SOUTHERN Co

SEE TWO

new node 7/16 diambiguation/clarify

evil pending

616 nuke

2024 MOST EXP IN WORLD

ATLANTA (AP) — The second of two new nuclear reactors in Georgia has entered commercial operation, capping a project that cost billions more and took years longer than originally projected.

Georgia Power Co. and fellow owners announced the milestone Monday for Plant Vogtle’s Unit 4, which joins an earlier new reactor southeast of Augusta in splitting atoms to make carbon-free electricity.

Unit 3 began commercial operation last summer, joining two older reactors that have stood on the site for decades. They’re the first two nuclear reactors built in the United States in decades.

The new Vogtle reactors are currently projected to cost Georgia Power and three other owners $31 billion, according to calculations by The Associated Press. Add in $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid Vogtle owners to walk away from construction, and the total nears $35 billion.

Electric customers in Georgia already have paid billions for what may be the most expensive power plant ever. The reactors were originally projected to cost $14 billion and be completed by 2017.

Utilities and their political supporters on Monday hailed the plant’s completion. Georgia Gov Brian Kemp proclaimed he was “thankful for this historic achievement by Georgia Power and its partners.” Chris Womack, CEO of Atlanta-based Southern Co., which owns Georgia Power, argues Vogtle will make the state’s electrical grid more reliable and resilient and help the utility meet its goal of zeroing out carbon emissions by 2050.

2/18 budget

In addition, the legislation extends tax credits to makers of biodiesel and "renewable diesel," and pushes back the deadline for nuclear facilities to qualify for credits. The nuclear provision would benefit the only plant in the works, under construction by Southern Company, in Georgia.

tax dodger:

n Mike Pence, Donald Trump has picked a running mate who could be relied on to take a chainsaw to President Obama’s signature environmental policy.

In 2015 the Indiana governor toldObama in no uncertain terms that his state would not be complying with the Clean Power Plan, which sets targets for reducing power plant emissions in each state. Pence joined a lawsuit that has succeeded in tying up the plan in court.

He and other climate crisis-denying policymakers have benefited from a well-coordinated network of industry front groups, conservative think tanks and law firms bent on blocking the Clean Power Plan. A good chunk of the funding for this cabal comes from some of the country’s largest electrical utilities companies.

Where do they get all that extra spending money? It turns out public utilities are champion tax dodgers—the dodgiest of all U.S. business sectors, in fact.

According to a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies, 23 of the 40 publicly held utilities that were profitable in 2015 paid no federal taxes that year. Sixteen of them paid no state income taxes. The most extreme example last year was Southern Company, which reaped $210 million in federal and state tax refunds, despite $3.6 billion in pre-tax income.

This Georgia-based firm, with nine million customers in the southeastern United States, is a fierce Clean Power Plan opponent. In comments to the Environmental Protection Agency, the firm warned the plan would result in “a complete deconstruction of the nation’s electric sector.”

Southern officials also did their best to make their customers’ hair stand on end by claiming the CPP would put $35 billion in upward pressure on their rates over the next 15 years. By contrast, the administration forecasts $80 per year in average savings per household through increased efficiency.

Southern CEO Tom Fanning pocketed $11.8 million in compensation last year and steered a good share of the rest of the proceeds from tax-dodging into blocking the Clean Power Plan through various industry groups, such as the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. That outfit is in turn a member of the Utility Air Regulatory Group, a petitioner along with Pence’s state of Indiana in the lawsuit to overturn the Clean Power Plan. The company is also a major Capitol Hill presence in its own right, having spent more than $25 million in federal lobbying in 2013-2014.

Pence and his utility industry partners against the CPP say they’re looking out for the public interest. They claim the EPA’s rules will be expensive for ratepayers and cost jobs. And yet if they were truly interested in what’s best for ordinary Americans, they would be investing much more in energy efficiency, the cheapest and fastest route to reducing carbon emissions.

Utilities are required by law to invest in “demand-side” energy efficiency at the consumer end, but the patchwork of state and federal programs have not gone nearly far enough to mitigate climate change and move the country toward a clean energy future.

Most of these programs also require home and building owners to invest significant upfront capital and so poor households often cannot participate. And since such programs potentially reduce utilities’ profits by reducing energy demand, the firms have had little incentive to do more.

