Evergy is proposing to the KCC, two fossil gas plants in Reno and Sumner County with a price tag of $2 Billion Dollars – leaving Kansans with the bill. Tell the KCC we don’t want dirty gas!
Evergy is a for-profit monopoly which means it has no free-market competition to provide us – the rate payers – the best and most affordable sources of electricity. We have no choice but to be Evergy customers for electricity.
So Evergy does not have to earn our business, but it does earn a profit from us.
Read the Evergy docket number: 25-EKCE-207-PRE
Profits for Wall Street Investors
The way Evergy makes a profit for Wall Street is by spending money on physical infrastructure (like expensive fossil gas plants) and then asking the Kansas Corporation Commission – the KCC – to force us – their customers – to pay that profit to Wall Street.
Evergy is currently asking the KCC to make us pay for TWO new fossil gas plants that are not needed to provide us with reliable, affordable electricity. In fact, fossil gas has a record of being neither reliable nor affordable.
Watch the video below to understand how utilities make a profit in projects such as this docket. Check out this web page for more info.
Winter Storm Uri, 2021
Just one single winter storm in 2021 collapsed the regional fossil gas system and caused gas plants to fail, cutting off power to millions of customers and resulting in hundreds of deaths. Gas plant failures accounted for about 60% of the power failures in that single storm, and gas plants failed at about that same rate in several other winter storms in the last decades. Other forms of generation were also impacted by that storm, but wind generation was much more reliable – and much less expensive to fix – than gas.
That single storm caused gas prices to rise 20,000% in a few days – that’s an increase of TWENTY THOUSAND PERCENT. As a result Kansas gas customers are now required to pay off an extra $622 MILLION over the next decade to cover the cost of the gas price spikes from just that single winter storm, in addition to rate increases that Evergy was just awarded by the KCC in the last couple of years. So much for Evergy’s claims that gas is cheap and reliable.
But Evergy’s investors are still making a profit. And Evergy wants these new gas plants to pick our pockets and provide a healthy profit to its Wall Street owners.
Evergy COULD provide us much lower cost and more reliable electricity using abundant Kansas wind and sun backed up by large scale batteries and its existing power generation facilities. Kansas has exponentially more available wind and solar power than we will ever use. But because wind and solar fuels are free, and converting them to electricity is so much cheaper than mining, importing, and distributing fossil fuels, Evergy can’t pay Wall Street its profits by providing us cheaper and more reliable electricity from the sun and wind.
So, Evergy claims it “needs” these new, expensive, risky gas plants and is asking the KCC to make us pay for them to power corporate AI we don’t want or need, sending our money to Wall Street investors.
Read more about Winter Storm Uri and it’s impacts on our electricity grid system here:
- The February 2021 Cold Weather Outages in Texas and the South Central United States | FERC, NERC and Regional Entity Staff Report
- Energy Infrastructure Impacts from Winter Storm Uri—Feb 2021
- Kansas Corporation Commission – KCC Consumer Alert – Winter Storm Uri Costs Deferred
- How Gas Plants Fail and Lead to Power Outages in Extreme Winter Weather – Union of Concerned Scientists
- Gas plants ‘disproportionately vulnerable to failure,’ warns Union of Concerned Scientists report | Utility Dive
- Gas Malfunction | Union of Concerned Scientists
- The impact of the February 2021 natural gas price hike on Kansas consumers
- Podcast: February 2021 natural gas price hike
- As economic impact of winter storm nears $1B, some large Kansas customers want to investigate
- On top of $1B fallout from February cold snap, natural gas prices expected to climb this winter • Kansas Reflector
- Natural gas shortages, high prices helped drive February power outages • Kansas Reflector
Webinar Recording with KS Sierra Club + CEP
Watch this recording to learn more about these two gas plants and how to take action!
TAKE ACTION today!
Public comments are now being accepted through February 17 – April 7th @5pm CT. Virtual comment is available March 5th @ 6pm CT. Film a Jogg video right now as public comment and it will automatically transcribe verbatim, printed, and submitted as your public comment to the KCC. Just turn your phone horizontally and upload it using the link provided by March 31st.
- Film a Jogg video HERE
- View our partner’s Joggs!
- Attend an event to learn more and film a Jogg video!
- March 12: LWV Lawrence/Douglas County, Lawrence Public Library, Meeting Rm B @ 6pm-7:30pm
- March 15: KS Sierra Club Southwind, Wichita
- March 17: Women for Kansas Hutchinson, Hutchinson Community College, Shears Technology Center, at 6:30pm
- March 18: Topeka LWV, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library at 12pm
- March 18: KS Sierra Club Virtual Zoom at 6pm, register here
- March 19: KIFA Virtual Zoom at 6pm, register here
- March 27: LWV Wichita, Wichita Public Library-Westlink Branch at 5:15pm
- April 1: KIFA, St. Andrew Christina Church, Olathe at 6pm
- Submit public comment on the KCC website in regards to your opposition to the Evergy gas plant docket 25-EKCE-207-PRE HERE
Power for People, Not Profits!
Questions? Email Christina Haswood at haswood@climateandenergy.org
