Sierra Club Utility Report Card Shows NV Energy’s Sierra Pacific Power Company Receives Lowest Rating Yet

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Reno, Nevada— Sierra Club launched its sixth Dirty Truth Report Tuesday rates utilities across the country on how much coal they are removing, how much gas they are planning and how much renewable energy they are adding. NV Energy’s two subsidiary companies are featured in the report, which finds that despite previous energy transition plans that successfully built or acquired enough clean energy, gas expansion and unprecedented load growth projections threaten to offset those gains.

NV Energy is divided into two territories, Sierra Pacific Power Company in northern Nevada and Nevada Power in southern Nevada, which together serve nearly all of Nevada’s residential customers. Over the past five years, both territories have received positive ratings for their clean energy transition plans. However, this year marks its worst score since the Sierra Club began tracking, and Sierra Pacific fell to a D score.

As Northern Nevada becomes a hotspot for AI data centers, Sierra Pacific has responded by planning to build more than 2.7 GW of new gas capacity on its system by 2035, four times the amount it planned last year. In fact, according to its latest filing, while data centers currently make up 5 percent of NV Energy’s sales, that share is projected to reach 64 percent by 2046. NV Energy has put forward a proposal that it says will require data centers to cover their costs and protect taxpayers from cost shifting driven by data centers, but those proposed protections are not yet in place, and according to testimony from the Bureau of Consumer Protection, there are still significant gaps in what that has been proposed. Nevada Power was recently forced to refund Southern Nevadans after overcharging customers $65 million over two decades, and only recently agreed to issue refunds.

In 2020, Nevadans voted to strengthen the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires the state’s utilities to cover a certain portion of their load with renewable energy. Currently, the RPS requires that 50 percent of the state’s energy come from renewable sources by 2030. But, by its own admission, NV Energy now hopes to fall short of these requirements.

“Nevadans voted to hold utilities accountable for their commitment to clean energy, but NV Energy’s plans to build expensive gas plants to meet AI-driven demand undermine their progress and fail to take into account what Nevadans have asked for.” said Olivia Tanager, Sierra Club Toiyabe chapter director. “NV Energy needs to continue expanding its clean energy development while strengthening customer protections against data center costs, and Nevada leaders can hold the company accountable to those commitments.”

“People in Northern Nevada are watching their communities change rapidly as data centers are deployed, and they deserve a say in what that growth will look like,” he said. Chris Bell, member of the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter. “We should not accept more gas plants as the inevitable price of growth. Nevada has abundant opportunities to meet our energy needs with clean resources, and we should pursue that with the vitality and vigor that the realities of the climate crisis demand.”

“The Dirty Truth report has once again revealed the overwhelming failure of utilities to plan to phase out their expensive, dirty fossil fuel infrastructure and transition to clean energy,” he said. Holly Bender, Sierra Club Program Director. “Every year that utilities delay the transition to clean energy is another year of families paying record bills for expensive fossil fuels, another year of extreme weather events, and another year of air and water pollution that threatens our health. We cannot afford to wait any longer to bring our grid into the 21st century. As artificial intelligence data centers drive energy demand, utilities rush to use expensive and dangerous fossil fuels, causing skyrocketing electricity prices and worsening air pollution. Now is the time for these companies to transition to affordable, reliable fossil fuels and clean energy to build a healthier, more sustainable energy future. The Sierra Club will continue to push utilities to use more renewable energy and work to reduce costs and emissions.”