BRACK: Send this energy turkey back to where it came from

By Andy Brack  |  My, oh my, how quickly we forget.

South Carolina’s “Nukegate scandal” surrounding the multi-billion-dollar failure of the V.C. Summer nuclear plant in Fairfield County was the largest business failure in the state’s history.  From 2008 to 2017, two utilities – Santee Cooper and the now-defunct S.C. Electric and Gas – invested $9 billion into the project.  

But the project went belly up after cost estimates soared to $25 billion.  Then the finger-pointing, lawsuits, merger, indictments and more began.  In the end, Dominion Energy bought SCE&G, some utility executives went to jail and ratepayers were left on the hook for billions of dollars.  We’re still paying off that turkey.

We should have learned to be careful when utilities want to do big things.  But now we’re facing a sequel as big utilities are imploring state lawmakers — who set up the V.C. Summer debacle by passing bad legislation – to again usurp the state’s energy laws and run roughshod over taxpayers and property owners.

A bipartisan mix of about half of state House members are co-sponsors of Speaker Murrell Smith’s “S.C. 10-year Energy Transformation Act.” In a hearing this week, conservation groups and members of the public railed about the detrimental impacts of the bill, H. 5118, which obviously was written with a lot of help from the big utility companies.

Conservationists say the bill seeks to gut the review process for siting new energy facilities, runs roughshod over protections put in place to keep another Nukegate scandal from happening, kills consumer protections created after the debacle and makes ratepayers front the money for risky energy investments.

“They have loaded this bill like a Christmas tree with various things the utilities want to prevent conservation groups from challenging the [future] decisions that will be made,” said Frank Holleman, a Greenville lawyer who represents the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Buried in the bill are provisions that would allow a Dominion Energy-Santee Cooper plan to convert an old coal power plant site in Colleton County into a fossil-fuel generation plant that burns natural gas. The problem? It would have to be piped in through pristine areas of the state. Anybody with half a brain knows that is highly likely to lead to habitat degradation.

In prepared remarks to a House committee, Holleman said, “this bill is a pro-eminent domain, pro-condemnation, anti-private property rights bill that threatens to shove massive pipeline construction through Aiken County, the ACE Basin, Colleton County and the Edisto watershed – and also counties in the Upcountry.  This bill contains no protections for private property rights, but instead removes rights and protections that currently exist.”

Translation:  The very legislature that went hogwild over private property rights just a few years ago to lower taxes is now considering ill-formed legislation that could allow the massive power of the government to trample on properties that utility companies want for their purposes.

“Our government is supposed to protect private citizens from the power of state-created monopolies,” Holleman argued.  “Instead, this bill protects the monopoly utilities from the rights of private landowners and the citizens of South Carolina.”

Eddy Moore, an energy analyst with the S.C. Coastal Conservation League, argues that “no amount of horse-trading can save” the current bill because it ignores reasonable alternatives to generate more power by adding solar, battery storage and wind energy.  

“It [the bill] literally opens the door to ratepayers paying for another abandoned nuclear plant with a cost similar to V.C. Summer,” Moore added.

Author Lewis Carroll reminds us that everything has a moral – if you can find it.  In the case of this pro-utility energy bill that will destroy special places and private property rights, the moral is smacking us in the face.  Lawmakers should kill the proposal and start over.  If they can’t, they need to get out of the Statehouse.

Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper.  Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.