Coal Ash Cleanup Costs Approach $17 Billion at Two Utilities
Summary
Duke Energy and Georgia Power now put the lifetime cost of closing their coal ash ponds at $8 billion to $9 billion and $8.5 billion — bills that keep rising with inflation and land on ratepayers. The entire hazardous-materials removal workforce nationwide, the category that does this kind of excavation, numbers just 51,710 people, earning 19% less than the U.S. average.
Two companies, up to $17.5 billion
Duke Energy's 2025 annual report puts a single number on its North and South Carolina coal ash basins: "The estimated total cost to permanently close all coal ash basins in North Carolina and South Carolina is estimated to be approximately $8 billion to $9 billion of which approximately $4.8 billion has been spent through 2025." The company expects most of what's left to go out the door over the next ten years.
Thirteen hundred miles south, Georgia Power told the Georgia Public Service Commission in a semiannual compliance filing this April that its own program, covering 29 coal ash ponds statewide, now costs $8.5 billion — up $521 million from the $8.0 billion it had estimated a year earlier. The company has spent $2 billion so far. It attributed the increase to "several market factors," a euphemism the reporting resolved to one word: inflation. The tab is carried by Georgia Power's 2.8 million customers through a Georgia PSC-approved monthly charge; their bills have risen six times since 2023.
View data as table
| Duke Energy — total closure cost | $8.0B–$9.0B | NC + SC coal ash basins, FY2025 10-K |
|---|---|---|
| Duke Energy — spent through 2025 | $4.8B | cumulative |
| Georgia Power — total closure cost | $8.5B | up from $8.0B a year earlier |
| Georgia Power — spent to date | $2.0B | 29 coal ash ponds statewide |
Add Duke's range to Georgia Power's point estimate and these two companies alone carry a disclosed coal ash liability of somewhere between $16.5 billion and $17.5 billion — and they are only two of roughly thirty investor-owned utilities nationwide with coal ash obligations under the CCR Rule.
The estimate is not a fixed number
Southern Company's 2025 annual report — Georgia Power's parent — shows how much these totals move from one accounting cycle to the next. Georgia Power's coal ash asset retirement obligation rose about $60 million in November 2024 and another $200 million in November 2025, both changes attributed to "higher future inflation rates." In the same filing, sister company Alabama Power's coal ash obligation fell about $257 million in June 2025 — same accounting exercise, opposite direction, attributed to "lower future inflation rates" and "higher discount rates." The dollar figure attached to a coal ash pond is, in other words, a forecast re-run twice a year, not a bill anyone has actually received.
For calendar year 2026 alone, Southern Company budgets $653 million company-wide for coal ash closure and monitoring — and Georgia Power's share of it, $360 million, is larger than Alabama Power's, even though Alabama Power's plants have been under CCR closure obligations for longer.
View data as table
| Georgia Power | $360M | of $653M Southern Company enterprise total, 2026 est. |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama Power | $256M | of $653M Southern Company enterprise total, 2026 est. |
| Mississippi Power | $18M | of $653M Southern Company enterprise total, 2026 est. |
The workforce doing the digging
No agency publishes a jobs count specific to coal ash excavation. The closest verifiable read is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Hazardous Materials Removal Workers category — asbestos, lead, radioactive waste, and coal ash crews together, SOC code 47-4041. 's May 2025 national estimates, published in its May 2026 wage release, count 51,710 of these workers nationwide, earning a mean annual wage of $56,430 — about 19% below the $69,770 mean wage across all U.S. occupations that same survey reports. It is a national figure for an entire hazardous-materials trade, not a coal-ash-specific one, and that imprecision is the point: the two disclosures above name a workforce nowhere near as precisely as they name a dollar figure.
The takeaway
- The money is verified and it is enormous. Duke Energy ($8B–$9B) and Georgia Power ($8.5B) alone disclose $16.5–$17.5 billion in coal ash closure costs — and both bills grew again in their most recent filings.
- The number moves with the assumptions, not just the ash. Georgia Power's estimate rose twice in a year on inflation assumptions alone; Alabama Power's fell on the same accounting logic run the other way. These are forecasts, remeasured twice a year, not fixed prices.
- The rule is loosening as the price rises. extended compliance deadlines in February 2026 and, in April 2026, proposed rescinding or softening several of the same 2024 legacy-impoundment closure requirements driving these cost estimates in the first place.
- The labor side has no comparable receipt. The national workforce category that does this kind of hazardous excavation numbers 51,710 people and pays below the U.S. average wage — nobody publishes a coal-ash-specific version of that number, even as utilities publish precise, rising dollar totals twice a year.
Duke Energy discloses its total as a range ($8.0B–$9.0B); this piece plots and adds the range midpoint ($8.5B) rather than a single company-stated figure, and says so wherever that midpoint appears. The hazardous materials removal figures cover the full national occupation, not coal-ash work specifically — no narrower federal statistic exists.
Sources
- Duke Energy Corp. — Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 ( EDGAR, filed Feb. 26, 2026) — source for the $8 billion–$9 billion total closure cost estimate for North and South Carolina coal ash basins and the $4.8 billion spent through 2025. sec.gov
- Southern Company — Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 ( EDGAR, filed Feb. 19, 2026) — source for Georgia Power's and Alabama Power's coal ash asset-retirement-obligation remeasurements (Nov. 2024, June 2025, Nov. 2025) and the 2026 budgeted closure and monitoring costs by subsidiary. sec.gov
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution — "Georgia Power says it will cost $521 million more to clean up coal ash" (April 2026), reporting Georgia Power's semiannual compliance filing with the Georgia Public Service Commission — source for the $8.5 billion total, the $2 billion spent to date, the 29-pond count, and the 2.8-million-customer, six-rate-increase detail. ajc.com
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — "2026 Proposed Amendments to the Coal Combustion Residuals Regulations" — source for the 2024 CCR Rule's extension to legacy surface impoundments, the February 2026 compliance deadline extensions, and the April 2026 proposal to modify or rescind legacy-impoundment closure requirements. epa.gov
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — "Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics," national Table 1, May 2025 estimates (news release USDL-26-0725, published May 15, 2026) — source for the 51,710 national employment figure and $56,430 mean annual wage for Hazardous Materials Removal Workers (SOC 47-4041), and the $69,770 mean annual wage across all U.S. occupations. bls.gov
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Coal ash is what's left after a coal plant burns its fuel: a fine gray residue laced with arsenic, mercury, and lead, historically dumped wet into unlined ponds next to the plant. The EPA's 2024 CCR Rule extended federal closure and groundwater-monitoring requirements to those older, "legacy" impoundments for the first time, on top of the active-site rules wrote in 2015. Utilities are now years into digging that legacy out, and two of the biggest have put numbers on what it costs. Those numbers keep going up — even as spent early 2026 giving facilities more time to comply, then in April proposed loosening several of the same closure requirements it had just finished writing.