About Thomas Fanning
Thomas Fanning, former Chairman, President, and CEO of Southern Company, appeared on a joint episode of the SunCast and Energy Empire podcasts on April 1, 2026. Fanning discussed his current role leading the Alliance for Critical Infrastructure, where he focuses on preparing the country for cyber and physical attacks on critical systems. He described a "COTE plan" in which the private sector would lead the recovery of America's critical infrastructure during a crisis, with the government shifting from regulator to enabler.
During the interview, Fanning argued for a national energy strategy, calling it a "national security imperative" to build power infrastructure. He also characterized organized energy markets such as PJM, New England, MISO, Texas, and California as "kind of a disaster," stating that "nobody's going to build long-term assets in those markets without changes." Fanning noted that in retirement he is also assisting former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz with nuclear energy efforts.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Thomas Fanning's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Joe Kernen0:00
Tom, you've seen not only Europe but even in China and other places around the world how tight things are. Could that ever happen here? Could people in the United States see a tripling of energy prices in mid-winter, or that could never happen here?
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Thomas Fanning0:22
Well, Joe, you can never say never, I guess. I think it is way more unlikely. I think what we're seeing right now and the real challenge in America is this notion of energy transition. As big and as complex as that issue is, we have kind of these factors at play: a lot more renewables coming in to bear as a matter of policy, a whole lot less coal which can run virtually 100% of the time, and then as a result, natural gas under pressure. There's this interesting number: 50%. Investment is down 50% in things like E&P and pipes. Exports are up about 50%, that's liquefied natural gas. And as a result, surprise or maybe not surprisingly, at least in the spot prices, are up about 50%. Now we think that is temporary because the markets will adjust. But the facts are heading into the winter, storage is down about five and a half percent and the rate of injection to replace the below normal storage is down 8%. A lot of bets on weather, all that, but man oh man, it is a very interesting time. Market structure is a big deal in this. About half the United States is in a market where it is integrated and regulated, and the notions of making, moving, and selling energy are all under one responsibility. For us in the Southeast, it's Alabama Power, Georgia Power, et al. In the so-called organized markets, those that are deregulated, I can only point to Texas and Winter Storm Uri. Those are what they call energy-only markets, and there really is no compensation for resilience and for storage and a whole variety of other factors which I think in the long run cause energy prices to be more stable. And you can get into problems when you're in the tails of weather or supply disturbances.
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Joe Kernen2:29
So how much of Southern Company is coal? How much of the U.S. is coal? And the reason I ask that is because somehow the global electricity is still 40%, so we're way down. Are you in single digits? And most of the, I think in the United States, it's, is it, we're not yet at single digits but we're headed that way.
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Thomas Fanning2:51
Before I became chairman of Southern, I guess we were 70% energy from coal. We're down last year, I think, to 17%. But the unintended consequence of high gas prices is that coal becomes more economic. And so my sense is in recent weeks our coal production has bumped up above 20%. Now how long that will persist, I don't know. What do we know? Gas prices are $5.35 or so, been as high as six, a little above, now down to about four is what's projected in the month ahead. We'll see.
