Energy plan on drawing board raising multiple concerns from Upstate to Lowcountry | Opinion

Pay attention to increases

Note: The author is the energy project manager for Conservation Voters of South Carolina.

Yet again, big power companies want to squeeze more profits out of South Carolina electric customers.

In the usual pattern of greed and overreach, both Duke Energy Carolinas and Dominion Energy are asking regulators to raise customer bills.

Dominion’s press release reports a 3.58% increase. But after digging through their complicated application and regulators’ hearing notice, I found that Dominion’s request is actually 14%. There will be a temporary 10% reduction due to changes in fuel prices; that reduction goes away when prices inevitably tick back up. Dominion’s press release combined these figures, hoping to hide from criticism.

You shouldn’t need a full-time job in energy advocacy to understand your power bill.

Elsewhere, we’re seeing overreach from Duke Energy Carolinas.

Duke is requesting an 11.4% increase in 2024 — swelling to 15.5% in 2026.

Duke wants more money now, plus a guarantee that it can reach into customers’ pockets years in the future.

Regulators will decide on the increases this summer.

Let’s hope House Bill 5118 hasn’t passed by then — a former regulator warns it would make a bad situation worse.

Until then, regulators want to hear from you at hearings across the state.

See Duke Hikes for dates.

Jalen Brooks-Knepfle, Columbia

Energy plan poses lasting problems

Note: The author is the executive director of the Carolina Ocean Alliance in Charleston.

I am writing in support Robby Maynor’s recent opinion article: “The energy bill racing through the SC legislature will harm small rural communities like mine.” The views I express are my own.

The Edisto River is the longest free-flowing black water river in the United States.

This river ranks as one of the most beautiful in the country, winding its way through the South Carolina Lowcountry for 250 miles from the Sandhills through cypress swamps and floodplain forests to the rich coastal estuary of the Ashepoo-Combahee-Edisto Basin.

This river system is home to internationally renowned sanctuaries for birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, rare plants, and the threatened Atlantic sturgeon.

A new polluting mega-project like the one proposed at Canadys threatens the future of these natural communities along with the human communities of Colleton County.

At a recent town hall at Colleton State Park, local citizens voiced their fears of the same pollution that tainted their water and killed their family members returning to their quiet rural community.

These people and the ecology of this river should not be sacrificed to feed the demands of industry and profit.

We must not allow our communities to be harmed and our natural resources degraded, especially for such a short-sighted project with such long-lasting repercussions.

South Carolina deserves better.

Grey Gowder, Charleston

Standing with Ukraine

I want to start this letter by thanking the great people of South Carolina, who have continued to stand by Ukraine.

I especially want to thank Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Representatives Joe Wilson (R-SC2) and Jim Clyburn (D-SC6) for voting for the Supplemental Foreign Aid Package. This includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, $14 million of which will go to projects right here in the Palmetto State.

As a non-Ukrainian, I have had the privilege and honor to work side-by-side and become friends with those who have been directly affected by Putin’s war in Ukraine.

I was in Washington just a few weeks ago as a member of the South Carolina delegation to the Spring 2024 Ukraine Action Summit where I met refugees and veterans of the war, humanitarian aid suppliers and Ukrainian and European leaders.

After meeting these truly amazing people and hearing their accounts of the war, I have a great deal of passion to support these individuals.

One friend told me that while at the summit, the house she was born in was bombed multiple times.

I hope and pray that my fellow South Carolinians will join me and continue to stand with Ukraine.

Hayden Laye, Walhalla