Planning for South Carolina’s Energy Future – October 18, 2023 Ad Hoc Meeting

Last year, I agreed to serve on a new House Ad-Hoc Committee: the State Economic Development and Utility Modernization Committee.

Generally, I’m not a fan of political Ad-Hoc committees. Why? Because sometimes all politicians do is “study” the issue. Other times we do draft legislation, but sometimes because of the enormity of the issue, the legislation never becomes law. It can be and has been frustrating. This time, I told Speaker Smith I’d serve because I knew the issue was important to our State, to him, and to the appointed chair Rep. Jay West.

We’ve had several meetings over the past year and none more important than last week’s. Folks, we’ve got a huge issue in our State. We don’t want to cause panic over energy supplies, but the future is potentially alarming. We need real solutions to fix/improve and it’s going to take the General Assembly working together, along with the Governor, the ratepayers, and all parties involved. I spoke briefly about this in the video clip above.

Many factors have led us to this point, and I attribute it to 2 POSITIVE things: people are moving to South Carolina and….business is moving to South Carolina!

With those positives come negatives, though….our power grid needs upgrading….and quickly! Unfortunately, quickly isn’t in the cards, but hopefully quicker is.

You can hear more about this from a column published today by my Senate colleague, Senator Tom Davis. I agree with him on a lot of what he writes and look forward to working with him and others on solutions. Let’s remember – we need to focus on people, not politics. We need to focus on policy, not politics.

I’ll continue to write more as we move forward with transformative changes for our state. I’ve been a part of earlier changes and look forward to continuing to improve our quality of life as people and companies realize the benefits to living in our great State!

As always, if you have advice or concerns, please let me know!

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