It would make far more sense to plug the loopholes that have allowed these highly profitable utilities get away without paying their fair share of taxes. Then invest the revenue in projects that would benefit everyday Americans, especially low-income and communities of color. If Southern had paid the full statutory federal and state tax rates last year, for example, they would’ve contributed nearly $1.5 billion to public coffers—enough to fund 9,000 good jobs for people in retrofitting homes or building wind turbines.

If all 40 profitable utilities had paid their fair share at the state and federal levels in 2015, they would’ve paid about of $14 billion in additional revenue. That would’ve been enough to create 88,000 energy efficiency jobs or weatherize homes for up to three million low-income families.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/pences-partners-against-climate-regs-tax-dodging-utilities

nyt

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/opinion/a-climate-plan-businesses-can-like.html?

A Climate Plan Businesses Can Like

By JODY FREEMAN and KATE KONSCHNIK AUG. 3, 2015

WITH the release of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a flood of legal challenges will begin. Already, opponents have denounced the new rule limiting carbon pollution as unconstitutional. Behind the rattling sabers, however, there’s a quieter story worth noticing. Many big players in the electric power industry will gain more with the rule in place than if the courts strike it down.

In fact, many power companies have worked with the administration to get the best possible deal, and with states to discuss compliance strategies. Given their financial interests, some of these utilities may even wind up helping the government defend the rule.

The plan sends a clear market signal that low-carbon energy will be profitable. Many of the country’s most powerful investor-owned utilities, including MidAmerican, Southern Company and Exelon, have made big investments in low carbon sources like wind, solar or nuclear power. Their decision to do so was driven by a mix of market opportunities, investor preferences, tax credits and state and federal air pollution standards.

In the last several years, utilities also have begun shifting away from coal toward cheaper natural gas. What they want now is a clear and predictable federal plan that will help them profit from these investments, and reward them for making more.

The president’s plan does just that. It limits carbon pollution at the nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants and allows them to meet those limits in a variety of ways; for example, by becoming more efficient, operating less often or investing in cleaner energy sources.

Incentives in the plan will encourage the development of renewable energy. States can award credits to companies that buy or build renewable projects, and these companies can bank them even before the compliance period for meeting emissions limits begins. The federal government will match these state credits, which will help businesses comply with those limits.With these incentives, it pays to produce clean energy.

Any utility that already owns cleaner forms of energy, or hopes to build them, can profit — whether it isSouthern Company constructing new nuclear reactors and steadily expanding its portfolio of renewables, or MidAmerican, a national leader in installed wind power that may look to expand its market.

Stand-alone solar and wind companies are expected to publicly back the plan because the demand for their renewable power will only increase.

In an era of flat electricity demand, utilities have been hard-pressed to get approval from state regulators to build new power projects. But the plan’s clean-energy incentives offer utilities the opportunity to make investments that will enable state utility commissions to justify rates so utilities can recover their costs.

What’s more, knowing there will be new demand for wind and solar energy will encourage investors to build new transmission lines. Meanwhile, utilities like Calpine, which own efficient natural gas plants, will be winners because the plan creates financial incentives to switch from coal to less-polluting gas.

Finally, utilities like Pacific Gas and Electric that design innovative ways to reduce energy demand, or offer energy retrofit and appliance rebate programs, also stand to gain, because energy efficiency now will be a valuable commodity.

Understanding these behind-the-scenes dynamics makes it clear that much of industry opposition to the rule is really just posturing. In any case, the legal jockeying is only part of the story.

Many power companies are fully prepared to implement the rule. And they are well positioned to press their states to help them, for instance by adopting statewide caps on carbon pollution, and allowing polluters to trade credits to let them cut emissions in the most economically efficient way. States could enlarge these markets to lower costs by joining regional trading schemes. Similar trading programs have already proved highly successful in addressing other pollution, like acid rain.

The question is whether some utilities will vocally support a rule that is in their financial interest, or remain on the sidelines. Clearly, it would bolster the government’s legal defense for major power companies to reinforce the argument that the new carbon standards are achievable at a reasonable cost without jeopardizing the electricity system’s reliability.

And just as it will be important to have supportive states on the government side to counter states that challenge the plan, it will also be crucial to have some industry players there. For conservative judges who may be skeptical of regulation, industry voices can make a big difference.

