Information is emerging about the massive data center that is proposed near Green Pond in Colleton County by Eagle Rock Partners.

The project got its first public airing in a zoning meeting Dec. 18. This Colleton proposal has significant implications for policies that must be enacted to protect the public interest throughout our state as data centers proliferate like wildfire.

Defense of the project by Ken Loeber of Eagle Rock has been unconvincing.

As reported by Jessica Holdman in the SC Daily Gazette on Dec. 19, “Loeber told the SC Daily Gazette he estimates the center will need 1,000 megawatts of electricity. That would take up nearly all of Santee Cooper’s share of a 2,200-megawatt, natural gas-fired power plant that the state-owned utility company is seeking to build, in partnership with Virginia-headquartered Dominion Energy, in nearby Canadys.”

Meanwhile, Dylan Nolan at Fitsnews reported on Dec. 19 that Loeber also said that “The simple fact is your [energy] rates are not going up due to this project.”

He appears to base that claim on his statement that “those [energy infrastructure projects] are projects that are being done regardless of whether we come to Colleton County or not.”

But why are they planned? It has been conceded by utilities that the rapid development of massive energy demands by data centers underlies much of the pressure to increase generating capacity.

Santee Cooper officials have placed the number at about 70% of the expansion at Canadys.

Loeber’s figures would place that percentage even higher, at more than 80% for this single project. This is not a case of more efficient use of existing capacity.

Utilities are planning to build specifically to meet data center needs.

The numbers in this case are daunting. Canadys is expected to cost $5 billion, of which $2.5 billion will be assigned to Santee Cooper. Pipeline extensions are expected to add at least $430 million to this total.

Unless the General Assembly acts quickly and decisively to demand that data centers pay in full for construction of the generating and transmission capacity that they will use, residential and small business ratepayers will be forced to absorb too much of that cost.

Santee Cooper, to its great credit, has established a large user rate that would help to mitigate this.

However, secondary distributors of Santee Cooper energy, like the co-op serving the proposed project area, are not obligated to do the same. Thus, data center builders can waltz in after a generating plant is underway and claim their right to be served, receiving much of the output at rates lower than those charged to residential and small business users.

Of course, if Eagle Rock is planning to assume Santee Cooper’s share of costs for building generation and transmission capacity in proportion to their planned use of that energy, none of this would be problematic.

Loeber conspicuously did not offer that clarification, and he surely would have if that was planned.

Instead, he offered comments that appear to be designed to evade that responsibility.

Hundreds of thousands of South Carolinians must pay their energy bills and then decide whether they can afford their medicine and their food.

Often the answer is only one of those, or neither.

All of us must pay energy bills or live in the dark and the cold.

Who will benefit from our payments, given current law and practices? Immensely wealthy corporations like Amazon and Google.

What Loeber is effectively saying is that our paying for much of the energy expansion that his company would need is already planned, and if his company doesn’t swoop in and take advantage of us, others will.

I don’t think I am alone in finding this small and unsatisfactory consolation. This is only one of the many reasons that the Eagle Rock data center proposal should die a rapid death.

However, it should be of major concern to small business and residential ratepayers and to public officials in Colleton County and at the Statehouse, both for this data center proposal and those that will come in the future.

~Lynn S. Teague, VP, Issues & Action, League of Women Voters of South Carolina