Georgia Power's New Play: Corporations Take the Helm in Renewable Push

ATLANTA, GA – June 25, 2026 – Georgia Power is handing the reins of its renewable energy expansion to its largest customers. The utility, a subsidiary of Southern Company, has opened enrollment for a novel program that allows commercial and industrial giants to identify and bring their own preferred solar projects to the state’s grid. This move, dubbed the Clean and Renewable Energy Subscription Customer Identified Resource (CARES CIR), signals a significant strategic pivot in how clean energy is procured in a state grappling with explosive demand from data centers and heavy industry.

The program, approved by the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) last year as part of the state's 2025 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), is designed to fast-track up to 3,000 megawatts (MW) of new renewable capacity. It effectively creates a direct channel for corporations with ambitious sustainability targets to secure clean power, a departure from the traditional utility-led procurement model.

"The CARES CIR program represents the next step in giving our customers more choice and flexibility in how they meet their sustainability goals," said Wilson Mallard, director of renewable development for Georgia Power. "By enabling customers to identify and subscribe to renewable energy projects that align with their priorities, we're expanding access to clean energy while maintaining reliability and value for all of our customers across Georgia."

Empowering Corporate Green Ambitions

At its core, the CARES CIR program is a direct response to immense pressure from the corporate world. As global firms from tech to manufacturing set aggressive environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, they are increasingly demanding clear pathways to power their operations with 100% renewable energy. Georgia, a burgeoning hub for data centers, has become a focal point of this demand.

The new program splits the offering into two tiers to accommodate different scales of corporate need:
* CARES CIR Utility-Scale: This track is for the largest energy users with annual demands exceeding 3 MW. They can subscribe to large renewable projects, greater than 6 MW in size, that they help identify.
* CARES CIR Distributed Generation: Aimed at mid-sized commercial and industrial customers with demands between 1 MW and 3 MW, this option allows them to subscribe to smaller, locally sourced solar projects ranging from 250 kilowatts to 6 MW.

This structured flexibility is a powerful tool for corporate sustainability officers. It allows a company to not only purchase renewable energy credits but to have a direct hand in the creation of the specific project supplying their power. This level of traceability and influence is a coveted asset in corporate ESG reporting and branding. The program effectively gives large customers an opportunity to better match their massive electricity loads with customer-funded clean energy resources, a feature highlighted by clean energy advocates.

A Regulated Response to Unprecedented Growth

The rollout of CARES CIR cannot be viewed in isolation. It is a key component of Georgia's strategy to manage what regulators have termed "unprecedented load growth." The state's 2025 IRP, a 20-year energy roadmap, was forged amidst intense debate over how to power the state's economic expansion without overburdening residential ratepayers or derailing climate goals.

Public hearings during the IRP process were contentious. While clean energy advocates and a majority of public commenters pushed for an accelerated transition away from fossil fuels, Georgia Power also proposed new natural gas infrastructure. Critics voiced significant concerns that the utility's plans were not ambitious enough on renewables and could lock the state into decades of fossil fuel dependency, potentially hindering the climate goals of the very corporations the state is trying to attract.

The PSC's approval of the IRP, including the CARES CIR program, represents a complex compromise. It allows for the massive, customer-driven renewable expansion while also greenlighting other generation sources. Crucially, in a move to quell criticism of "big tech billionaire welfare," regulators recently passed a new rule requiring large-load customers like data centers to pay higher rates and cover the costs of the new transmission and distribution infrastructure their facilities require. This regulatory backstop is designed to shield residential customers from subsidizing the energy needs of industrial giants.

The Mechanics of a New Procurement Model

The CARES CIR program builds on the success of Georgia Power's existing CARES initiatives, which have already procured over 2,200 MW of new solar in the past two years through competitive bidding. The new customer-identified model adds another layer of innovation. Developers can propose projects, and customers can then identify which ones they wish to champion and subscribe to.

Once a project is selected, Georgia Power steps in to execute a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with the developer, ensuring the project meets the utility's technical and financial standards. This hybrid approach maintains utility oversight while injecting customer choice into the front end of the process. The momentum for such projects is already evident. Through the CARES 2025 RFP, the utility has already signed contracts for 752 MW of new solar capacity across five Georgia counties, including a 200 MW project in Sumter County and a 194 MW facility in Jefferson County.

This pipeline of utility-scale solar demonstrates a robust market of developers ready and willing to build in Georgia, providing a deep well of potential projects for corporate customers to identify through the new CIR program.

Balancing Interests on the Grid of the Future

The central promise of the CARES CIR program is that it will "create value for all Georgia Power customers," not just the large corporations participating. The primary mechanism for this is the cost allocation structure. By having participating C&I customers fund their chosen renewable projects, the direct capital costs are not socialized across the entire rate base. This, combined with the new PSC rules for large-load customers, is intended to ensure that those driving the demand for new energy are the ones who pay for it.

Following the stipulated agreement that led to the IRP's approval, the PSC's own Public Interest Advocacy staff, whose role is to represent consumers, revised its initial analysis. It now projects that the overall plan could result in average monthly savings of around $8.50 for a typical residential customer, largely because the big energy users will be shouldering more of the system's expansion costs.

Compared to similar "green tariff" programs in other states, Georgia's model stands out for its direct customer involvement in project identification and its tight integration with the state's formal, long-range planning process. While programs in states like North Carolina and South Carolina also offer large customers renewable options, Georgia’s approach appears uniquely structured to address the specific challenge of massive, concentrated load growth while trying to maintain a balance of interests. The success of this model in delivering clean energy without placing an undue burden on residential customers will be watched closely by regulators and utilities across the country.