America Can Win the AI Race and Keep Energy Affordable, Southern Company Is Proving It

The following content is sponsored by Southern Company.

America doesn’t need to choose between winning the AI ​​race and keeping energy affordable for hard-working families. At Southern Company, we prove that both are possible by powering America’s most advanced industries, achieving energy dominance, and keeping energy affordable and reliable for the customers we are privileged to serve.

While it may not be the case everywhere, the Southeast is open for business. Utilities are effectively meeting the growing demand for electricity from new high-consumption customers, like AI data centers, while keeping energy rates more than 10% below the national average.

You may be wondering how is this possible? Indeed, our customer-focused market structure allows us to work directly with new, high-volume customers to identify their needs, generate the power to bring them online, and ensure they pay their fair share of system costs. This approach is working: Atlanta is now the nation’s top destination for new data centers.

But being a premier destination for economic development and helping ensure America wins the AI ​​race isn’t even the best part. The real victory is that we fuel this growth and energy dominance while keeping energy prices more than 10% below the national average. In Georgia, for example, we recently secured a three-year base rate freeze, a major victory for local households and businesses. Our belief is simple: building America’s future should never come at the expense of the people who make this country work.

Our commitment to delivering value to our customers is reinforced by the strong bipartisan leadership of federal, state and local officials in our region. Our clients benefit from innovative approaches and common-sense rules for nurturing important new customers. A good example is new rules adopted by the Georgia Public Service Commission that ensure that the costs of serving energy-intensive facilities are borne directly by those customers, not residential customers.

“Customers continue to be at the center of everything we do. Our customer focus underpins our disciplined approach to forecasting, pricing, contracting and deploying resources to address this one-of-a-kind growth opportunity. And we continue to implement these plans for the benefit of all our customers. — Chris Womack, president and CEO, Southern Company.

For more than a century, Southern Company has been at the forefront of American energy innovation. We have driven economic growth and development across the Southeast and beyond. We just built America’s first new nuclear power plant in more than 30 years, a historic milestone in reliable baseload power and proof that America can still accomplish hard things.

We don’t stop there. We plan to invest more than $70 billion in energy infrastructure to support a growing economy and ensure the United States remains the world’s energy superpower.

We also understand that energy reliability is not just about fueling growth, but also about preparing for the unexpected. When Hurricane Helen ravaged the Southeast last year with 140 mph winds and devastating flooding, it damaged critical infrastructure throughout our service territory. Power lines, transformers and thousands of poles were destroyed. But we were ready. Southern Company activated crews across our entire system, and in just 11 days, we restored service to 99% of the nearly 1.5 million customers impacted by the storm. This is the kind of resilience America needs and deserves.

If America is serious about beating China in the AI ​​race, it should look to the Southeast. Southern Company’s approach proves that growth doesn’t have to come at the expense of affordability. By combining investments in intelligent infrastructure, a customer-focused market structure, and a commitment to equitable cost sharing, we are enabling explosive growth in AI and advanced manufacturing.

As America enters a new era of energy innovation, Southern Company is leading the way. Together with public and private sector partners, we are building the future of energy and ensuring America stays ahead.