In any event, even companies that oppose the rule will continue to work quietly with the Environmental Protection Agency and the states on implementation. The legal challenges will drag on, and politicians will take their stands. The coal industry will say the sky is falling. But behind the scenes, real work is being done and progress is being made toward a lower carbon future.

omg

tool:

http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/sites/default/files/docs/pdf/UncleSamsFavoriteCorporations.pdf

provision of the 2009 Recovery Act providing cash payments in lieu of tax credits. Iberdrola’s subsidy total is $2.2 billion. Other top grant/ allocated tax credit recipients include NextEra Energy (parent of Florida Power & Light), NRG Energy, Southern Company, Summit Power and SCS Energy, each with more than $1 billion. The results exclude the numerous corporate tax breaks that ca

http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/subsidy-tracker

Southern and Hunton & Williams Letters

The Southern Company of Georgia, an electric utility with a number of coal-burning power plants, and Hunton & Williams, a law and lobbying firm that has joined with Southern to try to block the Obama administration's Clear Air Act rules, have also played key behind-the-scenes roles in pushing Mr. Pruitt and other mostly Republican attorneys general to take actions that help protect their interests.

KEY DOCUMENTS

##### Attorney general’s office signs and circulates a lobbyist-drafted letter.

Days after being approached by a lobbyist from Hunton & Williams asking Mr. Pruitt’s office to intervene with the federal government on an environmental issue, a lawyer in Mr. Pruitt’s office took the lobbyist-drafted letter, put it on state government stationery and circulated it to 15 other state attorneys general, almost all Republicans, urging them to sign on as well after telling them this was “a comment letter we have prepared.” Soon after, the nearly identical final letter was sent to the E.P.A. administrator signed by seven Republican attorneys general.

##### Lobbyists ask attorneys general to intervene on matters that stand to benefit clients.

Hunton & Williams, on behalf of the Southern Company, held private meetings with attorneys general and offered them legal pointers on how to challenge various proposed E.P.A. rules. Hunton also formally asked one attorney general to join with other states and to intervene in federal court on behalf of his client.

ANNOTATE

http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/09/special-report-industry-wraps-coal-ash-regulation-fight-in-the-mantle-of-civil-rights.html

Special Report: Industry wraps coal ash regulation fight in the mantle of civil rights

Standing out among the more than 250 people who testified at the recent Environmental Protection Agency hearing on proposed coal ash regulations in Charlotte, N.C. was one speaker with an especially distinguished background: Charles Steele Jr. (in photo at right), the first African-American member of the Tuscaloosa City Council and aformer Democratic state senator from Alabama who went on to lead the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the legendary civil rights organization whose first president was Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Steele left SCLC last year and now runs a consulting firm in Atlanta.

Given Steele's work on behalf of civil rights, one might have expected him to support better regulation of coal ash -- perhaps talking about the fact that many of the U.S. communities at greatest risk from the most potentially hazardous impoundments have higher-than-average poverty rates. Or about the finding that environmental contamination from coal ash dumps is concentrated in high-poverty communities. Or about the controversial decision to dump the toxic coal ash waste from the Tennessee Valley Authority's 2008 Kingston disaster in Tennessee in an impoverished, majority-black farming community in Alabama, in a landfill where runoff now contains levels of cancer-causing arsenic at more than 80 times the safe drinking water standard.

Instead, Steele was at the Sept. 14 hearing to argue against coal ash regulation, claiming that the costs would disproportionately burden the most economically vulnerable Americans.

"What I'm concerned about is the fact that we're not talking about poor people, about affordability," said Steele, a doctor of divinity whose impassioned preaching livened up the proceedings. "We all believe in clean air and a clean environment, but somebody must pay for this. It will be put on minorities and poor people."

In an opinion piece about his EPA testimony published the following day at a conservative website, Steele lumped the proposed coal ash rules together with other energy proposals and claimed that they would "increase the poverty rate by 20 percent for African-American families and 22 percent for Hispanic families, while decreasing median minority household incomes by as much as $660 per year." He also said that the coal ash regulations would have a disproportionate impact on the Southeast.

But coal ash experts take issue with Steele's claims.

"This is a completely disingenuous argument," said Lisa Evans, a former EPA official who's now an attorney with the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice.

