South Carolina considers its energy future through state Senate committee

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Senate on Thursday started its homework assignment of coming up with a comprehensive bill to guide energy policy in a rapidly growing state and amid a quickly changing power- generation world.

The Special Committee on South Carolina’s Energy Future plans several meetings through October. On Thursday, the committee heard from the leaders of the state’s three major utilities. Future meetings will bring in regular ratepayers, environmentalists, business leaders and experts on the latest technology to make electricity,

The Senate took this task upon itself. They put the brakes a massive 80-plus page energy overhaul bill that passed the House in March in less than six weeks, and the bill died at the end of the session.

Many senators said the process earlier this year was rushed. They remembered the last time they trusted an overhaul bill backed by utilities.

State-owned Santee Cooper and private South Carolina Electric & Gas used those rules passed 15 years ago to put ratepayers on the hook for billions of dollars spent on two new nuclear reactors that never generated a watt of power before construction was abandoned because of rising costs.

But those dire memories are being mixed with dire predictions of a state running out of power.

Unusually cold weather on Christmas Eve 2022 along with problems at a generating facility nearly led to rolling blackouts in South Carolina. Demand from advanced manufacturing and data centers is rising. If electric cars grow in popularity, more power is needed. And a state that added 1.3 million people since 2000 has a lot more air conditioners, washing machines and charges for devices, the utility leaders said.

Senators stopped Duke Energy’s president in South Carolina, Mike Callahan, in middle of his presentation after he told them his utility’s most recent predictions for growth in electricity usage over the rest of this decade were eight times more than they were just two years ago.

“Growth is here, and much more is coming. We need clear energy policy to plan for that growth,” Callahan said,

The utility leaders told senators their companies need to know what kind of sources of power — natural gas, solar, nuclear, wind or others — the state wants to emphasize. They would like to have a stable rules from regulators on how they operate.

“A quick no is a lot better to us than a long-term maybe,” Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Staton said.

Another complicating factor are federal rules that may…