Mississippi Power received a score of 44 out of 100 in the sixth edition of the Dirty Truth report published by Sierra Club, after it concluded that the company plans to add 548 megawatts of natural-gas-fired generation capacity by 2035, without adding any new renewable capacity during the same period.
The report evaluates utilities according to three main indicators: the size of the coal plants they plan to retire, the new gas capacity they intend to add, and the amount of renewable energy they bring into their generation mix. According to the data presented in the report, Mississippi Power intends to retire all of its 1,844,723 megawatts of coal capacity, but does not pair this with an announced plan to add renewable energy.
A Local Result Amid a National Decline
The observations were not limited to Mississippi Power. The 76 utilities included in the assessment recorded an overall average of 7 points out of 100, down 8 points from the previous year, the lowest average in the report’s history, according to Sierra Club.
The organization says that continued reliance on fossil fuels could affect electricity costs and pollution, while it believes renewable energy remains the least-cost option for generating electricity. This point represents Sierra Club’s position and interpretation of the report’s findings, rather than an independent result established in the text through a detailed financial comparison of each company.
Why Does This News Matter?
The actual change in Mississippi Power’s plan is a partial move away from coal while relying on gas instead of announcing renewable alternatives. For consumers and policymakers, this raises the question of whether coal-replacement plans will actually reduce costs and emissions, particularly given the absence of new renewable capacity in the figures cited by the report.
Sierra Club also links growing electricity demand, including demand associated with artificial-intelligence data centers, to utilities’ accelerated move toward investments in fossil fuels. However, the available material does not provide specific demand forecasts for Mississippi Power or an independent analysis of the cost of the company’s plans or the reliability of the alternatives.
Sierra Club’s Position
Amy Kelly, director of the Beyond Coal campaign at Sierra Club, said that the continuation of Mississippi Power’s coal-retirement plans makes it the only Southern Company subsidiary maintaining these positions, and described this as criticism of the parent company’s strategy in the southeastern United States.
For her part, Holly Bender, chief programs officer at Sierra Club, said that utilities are lagging in phasing out fossil-fuel infrastructure, calling for consistent investments in clean energy to reduce bills and emissions. These statements remain part of the position of the organization that issued the report.
Readers are referred to the full version of the Dirty Truth report for its evaluation methodology and the results for other utilities. The available material does not include a response from Mississippi Power or Southern Company to the findings.