Evans points out that the coal ash rule-making process required the EPA to conduct a regulatory impact analysis considering the economic effects of tougher oversight -- including how much the different versions of the proposed rules would increase consumers' electricity costs. The EPA found that there wasn't much difference in cost to consumers between the stricter approach, where coal ash would be treated like a special hazardous waste with federal enforcement, and the approach favored by industry, where coal ash would not be classified as hazardous and enforcement of federal disposal guidelines left up to states and citizen lawsuits.

The government analysis also found that there wasn't much of an increase in power costs even with the more protective regulation, which would result in an average increase in electricity bills nationwide of less than 1 percent, or 0.795 percent to be exact. That would raise the average monthly home power bill for U.S. residents -- currently about $99.70, according to recent Census data [pdf] -- by about 79 cents.

And despite Steele's claims that the South would be hit especially hard, a Facing South analysis found that the increase in average power bills in Southern states* would be only negligibly higher, at just 0.8 percent. In Steele's current state of Georgia, for example, the expected 1.16 percent cost increase would raise the average monthly home power bill of $106.48 by $1.24. In Steele's former home state of Alabama, the estimated 1.43 percent price hike would increase the average monthly residential bill of $121.70 by $1.74. Even in Kentucky, where the estimated increase would be the greatest of any Southern state at 2.3 percent, the average monthly residential bill of $89.35 would increase by just $2.06.

Those are price increases, yes -- but hardly the kind that would drive families into poverty. In turn, the modest additional cost would help build a regulatory system that would better protect people living near the nation's 584 coal ash impoundments from catastrophic failures. The new rules would also help protect nearby residents from health threats, as a recent EPA risk assessment [pdf] found that people living near unlined coal ash impoundments and drinking from wells have as much as a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer due to arsenic contamination.

So why would Steele make such exaggerated claims about the cost of coal ash regulation?

Industry connections

Steele was at the EPA coal ash hearing representing Working People for Fair Energy (WPFE), one of the numerous 501(c)(4) "social welfare" lobbying groups that have sprung up in advance of this fall's elections -- and that are not required by law to disclose where their money comes from. The website for the Atlanta-based group, which Steele incorporated last June, says its purpose is "protecting working families from national energy laws that create higher energy prices."

But a Facing South Investigation has found that WPFE has close ties to industry interests with a financial stake in fighting coal ash regulation:

* The scant information WPFE offers about itself on its website is that it's part of the Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy (PACE), another 501(c)(4) that's based in Montgomery, Ala. PACE was incorporated in February 2009 by William D. Lineberry, an attorney with the Birmingham, Ala. office of Balch & Bingham -- a firm that lobbies on behalf of the Southern Company and its Alabama Power subsidiary. Lineberry also serves on the tax committees of the Business Council of Alabama as well as Manufacture Alabama -- both of which are partners in PACE. PACE's other members include the Chamber of Commerce Association of Alabama, the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the IBEW System Council U-19, which represents 3,000 Alabama Power employees and is one of the largest member unions of the state AFL-CIO, another PACE partner.

* The research cited by Steele in his account of his EPA testimony came from a group called the Affordable Power Alliance led by conservative African-American Christian minister Harry R. Jackson Jr. APA in turn is affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality, founded in the 1940s as a civil rights organization but which in more recent years has supported anti-environmental initiatives such as expanded oil drilling while accepting money from Exxon Mobil and other corporations. "Coal and natural gas are the new civil rights battleground," CORE Chairman Roy Innishas said, "because without these sources, 'we' cannot enjoy this great society."

* When WPFE held a town hall meeting last year in Tuskegee, Ala. to discuss energy policy, joining Steele on the panel was Stephen A. Jones -- director of corporate relations for Alabama Power.

In an interview with Facing South, Steele said he didn't see a problem with WPFE's and PACE's relationship with industries that have a financial stake in fighting coal ash regulation.

"Our issues are the same," he said.

Steele's perspective is shaped by the close personal ties to energy interests forged during his decade in the Alabama senate, where he chaired the Industrial Recruitment Committee. Alabama Power -- a major player in state politics -- was one of the biggest contributors to his campaigns.

When Steele left the state senate in 2004 to head SCLC, he was taking the helm of an organization in deep trouble financially and otherwise. But Steele's connections helped turn around the SCLC's money woes. He built a new $3 million headquarters for the organization with a capital campaign headed by Mike Garrett, president and CEO of Georgia Power, "whom Steele got to know during his days in the Alabama legislature," as Ebony magazine reported.

