Environmentalists handed out t-shirts Tuesday Feb. 27, 2024) to protest plans for a large new natural gas plant in South Carolina. Opponents say the plant could soak ratepayers with costs and hurt the environment. Utilities say the plant will provide reliable power for future growth.
COLUMBIA, S.C.
Utilities are using a new South Carolina energy law to justify a request environmental advocates argue will tamp opposition to a proposed massive natural gas plant in Colleton County.
The Sierra Club, a national environmental nonprofit, wants to participate in a Public Service Commission case determining whether a proposed large natural gas plant in Colleton County properly protects the environment and ratepayers. Two local nonprofits, the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, jointly applied to intervene in the same case.
Utilities Dominion Energy and state-owned Santee Cooper argued the environmental groups had similar missions and concerns about the proposed plant. They asked the Public Service Commission to require the groups to consolidate their questions and concerns about the natural gas plant at the beginning of the month, according to docket filings.
Consolidating the groups’ concerns will avoid delays during the permitting process of the plant, the utilities argued in a filing with the Public Service Commission. Plus, a state law signed in 2025 aimed at boosting generation amid skyrocketing demand for power justified the request, Dominion and Santee Cooper argued.
The law changed how rates are set and how energy projects are permitted, in addition to allowing Santee Cooper and Dominion to work together on the roughly 2,200 megawatt Colleton County gas plant. The utilities will split the generated energy and $5 billion cost. Dominion and Santee Cooper asked to build the plant in mid-December, so a decision will be made by the Public Service Commission by mid-June, under the energy law’s six-month deadline
The timeline for intervenors to present their case and the push to consolidate parties “stacks the deck” against them, said Sari Amiel, a Sierra Club attorney assigned to the case.
“It’s making it very hard for us to make arguments that represent the public interest and consumer interests,” Amiel said.
The energy law was intended to cut “red tape” for energy projects to gain approval, said state Rep. Gil Gatch, R-Dorchester. Gatch was a proponent of the bill last year. He said conservation groups sometimes slow down permitting of energy projects or rate cases, costing utilities for delays. The energy law did not prevent conservation groups or other intervenors from fully participating in a permitting case, he said.
“Conservationists, and God love them, but they always, in a litigious way, will hold up siting and all kinds of energy related litigation that goes on before the Public Service Commission,” Gatch said.
“So what it does is it not only makes it more expensive because all those costs get pushed on to the ratepayer, but it also creates a huge lag, which creates more costs,” he continued.
New energy generation, including natural gas, is badly needed in South Carolina as coal plants retire and population grows, Gatch said.
“The Canadys plant, and other plants like it, are important to get up and running to meet the needs and the crisis that’s down the road,” he said.
Allowing the public, including environmental nonprofits, to voice their concerns is important because the Canadys plant will impact ratepayers and the environment, said Taylor Allred, a state energy and climate director at Coastal Conservation League, one of the intervenors.
“This is a very big project, a very consequential project, and it’s going to be a testing ground for kind of how this new framework plays out,” Allred said.
The debate over if the Colleton County natural gas plant is aligned with environmental and consumer interests coincides with a proposal for another gas plant in the Upstate, straining resources further for intervenors, Allred said. Duke Energy applied to build a 1,400 megawatt natural gas plant in Anderson County last summer.
Can utilities combine conservationists?
Dominion and Santee Cooper want two separate parties representing environmental interests to compare their concerns and questions for the Canadys natural gas plant and consolidate any similar issues.
Both Sierra Club and the Coastal Conservation League oppose such a measure, arguing it would compromise their integrity to divulge information to one another.
“This notion is absurd, and it’s simply an attempt to take away time and resources from environmental interveners seeking to represent environmental interests in an environmental proceeding,” Allred said.
“We would have to basically run anything in our case past the other party’s clients as well,” Amiel said. “So it would be limiting our ability to litigate our respective cases.”
Both utilities argued they have a right to request intervenors to consolidate. Santee Cooper spokesperson Mollie Gore wrote in an email the law allows for “robust participation” from other parties.
“The long-held ability to consolidate representation for parties with similar interests provides Commissioners the opportunity to efficiently consider the evidence in reaching a deliberate and thoughtful decision,” Gore wrote in an email.
Where that ability comes from has also been up for debate. When Dominion and Santee Cooper asked for environmental nonprofits to consolidate, they cited the General Assembly’s 2025 energy law.
But the ability for the Public Service Commission to consolidate intervenors at the request of utilities has been in South Carolina’s siting law for decades, which lawyers for the environmental groups pointed out in their response.
The utilities say the energy law’s intention and readoption of the siting code reaffirmed their right to request consolidation.
“Consolidation of parties with substantially similar interests, such as CCL/SACE and Sierra Club, advances that legislative purpose by reducing duplicative discovery, motions practice, and cross-examination, thereby ensuring a prompt and efficient conclusion of this proceeding,” a filing from Dominion and Santee Cooper reads.
A public hearing on the natural gas plant is scheduled in Colleton County for March 23 at 6 p.m., according to the docket. The deadline to formally intervene in the case is Feb. 6, 2026.
