Protect South Carolina, not utility profits. | Southern Environmental Law Center

Tell SC senators to protect South Carolina, not utility profits

There’s a lot at stake for South Carolinians this year at the legislature. After the Senate improved H.3309 by adding critical customer protections, the House stripped those out of the bill, threatening South Carolinians' ability to weigh in on threats to their health, environment, and wallets.

The House’s damaging legislation would hasten the construction of methane gas pipelines and plants and allow utilities to raise rates every year, while eliminating commonsense protections like cost-saving energy efficiency, notice to landowners if a utility project would implicate eminent domain, and assurances that customers aren't footing the bill for data center companies.

But there’s still a chance to protect our customer rights and our natural resources. After stopping the misguided House bill last year and passing a stronger bill earlier this year, the Senate can defend the customer protections in the bill and lead us toward a balanced and resilient energy future with reasonable legislation.

You can help today by asking your state senator to protect South Carolinians with a bill that protects our rights to transparency and clean air and water first – not utilities’ right to profit.

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{contact_data~positionHeld} {contact_data~firstName} {contact_data~lastName},

Once again, the South Carolina House has cleared the path for utilities to increase our electric rates and build expensive pipelines and power plants throughout the state. The Senate’s amendments to H.3309 added critical protections for customers—mandatory efficiency targets so customers can control their bills, notice to landowners whose property may be condemned for pipelines and power plants, and provisions to ensure customers don’t foot the bill for multibillion dollar data center companies.

Yesterday, the House stripped away all of those protections. The bill was already a gift to utilities’ bottom lines—yet they still fought to weaken or remove the very few pieces of this bill intended to benefit customers and protect citizens. South Carolina is among the worst states in the country for energy efficiency—mandatory targets are needed to make sure ratepayers aren’t paying for new assets that could have been avoided. The data center protections provided transparency into their water usage and ensured that they were responsible for their own costs. And the landowner notice provision simply required that utilities notify landowners and affected communities when a project might require eminent domain. This is especially important given that the Canadys gas plant will require a new pipeline that crosses over half the state and possibly the ACE Basin.

The parts of the bill the House removed were all reasonable and necessary checks on monopoly utility overreach; we don’t need to risk another Base Load Review Act disaster to pad utility bottom lines.

Please protect South Carolinians by keeping these common-sense, necessary provisions that protect our rights to transparency, affordable energy, clean air, and clean water first – not utilities’ right to profit.

Thanks, 
 
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