Fulton County already earns an F for ozone pollution. Now a legal fight in Fulton County Superior Court will determine whether a massive new gas plant 50 miles upwind gets stricter air quality controls before it fires up.
Georgia Power broke ground Monday, August 3, on a natural gas expansion at Plant Bowen in Bartow County that will add roughly 1,485 megawatts of gas-fired generation and a 500-megawatt battery storage system using Tesla Megapack technology. The project is backed by a $26.5 billion federal loan to parent company Southern Company, which Deputy Energy Secretary James Danly called the largest non-emergency loan in Department of Energy history.
The Southern Environmental Law Center and Sierra Club have appealed to Fulton County Superior Court after a state administrative judge sided with Georgia Power on the plant's air permit. SELC lawyer Marissa Land said in a phone interview Monday that the Georgia Environmental Protection Division "has failed in its obligations to protect Atlantans, to protect Georgians, from bad air quality. They are not applying the most stringent requirements to Plant Bowen, even though the Atlanta area is currently experiencing unhealthy levels of ozone."
Data centers are driving the build
The expansion exists because of data centers. The Georgia Public Service Commission approved nearly 10,000 megawatts of new generation capacity in December 2025, approximately 80 percent of it to power data centers. Georgia Power's own demand forecast exploded from 400 megawatts of needed new capacity in 2022 to 8,500 megawatts by 2025.
Georgia now has 56 data centers under construction, third nationally behind Texas and Virginia. Georgia Power has not identified which metro Atlanta employers are driving the demand, though the utility's service territory includes Perimeter Center's concentration of Fortune 500 headquarters.
Fulton County's air grade
The American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air report gave Fulton County an F grade for high ozone days, logging 14 orange ozone days and three red ozone days over the 2022–2024 measurement period. The Atlanta metro area, which formally includes Sandy Springs in its name, ranked 43rd worst nationally for ozone out of 226 metro areas.
The SELC's court filing argues metro Atlanta is violating federal ozone standards again, just four years after the region was cleared from federal monitoring in 2022. Rising ozone levels should have triggered contingency plans for seven metro counties, including Fulton, the group contends.
Georgia EPD spokesperson Sara Lips did not return multiple requests for comment from the Georgia Recorder, which reported the story.
Local stakes
Sandy Springs sits inside that F-graded airshed. Construction crews on the $4.6 billion SR 400 Express Lanes project are working around the clock through their first full summer on the corridor. No federal or Georgia state law requires their employers to protect them from heat or ozone exposure, and the Fulton County Board of Health recommends limiting outdoor activity between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on high-ozone days.
Georgia Power President and CEO Kim Greene said July 28 that large-load data center contracts extend 25 years and include minimum monthly bills and collateral to prevent costs from shifting to residential ratepayers. The company also reversed plans to retire Plant Bowen's existing coal-fired units by 2028, saying it needs them to meet growing demand.
The new gas units are expected to begin operating within three to four years. Further gas expansions are planned at Plant Wansley, Plant McIntosh, and Plant Yates, plus more than 1,000 miles of new transmission lines. No hearing date for the Fulton County Superior Court appeal has been publicly scheduled.
