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Santee Cooper hopes to generate 40% green power
By Molly Parker
Staff Writer
Against the backdrop of Santee Cooper’s plans to build a coal plant in Florence County, the state-owned utility earlier this month rolled out an aggressive agenda to generate at least 40% of its power from non-greenhouse gas-emitting sources by 2020.
Currently, just over 10% of the utility’s energy comes from either nuclear or renewable resources; therefore, the challenge for Santee Cooper is to increase by nearly four times its power sources that don’t spit out carbon dioxides and other greenhouse gases in less than 13 years.
In setting the green energy policy, Santee Cooper’s board also voted to create a new Department of Conservation and Renewable Energy and named 23-year utility veteran Marc Tye to oversee it.
Tye, as vice president of the department, will report directly to Santee Cooper CEO Lonnie Carter.
Admitting the goal was steep, Carter said the first step will be establishing a timeline with realistic benchmarks.
“We’re trying to swallow an elephant,” Carter said. “How do you swallow an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Santee Cooper’s energy portfolio consists of about 77% coal-fired energy, 10% nuclear, 8% natural gas, 1.5% hydro and less than 1% renewable resources such as solar and landfill methane gas, spokeswoman Laura Varn said.
Carter said the timing of the announcement is not connected to plans for the new coal plant near Kingsburg on the Great Pee Dee River. Environmentalists and some residents are rallying against the utility’s plans to build one, and possibly two, 600-megawatt pulverized coal units in rural Florence County.
Carter said the timing of the conservation and renewables push is more about predictions that a Congress-backed carbon tax is on the horizon. If approved and operational by 2012 as Santee Cooper plans, the plant near Kingsburg would be the utility’s third coal facility built in just five years.
“The board has been considering this for a number of months, and it’s more driven at looking at long term, what are going to be our policies in this country regarding carbon and strategically, what can we do about that?” Carter said. “We can reduce our dependence on conventional generation that produces carbon. That’s how you reduce that risk and that’s the strategy and that’s what it’s aimed at. Quite frankly, the Pee Dee campus is a short-term issue.”
To reach its green goal, the utility is counting on the addition of two new nuclear units to be built at the existing V.C. Summer nuclear plant near Jenkinsville, which it owns in a partnership with South Carolina Electric & Gas. Nuclear plants are expensive to build but produce cheap energy that is greenhouse-gas-free. Both utilities are preparing to submit applications by the end of the year to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has not issued a permit for a new nuclear plant in nearly 30 years.
One unit is projected to go online by 2016, the other by 2019, though Carter admitted it’s uncertain how the nuclear permitting process will play out.
The remaining energy resources would come from renewable and voluntary conservation programs, which Carter said will represent the biggest challenge. Santee Cooper is capturing methane from landfills to produce energy, studying the viability of wind farms in South
Carolina and running solar programs with several public schools.
The utility also rolled out on Oct. 1 a net billing program in which people who produce their own energy can sell excess back to the utility. The most common means would be through installation of solar panels. Several people have inquired about the program, Tye told the board, but no one has signed on to date.
The conservation measures will largely be aimed at homeowners and small businesses, Carter said, noting large industrial customers, looking to cut costs, have been ahead of the curve in implementing energy-saving measures.
“They probably have something to teach us,” he said.
Molly Parker is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her directly at mparker@setcommedia.com.
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