Yesterday, Alabama Power announced it would resume disconnecting customers and charging late fees in late September, despite the company’s massive profits and the ongoing pandemic wreaking economic havoc on our state. Southern Company, the parent company of Alabama Power, made $4.7 billion in profit last year alone. Right now bad debt in Alabama and Georgia is estimated at less than $160 million, or just 4% of Southern Company’s profits from last year.
Let’s put this all in perspective. How much bad debt is there right now?
First, we don’t exactly know. Why? Because the Alabama Public Service Commission (PSC) has refused to collect or ask for data regarding how many Alabama Power customers are behind on their bills.
What we do know is that our next door neighbor, Georgia, can tell us a lot.
Georgia Power, also owned by Southern Company, restarted disconnections on July 15. More than 15,000 Georgia Power customers were disconnected in about two weeks (July 15 through the end of the month), despite all the company’s proclamations about how great it was and all the options it said were open to consumers.
Georgia Power, which is almost double the size of Alabama Power by number of customers, told its Public Service Commission that customers were about $83.4 million behind on bills. Even if Alabama Power held just as much bad debt as Georgia Power, the bad debt among the two companies would total about $160 million.
Southern Company profits handsomely from Alabamians
Last year, Southern Company, the parent company of Alabama Power, earned a net profit of $4.7 billion. You read that right. With a B. The bad debt carried by Georgia Power from COVID-19, and likely Alabama Power, would total just under 4% of Southern Company’s net income from 2019.
Southern Company owns and operates government-backed electric monopolies in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. These are not like other companies, say your local auto mechanic. It has an exclusive license to sell electricity and profit from those sales. Alabama Power has one of the highest profit rates in the country, so much so that over the last few years, it collected $1+ billion more than if its profit rate had been the national average.
To be clear, Energy Alabama is not advocating that people shouldn’t be responsible for the energy they consume. We simply believe that Southern Company and Alabama Power can and should share in the burden during these unprecedented times. Churches, nonprofits, and community groups should not be scrambling to help vulnerable Alabamians pay bills when Southern Company and Alabama Power have enjoyed years of blockbuster profits.
No one asked for COVID-19 and economic crisis we are in. We are all affected. We should all pitch in. That includes Alabama Power and Southern Company shareholders.
But there is something you can do now to help your neighbors!
We’ve joined with our friends at Gasp and hope you’ll contact Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) and Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) and ask them to support Senate Bill 4362, which would put a federal stop to utility disconnections during COVID-19.
