Senate pulls plug on energy bill. What does promising compromise mean for SC?

A promising compromise has replaced a sprawling energy bill that stalled in the South Carolina Legislature.

While the South Carolina Energy Security Act will not become law this year, the state Senate on Tuesday vowed, via a joint resolution, to continue studying the state’s energy needs, aiming to pass legislation early next session. It’s a compromise state Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, says acknowledges the push the House put behind the bill, and one that stakeholders, including utilities and cooperatives, were willing to take.

“I think there was an acknowledgment in the Senate, both on the Republican and Democratic sides, that the Speaker of the House and the House of Representatives have raised an extremely important issue,” Davis said of the energy resolution. “We acknowledged the work they’ve done in regard to demonstrating that we have a (energy) capacity problem in South Carolina, that we have to upgrade our transmission and that we have to take a hard look at a gas.”

In effect, the Senate killed H. 5118 by passing a “strike and insert” amendment that included observations relating to the state’s energy needs. The move was in the form of a resolution, which does not carry the effect of law. As such, Santee Cooper doesn’t have the green light to build a natural gas plant in partnership with Dominion Energy in Canadys.

But even without the effect of law, Davis said the resolution wasn’t “inconsequential.”

“The intention of this is to reassure the utilities, the people of South Carolina and capital markets that provide money to the energy sector that we are taking this, and will take this, seriously in a comprehensive way that will address all aspects of energy generation and transmission,” he said.

Davis added that the resolution came at the urging of utilities and energy cooperatives, who conceded the Senate’s hesitation to debate the bill.

“The utilities were saying, ‘Look, we understand that you don’t think you’re in a position to go as far as the House did, but can you at least pass a joint resolution, because that is valuable to us,’ ” Davis said.

State Sen. Mike Fanning, D-Fairfield, asked Davis whether the measure could end up in a conference committee if the House rejects the amendment.

If a conference committee were to convene, Davis said, “anything beyond a statement of what we think material findings are, and variables are, and inquires should be, will not be acceptable by this body, I think that’s clear.”

After clearing the House, H. 5118 appeared to be on a fast track for passage, until it stalled last month in the Senate when Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, urged his colleagues to slow down the measure.

Still, Davis, a leading figure in the energy debate, who originally drafted a companion bill that amended the House version, was committed to passing something, albeit at a compromise. That came in the form of Tuesday’s resolution.

“The House did a great job of digging in and identifying the (energy) issue, and then went ahead and proposed a solution,” Davis said. “The Senate decided that it was going to respect what the House did ... and pass this version of the bill, acknowledging that they had identified important issues and that we have to take it up over the next the summer and fall and come back in January prepared to reach some sort of specific conclusion with the same degree of specificity that the House did.”