Sell Santee Cooper

Blog by Frank Knapp, President/CEO South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce April 19, 2021 Logic might yet prevail in the SC Senate regarding the future of Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility that provides electricity to about 2 million South Carolinians either directly or through electric cooperatives. Santee Cooper ran up a $4 billion construction

Sumter Daily Item April 13, 2021 By James Felder, Gullah Geechee Leadership Institute Fifty years ago, Isaac Samuel Leevy Johnson, Herbert Fielding and I stepped into the state capitol to take our places as South Carolina’s first Black members of the General Assembly. It was a milestone on a road of transformational change. And, with

Post and Courier April 7, 2021 By Dana Beach If ever there were a question that reveals the wide array of ideological perspectives in South Carolina, it’s whether the state should sell its electric power company, the S.C. Public Service Authority. Santee Cooper is a veritable Rorschach test of economic and political beliefs. For observers

Blog by Frank Knapp, President and CEO of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce April 6, 2021 The South Carolina legislature’s effort to resolve the future of Santee Cooper continues to move at a glacial pace, years after the V.C. Summer nuclear fiasco that will cost Santee Cooper and co-op customers more than

The Greenville News March 21, 2021 By Jim DeMint, Special to the Greenville news To many of my fellow South Carolinians, I am known for my years as an elected official, first in the US House of Representatives, then the US Senate. But before my tenure in Washington—for more than 20 years—I was the full-time CEO of a small

Energy Consumers of the Carolinas February 9, 2021 by Scott Carlberg Santee Cooper CEO Mark Bonsall sent a letter to the General Assembly in late January announcing Santee Cooper will be in debt until 2055. Although likely not his intent the letter clearly highlights the choice confronting legislators: Pay off the debt now with a

In the battle over the future of Santee Cooper, sell or reform, the state agency always fights back with the claim that they have the lowest electric rates in South Carolina.  No investor-owned utility, like NextEra, could ever provide lower electricity rates, says Santee Cooper. But this claim of the lowest electric rates has been