News

Power companies and lawmakers are pushing hard for a new gas-fired power plant, likely at a site along the Edisto River. But the push carries echoes of what happened before the failed plan to build the V.C. Summer nuclear station north of Columbia, a project that set $9 billion on fire.

South Carolina lawmakers advanced controversial legislation to fast-track a new natural gas plant in South Carolina’s Lowcountry with language some believe would hamstring the state’s solar energy sector.

COLUMBIA — A controversial energy bill is heading to the House floor over the continued opposition of consumer and environmental advocates, who say changes fell far short of addressing concerns over fast-tracking a new power plant in South Carolina.

Ratepayers have never had a lot of friends on the S.C. Public Service Commission, whose job should be to protect the public from the monopoly utilities our Legislature forces us to buy our electricity from but which has always done a better job at protecting the utilities’ government-guaranteed profits.

A state Public Service Commission member has resigned in protest from the utility oversight board because of concerns that a bill moving through the Legislature could lead to a repeat of the failed V.C. Summer nuclear project in South Carolina seven years ago.

Essentially, the same utilities whose greed and incompetence cost 5,000 South Carolinians their jobs, and the same utilities that fleeced ratepayers to the tune of $9 billion, are now asking for a sweetheart deal for another project that is the same size as the failed V.C. Summer project.

South Carolina faces a repeat of the 2017 V.C. Summer nuclear construction debacle that soaked ratepayers if state legislators make it easier for utilities to build a large natural gas plant in Colleton County, critics said this week.

We have been told repeatedly that the current situation is not similar to the sad history around the Base Load Review Act and V. C. Summer, but the evidence points toward some very important parallels that must be acknowledged.

Opponents of legislation paving the way for a new power plant in South Carolina argue it’s eerily similar to a law rushed through the Legislature 17 years ago that ultimately left utility customers on the hook for billions of dollars they continue to pay for an abandoned nuclear power project.