Some of the deals Steele made between SCLC and business interests proved controversial. In 2008, for example, an op-ed bearing Steele's byline appeared in a number of Southern U.S. newspapers criticizing federal legislation to reduce credit card fees by arguing that it would boost the profits of major retailers including Wal-Mart. But it turned out Steele didn't write the editorial and was angry the P.R. firm that did put his name on it because, as the Washington Post reported, Wal-Mart "is listed on the SCLC's Web site as a sponsor of the organization. No one at the SCLC would want to insult a large benefactor."

That same year, Steele had an op-ed published in the Washington Post that noted the devastating effect the subprime mortgage crisis was having on minority homeowners. But rather than supporting proposals to better regulate credit markets, Steele attacked them -- while defending companies that issued high-interest credit cards to people with bad credit. As Mother Jones observed at the time, that's not altogether surprising when you consider that a year earlier "the SCLC formed a partnership with CompuCredit, a subprime credit card issuer and payday lending company."

The Federal Trade Commission eventually sued CompuCredit for unfair and deceptive trade practices and for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, charging that it cheated consumers out of more than $200 million through a scheme in which they paid so much in fees that they had little credit available.

But Steele defended the company even then, saying that it "has been a true friend to the SCLC."

The fight for the status quo

The utility industry could certainly use a staunch defender like Steele right now, as it has a great deal at stake in the battle over coal ash regulation.

That's especially true for the Southern Company. Generating almost 70 percent of its power by burning coal, the company produces an enormous amount of coal ash -- 12.4 billion pounds in 2008 alone, according to a recent corporate report [pdf]. It operates 11 power plants with coal ash surface impoundments in Georgia, six in Alabama, three in Florida and two in Mississippi, which means that complying with proposed federal requirements to ensure they are not leaking contamination to groundwater would be a major undertaking.

Southern Company has had serious problems with its coal ash impoundments in the past. In 2002, years before TVA's Kingston catastrophe brought coal ash to the public's attention, a sinkhole opened up in an impoundment at Georgia Power's Plant Bowen in Bartow County, Ga., eventually covering four acres and reaching 30 feet in depth. The structure's failure released 2.25 million gallons of a water and coal-ash mix to a tributary of the Euharlee Creek that feeds the Etowah River, which in turn provides drinking water to downstream communities.

The incident at Plant Bowen was listed in a 2007 EPA report [pdf] documenting U.S. coal ash damage cases, 137 of which have been discovered to date [pdf]. Also listed in the EPA report as a potential damage case was the Lansing Smith Plant near Panama City, Fla., owned by Southern Company subsidiary Gulf Power. Data collected at that site "indicates that there were documented exceedances of primary drinking water standards for cadmium, chromium and fluoride and secondary drinking water standards for sulfate, chloride, manganese and iron in on-site groundwater" attributable to coal ash, according to the EPA.

The full extent of environmental damages caused by Southern Company's coal ash impoundments is not known. In the absence of federal regulations, coal ash oversight is left up to state authorities. But many coal ash-generating states -- including Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, all in the Southern Company's service area -- currently require no groundwater monitoring of operating coal ash ponds. In fact, states that do not require monitoring at coal ash ponds account for about 70 percent of the coal ash waste generated nationwide in 2008, as noted in a recent report by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), Earthjustice and Sierra Club.

"Contamination of the environment and water supplies with toxic levels of arsenic, lead and other chemicals is a pervasive reality at America's coal ash disposal sites because states are not preventing it," said Jeff Stant, director of EIP's Coal Combustion Waste Initiative. "The case for a national regulation setting common sense safeguards for states to meet, such as liners, monitoring and cleanup standards, could not be more persuasive."

But with the help of Steele and other industry advocates, the Southern Company is fighting to maintain the regulatory status quo. David Ratcliffe, the company's chairman, president and CEO, met with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson last July as part of a group of utility executives asking her not to regulate coal ash as hazardous waste. He followed up with a letter to Jackson [pdf] in which he reiterated his case, citing the company's financial concerns. In addition, the Southern Company's shareholders recently rejected a resolution seeking better disclosure on the financial risks associated with its coal ash ponds.

