May 8, 2025
Legislature sides with private utility and BIG tech profits over consumers
Last week the House voted 88-13 to strip consumer protections from a massive energy bill, H.3309, before sending the bill back to the Senate, where the protections were approved.
Yesterday, the state Senate voted 35-11 to concur with the House removing those consumer protections.
Simply put, Dominion, Duke, Google, Microsoft, Meta and other big tech companies won.
While some of the anti-consumer parts of the original H.3309 were thankfully removed during the process, here are the consumer protections put in the bill by the Senate that were lost:
–Requiring new data centers to cover the costs of costly new generation and transmission they need to operate and have no cost-shifting to residential and small business ratepayers.
–Ending the costly and wasteful state tax incentives (sales tax on computers and electricity they use) to lure data centers that are coming anyway.
–Setting a minimum goal for energy efficiency programs offered by utilities.
–Requiring a 60-day notice to property owners whose property might be taken by eminent domain for the construction of gas, electricity or communications lines and also requires a public hearing.
Dominion and Duke ratepayers can now look forward to higher rates to pay for the costly new energy generation they need to provide electricity to anticipated data centers.
And these rate increases will start coming every year instead of every 3-5 years because the legislature approved Dominion and Duke raising their rates to pump up their return on equity when they want to without going through a traditional rate hearing at the Public Service Commission.
It is a disappointing end to this two-year process that started out as simply approving Santee Cooper to partner with Dominion to build a gas plant.
Below are the names of the Senate and House members who voted to keep the consumer protections in H.3309. Please send them a message of appreciation.
Now we have to work on passing the Senate’s deleted consumer protections starting in January.
Frank Knapp
President & CEO
Senate
Karl Allen karlallen@scsenate.gov
Allen Blackmon allenblackmon@scsenate.gov
Chip Campsen chipcampsen@scsenate.gov
Richard Cash richardcash@scsenate.gov
Tom Corbin tomcorbin@scsenate.gov
Tameika Devine tidevine@scsenate.gov
Shane Martin shanemartin@scsenate.gov
Shane Massey shanemassey@scsenate.gov
Harvey Peeler harveypeeler@scsenate.gov
Rex Rice rexrice@scsenate.gov
Ed Sutton edsutton@scsenate.gov
House
Heather Bauer heatherbauer@schouse.gov
Gilda Cobb-Hunter gildacobbhunter@schouse.gov
Kambrell Garvin kambrellgarvin@schouse.gov
Hamilton Grant hamiltongrant@schouse.gov
Rosalyn Henderson-Myers  rosalynhenderson-myers@schouse.gov
Wendell Jones wendelljones@schouse.gov
JA. Moore jamoore@schouse.gov
Robert Reese robertreese@schouse.gov
Michael Rivers michaelrivers@schouse.gov
Seth Rose sethrose@schouse.gov
Tiffany Spann-Wilder tiffanyspannwilder@schouse.gov
Courtney Waters  courtneywaters@schouse.gov
Spencer Wetmore  spencerwetmore@schouse.gov