Or pass this along to anyone you know in Georgia.
Hello, I'm Hank Green, and there is a fairly good chance that someone you know sent you this video because you live in Georgia. I needed to talk to you because a very small number of you have the chance to make a very large—and I think quite positive—impact. If you stick with me through even half of this video, you’re going to understand something that almost nobody understands.
I think for something to be commonly understood, it has to be three things: important, not too complex, and interesting. Public service commissions are important. They’re not too complex—but they are extremely boring. Still, if we can power through this together, we can make Georgia and America a better place.
So, you probably think, as I did, that the price you pay for power is set by the power company. Those are the people to get mad at when the price of electricity goes up. But this isn’t the case, and there’s a good reason for it. Power companies have to be monopolies. It just doesn’t make sense to have five different sets of poles and wires crisscrossing every street. Building and maintaining all that infrastructure is so expensive that competition would actually make everything worse, not better.
Now, you could argue that in that situation, the thing to do is just have it be owned and run by the government—and some places do that. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority is a publicly owned utility that provides power across several states and has done so reliably for decades. But in most places in the U.S., we have a power company that gets granted a monopoly by the state, and then the state regulates them.
If the power company has a monopoly and is unregulated, they’ll charge however much they can get away with, and they also won’t necessarily provide service to people in places where it might not be profitable. So, the power company has to be a monopoly, but you have to regulate them so they don’t do all the things monopolies would do if they were unregulated. People like this regulated-monopoly model because it combines public oversight with private efficiency. The company has an incentive to run things smoothly and invest in maintenance, but the public still has a say in how much they can charge and how much profit they can make.
Now, you can argue that one of these systems is better or worse than the other, but that’s not what we’re here to do today. In Georgia, there’s a power company—it’s called Georgia Power. While this works a little differently in every state, the basic model is the same. Power companies are allowed to earn a set rate of return, often around 8%, on their approved investments like power plants and transmission lines. But to keep them from just spending recklessly—because that would increase their profit—those investments have to be approved by a group of people chosen to represent the public.
This is the Public Service Commission. These commissions decide whether spending is justified and rates are fair. They also approve new power plants and renewable energy projects. They require utilities to fund energy efficiency programs that save power rather than just generating more of it, and they make sure safety and reliability standards are met. Depending on the state, commissions are either elected by voters, as they are in Georgia, or they’re appointed by governors or legislators. Either way, they wield an enormous amount of power over how billions of dollars are spent and how energy policy in a state takes shape.
In Georgia, the Public Service Commission (PSC) is made up of five commissioners, and they’re elected statewide. Every voter in Georgia gets to vote on every public service commissioner. The Georgia PSC has made some atypical decisions over the years, including approving an unusually high rate of return for the utility—often between 8 and 10%, but in Georgia it’s 12%. They’ve also greenlighted multiple rates increases that have driven up customer bills, and critics say that the commission has too often sided with the utility rather than consumers.
Somewhat weirdly, the Georgia PSC is currently made up of five Republicans. This is a partisan seat, so they do run as Democrat or Republican. This is strange because Georgia is pretty solidly a purple state, but the PSC is 100% Republican—probably because its elections are held statewide rather than by district. Also, attention is usually low for these down-ballot races, and utilities often support candidates who favor their interests. As a result, incumbents are rarely challenged successfully.
But this moment is an exceptional one. There’s a special election happening for the Georgia Public Service Commission this year—very soon—because the previous election was delayed after a lawsuit. We’re not going to get into those details, but that’s interesting if you want to check it out. It meant that elections scheduled for 2024 and earlier were delayed to 2025. So, in many places in Georgia, this will be the only race on the ballot. You’ll get your ballot, and there will be two things: both for the Georgia Public Service Commission.