Meanwhile, Alabama Power and Georgia Power are still withholding details from the public about the structural stability of their coal ash impoundments, claiming that the data represents confidential business information. North Carolina-based Duke Energy and First Energy of Ohio had made similar claims that were denied by the EPA, but the agency is still in the process of making a final determination on the Southern Company's claims. The EPA acknowledges that the utility "is taking a legally allowable position" -- but notes that it's alone among U.S. power companies.

Yet that's whose interests Steele is defending under the guise of economic and racial justice. Furthermore, he likens what will happen should EPA regulate coal ash as hazardous waste to a "revolution."

"You better get ready," Steele told Facing South. "This is like the civil rights movement -- we're going to have to take it to the streets."

(For more information about the proposed EPA coal ash regulations, click here. The agency is accepting public comments through Nov. 19.)

* Facing South counts the following states as part of the South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.

4/15

Utility Giant Cuts Ties With Willie Soon

The Southern Company, which generates power for nine states––largely from coal––has decided it will no longer fund the work of controversial climate contrarian and Harvard-Smithsonian scientist Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon.

Gehri

After finishing a study contending that solar activity is increasing global warming, scientist Willie Soon of theHarvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysicsreported his news to a utility company that was a major funder of his work.

"I have a big super-duper paper soon to be accepted on how the sun affects the climate system," Soon wrote in a 2009 email to Robert Gehri, a research specialist with Southern Company Services, a mega utility company in the southeastern U.S. that generates power largely from coal.

Soon, one of few skeptics in the climate science community, described the paper that was published in the journal *Physical Geography* as "fairly significant scientifically in that this is the first successful formulation of a sun-climate connection." He was writing a follow-up note to Gehri, whose company has provided more than $400,000 from 2006 through 2015 to fund Soon’s research—and part of his salary.

The emails and related documents were obtained by Greenpeace through Freedom of Information Act requests. They were made public today by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental watchdog organization based in Virginia.

The communications show that Soon called his peer-reviewed research papers "deliverables" in return for funding from fossil fuel companies. In addition, the documents reveal that Soon and Harvard-Smithsonian gave the coal utility company the right to review his scientific papers and make suggestions before they were published. Soon and Harvard-Smithsonian also pledged not to disclose Southern’s role as a funder without permission.

Although the emails don’t show a response from Gehri, an industry executive with a long track record of working behind the scenes to downplay the significance of global warming, they do show Soon sharing a collegial familiarity with industry executives, media skeptics and organizations dedicated to undermining prevailing climate science.

The theory advanced by Soon that the sun is a contributor to recent climate change has been widely discredited by scientists worldwide as well as by theUnited Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading international body on climate science. Nevertheless, the theory has stoked long-simmering public confusion about the sun’s role in global warming that continues to this day.

For decades, the industry has latched on to controversial findings like those advanced by Soon and a small group of contrarian scientists to create the impression that researchers are divided about the cause of climate change. It has pumped millions of dollars into research projects to cast doubt on mainstream climate science showing that the primary driver of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels.

The trove of documents released today offers one of the starkest glimpses yet into the workings of this strategy of peddling scientific doubt. Scientists, academics and policymakers say the strategy has helped the industry in delaying or thwarting decisive steps toward curbing global warming.

"The industry has had a longstanding, rather broad-based campaign to create doubt about the science," said Michael MacCracken, a former program director for the U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Research Program. He is now the chief scientist for climate change programs with the Climate Institute, an independent climate research organization in Washington, D.C.

The campaign "has paralyzed implementation of what could have been a reasonable ramping up of control efforts over the last few decades, putting the nation and the world now into a situation where much more aggressive action to limit emissions is needed," MacCracken said.

One of the first worldwide calls to address global warming resulted in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that mandated greenhouse gas reductions.

In response, the American Petroleum Institute (API) coordinated a plan to spend millions of dollars to convince the public that the climate accord was based on shaky science. The institute pulled together a Global Climate Science Communications team to enlist scientists who shared the industry's views. The action plan developed by the team said "victory will be achieved when those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality."

Among the 12 people listed as members of the team was Robert Gehri, the Southern Co. executive who was Soon's corporate contact on the 2009 sun study. Others included representatives from Exxon and Chevron and organizations critical of global-warming science.

Today the industry persists in its campaign to muddy the picture of climate change. ExxonMobil, API and the Charles Koch Foundation for years were among the largest funders of research and lobbying intended to cast doubt on the science documenting global warming.

