15 Falsehoods: Separating Facts From Fiction in Selling Santee Cooper

Santee Cooper’s recent abuses of customers’ budgets, South Carolina’s political system and our environment make it clear that Santee Cooper customers and our state deserve better.

Earlier this year, the South Carolina Department of Administration selected a purchase bid by NextEra Energy as the best among all of the offerors. NextEra’s offer would have erased the nuclear construction debt, reimbursed the two million Santee Cooper and co-op customers what they paid for the abandoned V.C. Summer nuclear project and shifted the utility dramatically away from coal. The legislature ultimately rejected all options on the table and instead decided that in the upcoming 2021 legislative session a final decision on the future of Santee Cooper – reform or sell – will be made.

Should NextEra offer a new bid it will be an opportunity to bring the world’s largest producer of wind and solar energy and one of America’s largest capital investors in infrastructure into South Carolina.

The South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce and the Gullah Geechee Chamber of Commerce expose the weakness of 15 specific arguments used by status quo proponents who want to keep the “rogue agency” a state government-owned and operated entity.