This is a boring election for a bureaucratic thing that no one understands, which means turnout will be extremely low. Even in presidential years, when there’s a bunch on the ballot, I sometimes look at those later items and think, “I don’t know what the Public Service Commission is. I’m sure it’s important, but what do I know? Should my vote even matter here since I’m so uninformed?” The turnout in the June primary for the PSC was about 2.8% of registered voters in Georgia, and the July runoff was even lower. In off-year special elections like this one, turnout is usually very low—which means very small numbers can swing the result.
Tim Echols, one of the Republican commissioners running to keep his seat, was blunt about this. He said, “I’m also praying for torrential rain that day. Hail would be even better.” And look, I know that’s just a joke, but it’s not really the kind of voter enfranchisement I like to hear from elected leaders. If it’s a good idea to restore some balance to the Georgia PSC—and I think it is—the difference could be made by thousands of votes.
When I heard about this, I thought, “I could probably reach 10,000 Georgians.” And look, I’m not from Georgia—I’m coming in from Montana giving you guys advice—but I think it’s important. That’s why this video exists.
Before I give you a little more context about why power and public service commissions are so important right now, I’ll let you know there are links in the description to check your registration and find your early voting place. Early voting is going on right now—it’s already started. It will continue until Halloween, and the actual election day is November 4th. There’s a link to the Georgia early voting page in the description with everything you need to check your registration and find your polling place.
Also, Georgia has good absentee voting infrastructure, and it’s never a bad time to apply for absentee ballots. In Georgia, you don’t need a reason—it makes voting way easier. You just apply, and you can do it online.
Now that you know more than 99% of people about how most power companies in the U.S. actually work, let’s have a little more context about where power is right now. It’s suddenly the deciding variable in a lot of the economy, especially with the surge of AI data centers. Electricity demand is jumping after years of being flat. That new demand has to be planned and paid for—either by building more power plants, renewable energy, and wires, or by being smarter about how we use what we’ve got.
We also have to decide where the burden of those costs lies. Should data centers get sweetheart deals at the expense of households? Or should it be the opposite—if you want to build a data center and have hundreds of billions of dollars to spend, maybe you should help subsidize those costs instead of passing them on to households.
Georgia Power is currently projecting massive growth in demand. But here’s the thing: utilities always want to build. Power companies get to charge a set percentage over the amount they spend on new power plants and lines. Since that amount is capped—even if it’s higher than usual in Georgia—one of the only ways to make more money is to build more stuff, which means they assume demand will grow more than it really might. That’s why they always want to build more.
Overbuilding locks in higher profits for them and higher costs for consumers. Sometimes that aligns with public interest—we do need more electricity—but if regulators never push back, it leads to overbuilding and locks in higher bills for decades.
This is why the AI data center boom matters. Georgia is a place where many of these are being planned. These facilities can use as much power as a midsized city but don’t create jobs anywhere near that scale. They’re extremely energy-intensive and great for a utility’s profits if they get to build new plants and lines. But Georgia Power’s assumptions about how many data centers will actually be built may be based on a financial bubble.
Regardless of whether those data centers get built, if the PSC approves the spending, the utility will spend the money—and rates will go up. Meanwhile, Georgia’s distributed solar—like rooftop and community solar—is underdeveloped compared to many states, even though it’s a sunny place. That’s largely because past PSC majorities were skeptical of it.
That has costs but also benefits. The upside for Georgia is that it can now learn from other states’ mistakes and successes, adopting smarter versions of these tools. Done well, they can reduce the amount of expensive new investments Georgia Power needs to make.
A PSC that’s 100% aligned with the utility and never challenges optimistic growth forecasts or expensive buildouts is bad for ratepayers. So, send this video to anybody you know in Georgia and tell them this is actually a rare opportunity. It’s a statewide election, and you will see both PSC seats on your ballot no matter where you live.
If having every seat held by one party in a purple state feels odd, this is a rare election where your vote is guaranteed to matter. Again—if you know anybody in Georgia, text this video to them. And if you are from Georgia, everything you need to vote early or sign up for absentee voting (which you can do 100% online) is linked in the description.