Soon, who is not paid a salary by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center but relies on grants for his wages, has tapped that largess. In addition to the research grants from Southern Co. totaling $409,754 between 2006 and 2015, Soon collected nearly $800,000 in funding from ExxonMobil, API and the Charles Koch Foundation between 2003 and 2012, according to years of public records obtained by Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center.

Soon declined numerous requests for an interview and when reached by phone Thursday after business hours said it was "rude" to be contacted at home.

The 49-year-old scientist earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in science and his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California. Soon has been affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics since 1991. (The group is not officially associated with Harvard University, though it is located on the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Mass.)

Soon and his co-authors have published dozens of papers in top scientific journals worldwide, sometimes without disclosing the source of funding for those projects, a practice that raises ethical questions and often violates the conflict-of-interest policies of the publications.

The reports cover a wide range of climate-denial perspectives. Many of the studies postulate that changes in solar activity are responsible for global temperature trends, such as the 2009 paper that Soon boasted about to Southern Co. The studies all question the extent, severity, cause and existence of man-made climate change.

Questions regarding Soon's credibility and impartiality have circulated for years and have been grist for environmental organizations critical of his research findings and his ethics.

Controversy erupted early this year with the publication of a paper co-authored by Soon in Science Bulletin, a scientific journal cosponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

In the paper, Soon and three other climate skeptics attempt to discredit the UN panel on global warming, the IPCC. Soon and his co-researchers contend the IPCC used flawed techniques to calculate changes in global temperature that exaggerated the threat of global warming by as much as 50 percent. The paper has been roundly criticized by climate scientists and academics.

Each of the writers said at the end of the piece that they had no conflicts of interest. But Davies of the Climate Investigations Center challenged that assertion because of the FOIA paper trail showing Soon has long accepted industry money.

The newly released documents show that the dust-up over the Chinese journal echoed a practice Soon engaged in with a variety of less obscure journals that published his work.

Although Soon has at times disclosed the support he received from Exxon, API and the Koch Foundation, the documents show he failed to disclose his special relationship with Southern.

"As further consideration to SCS [Southern Company Services], Smithsonian shall provide SCS an advance written copy of proposed publications regarding the deliverables for comment and input, if any, from SCS," according to a funding agreement signed by Smithsonian’s William J. Ford, contract and grant specialist; and Bryan Baldwin, Southern’s manager of environmental assessment.

Christine Pulliam, a spokeswoman for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said Soon expressed his own opinion. She defended the center's funding agreements and its scrutiny of the research performed.

"The Smithsonian stands by the process by which the research results of all of its scholars are peer reviewed and vetted by other scientists," Pulliam said. "This is the way the scientific process works. The funding entities, regardless of their affiliation, have no influence on the research."

Southern Co. did not make an official available to explain its association with Soon. Company spokeswoman Jeannice Hall issued a brief statement that the company "funds a broad range of research on a number of topics that have potentially significant public policy implications for our business."

Agreements such as those between Soon and Southern raised troubling issues, according to Juscelino Colares, a professor of law and associate director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland.

"It all goes to the matter of credibility," said Colares, who teaches courses on international environmental law. "Why are they hiding something? Why are they giving non-science the weight of science? This is manipulation that gives the funder the last word."

Davies said the close relationship with industry that the Soon documents reveal raises doubts about the impartiality that is supposed to come with scientific research.

"It shows that he is not just being funded to do science but to impact the public policy arena," Davies said.

As part of a final report to Southern in 2011 outlining the papers and presentations he produced for a $60,000 grant, Soon explained the policy relevance of the research he delivered: "The hypothesized dangerous consequences of rising atmospheric CO2 are too speculative for responsible regulatory policy."

In announcing the completion of his 2009 sun-climate paper to Koch foundation executives, who had contributed $65,000 to fund the study, Soon said his findings were consistent with the hypothesis that the sun causes climatic change in the Arctic.

"It...raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, in the name of preventing catastrophic climate change," Soon told the executives in a 2009 email.

One study Soon published—funded by Southern and the Koch foundation—has stirred the debate about the fate of polar bears in the face of climate change and the loss of sea ice. In the study, Soon dismissed the idea that polar bears in the Canadian Arctic were at risk from the impacts of climate change—and questioned whether the region was even warming at all.

Davies said Soon's polar bear research goes to the heart of how the industry employs research like Soon's to deflect attention from the true cause of global warming.

