SC lawmaker: I can’t support a bill that would cause your power bills to rise | Opinion
South Carolinians pay some of the highest power bills in the county. If a bill being pushed by Dominion Energy becomes law, energy bills will go up to fund the Virginia-based power company’s construction of a new natural gas plant mega-project in Colleton County.
Ratepayers will pay for the pipelines to feed it and bills will rise to line the pockets of utility executives who want to use your money to speculatively develop industrial sites that may never create a single job or host a single company.
At a time when lawmakers should be looking for ways to cut costs for families, H. 5118 is a massive giveaway that puts corporate profits on the back of ordinary ratepayers. It’s wrong and I won’t support this bill in its current form.
This controversial bill being rushed through the S.C. House places all financial risk on regular people who pay utility bills. The increases in energy bills will finance the cost of building a multi-billion dollar gas plant. That’s not all. Dominion receives unprecedented power and speed to condemn and take private land to build pipelines to service the plant. Public input procedures will be eliminated.
Perhaps most shocking, this bill empowers Dominion to build speculative industrial sites, like those typically built by our state Department of Commerce or a county economic development project, at ratepayer expense based on the sheer possibility that these sites might someday be occupied — as a justification for the new gas plant. Ratepayers pay for all of this, but not before Dominion recoups a 10% profit on top of the cost of everything it decides to build.
This is an extraordinary deal for Dominion, and historically, these corporate giveaways have not worked out well for S.C. families. In 2007, Dominion’s predecessor, South Carolina Electric and Gas convinced the legislature to pass the Base Load Review Act, which allowed the now-defunct utility to shift $9 billion in costs onto ratepayers to build the V.C. Summer nuclear power plant project that collapsed, destroyed the company and never generated a single kilowatt hour of electricity. Ratepayers are still paying for that debacle.
Making policy often requires balancing competing, sometime contradictory ideas. So, let’s be clear about some broad areas of agreement: First, South Carolina needs more energy. Our population is growing and continued economic development requires new energy generation to support growth. Second, natural gas is a cleaner energy source than dirty coal plants that generate much of our state’s power. Notably, our state has a strategic energy plan that calls for increasing wind and solar and decommissioning coal plants. These goals are not addressed by H. 5118.
I believe in capitalism — a private company should be rewarded for taking risks, but that’s not what H.5118 offers. Under this bill, Dominion’s customers take all the risks and the energy giant is guaranteed a healthy 10% profit. And, no one has said what it will cost to build the gas plant, yet lawmakers are lining up to spend your money on it.
Increasing our state’s energy portfolio should include bringing more wind and solar online. We should not write a blank check or give unprecedented powers to a private company. If Dominion wants to gamble on a new gas plant, it should do so with its investors’ money, not ours.
Heather Bauer is a member of the S.C. House who represents District 75 in Columbia.
