House Bill 3309

In the last week of the 2025 legislative session, the omnibus energy legislation House Bill 3309 was approved by the General Assembly. The bill includes sweeping policy changes that will significantly impact electric utility investment decisions, the environment, and our electricity bills.

In April, the Senate approved numerous amendments that improved upon the version of the bill initially passed by the House in February. While some of those amendments remain, the House unfortunately stripped three key provisions: energy efficiency program savings targets, requiring pipeline companies to notify landowners of eminent domain, and protecting everyday customers from subsidizing the cost of gas-fired power plants built to serve big data centers.

H. 3309 also authorizes a joint venture between Santee Cooper and Dominion Energy to construct a major new gas plant at the site of Dominion’s retired Canadys coal plant on the Edisto River.

If built, it would be one of the highest-capacity gas-fired power plants in the country. It would potentially require significant pipeline construction through the ACE Basin, threatening property rights and critical wetland habitats.

The Conservation League will continue to engage with community members in Canadys and intervene in the expected Siting Act review proceeding by the Public Service Commission. Through community organizing, regulatory intervention, public education, and other efforts, our team will work to secure reasonable protections for the surrounding communities and ratepayers.

The Conservation League worked this year to help achieve a more balanced bill.

In March, our Energy & Climate Program Director Taylor Allred testified on the bill before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee regarding recommended reforms to energy resource planning, rate design, energy efficiency programs, and business access to clean energy. We will continue advocating for these and other reforms that could help our state unlock its clean energy potential and protect ratepayers from costly overreliance on fossil fuels. 

In the end, some of the harmful provisions from the bill were removed, including obstacles to solar development, changes to Public Service Commission procedures that would undermine due process, and restrictions that would make it more difficult to establish legal standing for appealing agency decisions. But overall, this bill remains concerning.

Read more about the details of this bill from Southern Alliance for Clean Energy here.

UNDERLYING MOTIVATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES

The support for a new, mega gas plant at Canadys is also part of a larger state-wide push to transform South Carolina’s energy policy. However, there is not enough demand to justify a new mega plant like this — especially not one that would be so destructive to communities and our ecosystem.

To justify the plant, utilities have pointed to growth in industrial demand for electricity, primarily driven by potential new data centers that are looking to our state as a potential source of cheap energy. Data centers are not major job creators, receive generous tax subsidies, and use large amounts of water and large-scale diesel backup generators.

Many of the big tech companies building data centers have made bold commitments to secure clean energy supplies. Some may choose not to even build in South Carolina if utility companies go all-in on gas. That could leave everyone else stuck with the bill for billions in new gas infrastructure that we do not need.

House Bill 5118 in the 2024 Legislative Session 

In 2024, the South Carolina House of Representatives passed House Bill 5118, a controversial omnibus energy bill that would have transformed our state’s energy policy. This bill aimed to reduce oversight of utility companies, potentially undermining efforts to ensure fair rates for consumers, and would have permitted Dominion Energy and Santee Cooper to construct a new gas plant as a joint venture in Canadys, South Carolina. Fortunately, it did not pass in the Senate, but a variation of the bill returned as H.3309 in 2025. 

We expressed concerns about many of the provisions in House Bill 5118. Among other things, it could fast-track the development of an expensive new gas plant and pipeline in the ACE Basin, which is one of the largest undeveloped wetland ecosystems on the East Coast. 

Shortly before the end of the legislative session in May 2024, a significantly scaled-back version was passed by the Senate and the bill was referred to a conference committee of senators and representatives that could meet to consider potential compromises in the coming months.