"Climate change isn't something you can go out and see like a polluted river," he said. "But with the polar bears, all of a sudden you could see the results of climate change."

They were starving as their hunting grounds melted away, and people were beginning to connect all of this to the consequences of fossil fuel and atmospheric carbon, Davies said.

"So the companies are happy having Willie Soon out there," he said "These companies are paying him to go out in the world to cast doubt."

InsideClimate News reporters Lisa Song and Sabrina Shankman contributed to this report.

===

ranked 4 in oil change;

http://dirtyenergymoney.com/view.php?type=search&com=29852#view=connections

Rogers, Mike (R-AL)

$172,068

Type	Public (NYSE: SO)
Headquarters	30 Ivan Allen Jr. Blvd. NW Atlanta, GA 30308
Area served	AL, FL, GA, MS
Key people	David M. Ratcliffe, CEO
Industry	Electric Producer, Distributor, & Utility Telecommunications Synthetic Fuels
Products	Electricity
Revenue	$15.14 billion (2007)^{[1]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Southern_Company#cite_note-businessweek-0)
Net income	▲ $1.73 billion (2007)^{[1]^}(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Southern_Company#cite_note-businessweek-0)
Employees	26,742 (2007)
Subsidiaries	Alabama Power Georgia Power Gulf Power Mississippi Power Savannah Electric & Power Southern Power Southern Nuclear SouthernLINC Wireless Southern Telecom
Website	SouthernCompany.com

Plant Name	State	County	Year(s) Built	Capacity	2007 CO₂ Emissions	2006 SO₂ Emissions
Scherer	GA	Monroe	1982, 1984, 1987, 1989	3564 MW	25,300,000 tons	74,205 tons
Bowen	GA	Bartow	1971, 1972, 1974, 1975	3499 MW	20,500,000 tons	206,442 tons
Miller	AL	Jefferson	1978, 1985, 1989, 1991	2822 MW	20,600,000 tons	53,379 tons
Gaston	AL	Shelby	1960, 1961, 1962, 1974	2013 MW	12,200,000 tons	130,494 tons
Wansley	GA	Heard	1976, 1978	1904 MW	11,900,000 tons	96,200 tons
Barry	AL	Mobile	1954, 1959, 1969, 1971	1771 MW	12,800,000 tons	52,621 tons
Harllee Branch	GA	Putnam	1965, 1967, 1968, 1969	1746 MW	7,551,000 tons	95,990 tons
Yates	GA	Coweta	1950, 1952, 1957, 1958, 1974	1487 MW	6,095,000 tons	75,476 tons
Gorgas	AL	Walker	1951, 1952, 1956, 1958, 1972	1417 MW	8,258,000 tons	81,268 tons
Crist	FL	Escambia	1959, 1961, 1970, 1973	1135 MW	5,737,000 tons	35,614 tons
Victor J. Daniel	MS	Jackson	1977, 1981	1000 MW	9,094,000 tons	31,767 tons
Hammond	GA	Floyd	1954, 1955, 1970	953 MW	4,098,000 tons	40,579 tons
Jack Watson	MS	Harrison	1968, 1973	750 MW	5,075,000 tons	29,113 tons
Jack McDonough	GA	Cobb	1963, 1964	598 MW	3,213,000 tons	28,835 tons
Greene County	AL	Greene	1965, 1966	568 MW	3,760,000 tons	37,863 tons
Lansing Smith	FL	Bay	1965, 1967	340 MW	3,792,000 tons	48,776 tons
Birchwood	VA	King George	1996	258 MW	0 tons	N/A
Kraft	GA	Chatham	1958, 1961, 1965	208 MW	1,357,000 tons	4,658 tons
McIntosh	GA	Effingham	1979	178 MW	1,176,000 tons	5,713 tons
Mitchell	GA	Dougherty	1964	163 MW	443,000 tons	4,938 tons
Gadsden	AL	Etowah	1949	138 MW	733,000 tons	10,062 tons
Scholz Generating Plant	FL	Jackson	1953	98 MW	531,000 tons	5,920 tons

SOUTHERN Co

Southern and Hunton & Williams Letters

KEY DOCUMENTS

Utility Giant Cuts Ties With Willie Soon

Gehri

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rs climate killers

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Dirty $ rank 4 09-10 pol spending

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2010/09/dirty_money.html

Southern Company

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