned, and proposed data centers in the region are enough to make metro Atlanta the second-largest data center market in the world.
“Black voters in particular are concerned about where these data centers are going … and ultimately whether or not the data centers are going to make their bills go up,” Brionté McCorkle, executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters, a group that specializes in mobilizing Black voters on environmental justice issues, told Capital B Atlanta on Wednesday.
PSC commissioners don’t decide whether new data centers get built, but they do determine who pays to build the infrastructure used to power those data centers. In recent years, PSC commissioners have been accused of rubber-stamping rate hikes for Georgia Power and Atlanta Gas Light to support the state’s data center and artificial intelligence boom.
This year’s PSC elections will also decide the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans on the five-member regulatory body for the first time in recent memory.
Republicans have maintained majority control of the PSC since the late 1990s. Last year, voters angry about Republican PSC commissioners approving six Georgia Power rate hikes over the preceding two years helped Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson defeat GOP incumbents Fitz Johnson and Tim Echols.
This year, PSC commissioners negotiated an estimated $4 per month decrease in people’s monthly Georgia Power bills. McCorkle said the change may be small, but it’s a step in the right direction and a direct response to Georgia voters making their voices heard at the ballot box.
Those same voters can send an even stronger message in November before the commission decides cost allocation for infrastructure development in the coming years.
Who’s running?
Hubbard’s special election victory in last year’s District 3 race allowed him to fill the remainder of Fitz Johnson’s term, which ends in December. The rivals are facing off once again in November after Johnson won a primary battle earlier this year. The winner will serve a full six-year term ending in 2032.
Who is Fitz Johnson?
Fitz Johnson is a Republican West Atlanta resident and owner of ASID Group International LLC., a professional services provider. He previously served on the PSC for more than four years before losing his reelection bid a year ago.
He pointed out he voted in favor of last year’s unprecedented rate hike freeze and for negotiating with Georgia Power to ensure residential customers don’t pick up the tab for data center infrastructure costs.
“When you hear someone tell you, ‘Oh, your bill is going to go up because there’s a data center coming in,’ they’re absolutely wrong,” Johnson told Capital B Atlanta. “If I’m elected again, you’ll see me fighting for the ratepayers to ensure that their rates remain constant, if not go down.”
Johnson also pushed back on the criticism he’s received for approving Georgia Power rate hikes in the past and for taking campaign contributions from Georgia Power-affiliated donors.
“[In] leadership, sometimes you have to make very difficult decisions,” he said. “We knew as we made those decisions that we would be able to come back around and have rates frozen for three years.”
Who is Peter Hubbard?
Hubbard is the Democrat and former renewable energy project developer who this year helped pressure Georgia Power to lower rates by $4 per month. His office says he and fellow Democrat Alicia Johnson compelled Georgia Power to slash $500 million from its developing OpenAI data center project in Effingham County.
Hubbard said he plans to create more downward rate pressure on Georgia Power and Atlanta Gas Light if voters reelect him and make Shelia Edwards the third Democrat on the commission.
“There’s a lot of work, and this is going to take time to push down the trajectory,” Hubbard said. “Give me that runway to be able to effectuate the change that I’m talking about with the votes behind me.”
Who is Shelia Edwards?
Edwards is a Mableton resident and owner of Trappier Communications, a communications consulting firm, who has been endorsed by former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, the Sierra Club, and the Working Families Party.
She said she’s running to ensure the PSC works on behalf of Georgia customers and not utility companies.
“Do you want a Public Service Commission that is utility focused or one that is consumer focused?” she said. “There’s a way for Georgia Power to make money but not have their boots on the backs of Georgians.”
Who is Josh Tolbert?
Republican Josh Tolbert, a Smyrna resident who serves as founder and principal engineer for Atlanta Experts, is running against Edwards.
Tolbert earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Alabama in 2012 in addition to two masters degrees. He said he’ll bring a level of technical expertise to the commission that doesn’t currently exist.
“There’s a difference [between] wanting power bills to go down and knowing how to do it,” Tolbert said. “This job is technical and it’s time we send an engineer who knows how to do it.”
Tolbert vowed to oppose pushing data center infrastructure costs onto residential customers. He also pushed back against criticism he’s received for supporting data center development in Georgia and removing pro-data center rhetoric from his campaign website.
“It’s gotten so toxic where if you say pro-data center, people assume that means you want one in everybody’s living room and homeowners should pay for it,” Tolbert said. “What I believe is today, when people are anti-data center, they are taking the voice away from the community. … I believe communities should be owed the right that data centers make their pitch to them, and the communities make their decision.”
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