Senators look to address SC’s energy need growth. Will they support new natural gas plant?
After weeks of hearings about the South Carolina’s projected energy needs and how to address future population and economic growth, state senators on a special committee are aiming to hone in on what they want to see in energy legislation.
But a final product of what the state Senate will consider or even pass isn’t expected until next year.
Among the considerations is a joint project between Dominion Energy and the state-owned Santee Cooper, easing the appeals process for gas line approvals and whether to use unfinished V.C. Summer nuclear reactors to provide electricity for data centers.
Lawmakers this year have been working on how to address the state’s energy needs as the state population grows. The state House earlier this year passed an energy package that including allowing Dominion Energy and the state-owned electric utility to Santee Cooper to build a natural gas plant in Canadys in Colleton County.
Among other items, the legislation would also reduce the number of members who serve on the Public Service Commission, which sets electricity rates for investor owned utilities.
But the state Senate did not like the pace the bill moved with during the spring and opted block the House version while having a working group of senators come up with their own version for the upper chamber to consider.
The working group has met during the last several months and expects to continue through the end of October. Draft language of a possible state Senate energy bill proposal will start to be written as senators hope to have a product ready by January or February of next year.
Among the policy positions senators on the committee plan to take is allowing Santee Cooper to partner with Dominion Energy to build a joint gas plant. But senators don’t plan to specify the Canady’s location.
“Not only do we not want to identify a specific site, we also don’t want to send a message to the (Public Service Commission) that this is a done deal and you don’t need to question them anymore,” said Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, who is co-chairing the Senate committee.
The proposed location of Canadys has state Sen. Margie Bright Matthews worried and she says Dominion needs to carry out clean up in Colleton County from previous plants.
“I don’t want my poor areas being the conduit to give energy to other areas to make it, and then my people die from cancers and all these other things,” Bright Matthews said.
Senators on the committee also want to explore legislative language on how to quicken the permitting and the appellate process for gas lines.
“We definitely need more gas in the state, to try to help speed that process up,” Massey said.
“I think we need to see how the what this staff suggested language is, and then let us tinker with that,” Massey said of permitting for gas line projects.
How much electricity is needed by large energy users such as data centers plan to come to the state, has been a part of the discussions over the last few month.
“At the very least, if a big driver for why we’re having this whole conversation for more generation is large energy users, which seems to be the case listening to all the testimony, at the very least, they’ve got to contribute more than the residential customers do,” Massey said.
Senators may not want to jump all in on restarting the V.C. Summer reactor project. Santee Cooper and SCANA partnered in building two more nuclear reactors at V.C. Summer. But after $9 billion was spent, the project was abandoned because of construction cost overruns.
A similar project is up and running in Georgia, and nuclear plants in other parts of the country are being fired back up to accommodate data center growth.
A report by two members of the Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council said partially completed buildings show “no degradation, corrosion’’ or chipped concrete at the V.C. Summer site northwest of Columbia.
Senators on the working group now are looking at conducting a more in-depth study on whether the reactor project could start up.
“The idea that we’d be looking for reasons not to do it, as opposed to energetically embracing the opportunity is unfathomable to me,” said state Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, who has asked if the V.C. Summer project could restart for the benefit of data centers. “I don’t understand the sense of reluctance that there is. Maybe it’s a hangover from 2017 and the fact we got screwed, and maybe we’re still upset about that, but we need to be clear-eyed about this. We have an asset in the ground that, by at least preliminary analysis, says is still usable.”
Senators also will look at whether South Carolina should participate in markets to buy or sell excess energy.
Still, Massey thinks an overall product out of the Senate will be shorter than the House version that passed earlier this year. Senators may start to take up a formal bill in January or February. The committee had hoped to finish work before before November, but could end up working in the last two months of the year.
“I think we’ll do some of the things that the House did. We’ll do some additional things, but my guess is that the total length will be less,” Massey said.
“You’ll probably take some of these away. You’ll probably add some more to it as we go along. But this is the sausage-making part of the part of the process,” Massey added.
