S.C. Electric Co-ops Support Lawsuits Challenging EPA Power Plant Regulations

South Carolina’s elec­tric coop­er­a­tives are sup­port­ing a pair of law­suits that chal­lenge the legal­i­ty of the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency’s new reg­u­la­tions on fos­sil fuel pow­er plants.

The Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tives of South Car­oli­na and Cen­tral Elec­tric Pow­er Coop­er­a­tive on May 9 filed a dec­la­ra­tion in sup­port of sep­a­rate law­suits by the Nation­al Rur­al Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive Asso­ci­a­tion and a coali­tion of 23 state attor­neys gen­er­al, includ­ing S.C. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Alan Wil­son.

“While we share the EPA’s goal of pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment, we can’t sup­port a plan that jeop­ar­dizes the reli­a­bil­i­ty of South Carolina’s elec­tric grid while dri­ving up pow­er bills,” said Mike Couick, CEO of the Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tives of South Car­oli­na. “We need a real­is­tic path for­ward.”

The EPA reg­u­la­tions aim to great­ly reduce car­bon emis­sions from exist­ing coal-fired pow­er plants and new nat­ur­al gas-fired units. The rules would require those pow­er plants to either throt­tle down their out­put or cap­ture and store their car­bon emis­sions with a tech­nol­o­gy that is unproven, unaf­ford­able and com­mer­cial­ly unavail­able.

These reg­u­la­tions come as demand for elec­tric­i­ty soars in South Car­oli­na and across the South­east due to pop­u­la­tion growth and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, includ­ing a parade of clean ener­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing projects ded­i­cat­ed to pro­duc­ing elec­tric vehi­cles and the parts that pow­er them.

“South Car­oli­na is one of the fastest grow­ing states in the nation. We urgent­ly need more elec­tric­i­ty, not less,” said Cen­tral CEO Rob Hochstetler. “These reg­u­la­tions make it hard­er for elec­tric coop­er­a­tives to keep up, threat­en­ing our abil­i­ty to keep the lights on for res­i­dents and busi­ness­es across our state.”

This dec­la­ra­tion fol­lows the S.C. elec­tric coop­er­a­tives’ August 2023 and Decem­ber 2023 com­ments oppos­ing the pro­posed EPA reg­u­la­tions as unlaw­ful, unwork­able and unre­al­is­tic.

S.C. elec­tric coop­er­a­tive lead­ers also have tes­ti­fied at the State House and in Con­gress about these reg­u­la­tions and oth­er threats to the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the Pal­met­to State’s pow­er grid.