Good news: The energy crisis is over in South Carolina. There is no reason for the state and its residents to continue to look into alternative energy sources. Solar? Wind? Hydrogen? Poppycock!

Gas prices have dropped. Some state utilities have lowered the cost of heating oil for this winter. And recently permitted nuclear and coal-fired plants will keep the state out of a projected “energy deficit.”

But not so fast, says state Danny Verdin, R-Laurens and chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. “Inflation in energy costs will come faster and faster over the next 15 years,” Verdin says. “We’re being told that we’re just two years into steep fuel cost increases; we’re already a year into steep food prices inflation.”

As a result, Verdin says his committee and his colleagues in the General Assembly have been looking for a solution to a pending energy crisis, but that a magic bullet hasn’t presented itself.

“Everything, right now, is pointing toward an increased reliance on nuclear power in South Carolina,” he says. “The question now is what is going to bridge the state over to when those plants are online.”

Coal is being hotly debated because it’s inexpensive and available, according to Verdin, but no one is crazy about its carbon-based environmental impact.

Verdin says the solution to increasing the use of alternative energy sources in South Carolina would be a lot easier to find if someone (paging all technophiles) could invent a better energy storage system.

When a city needs more power and its residents flip more switches, traditional energy plants just increase output. Without good storage systems, it’s problematic for solar and wind plants when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t churning.

As a result, solar and wind cannot be counted on for “base load” power generation. But that’s not to say solar and wind won’t soon have their day.

In the desert of California, utilities are planning two solar plants, one 500 megawatts and the other 300 megawatts. The plants, which would sprawl across 2,000 acres, would use solar reflecting technology versus traditional photovoltaic cell technology to generate more power combined than a 600-megawatt coal-burning plant Santee Cooper is planning to build in Florence County.

Laura Varn, spokeswoman for state-owned Santee Cooper, says the reason California can generate solar power in massive plants and South Carolina can’t is geographical differences. “They have deserts,” Varn says. “What part of the state would they have us cover up with a solar plant?”

Varn argues that coal and nuclear opponents don’t look at the whole picture. “If you’re going to worry about quality of life issues,” she says, “then why not ask, how many people would die if there was no electricity? How many people would die in the summer heat because there was no air conditioning, or how many would die in the winter because they couldn’t heat their homes?”

Charlie Sneed, a founder of the 
scgreen.org web site dedicated to serving as a forum for sustainability advocates, says state policy is lacking. “The state Public Service Commission is a joke; the state Office of Regulatory Staff is a joke,” Sneed says, referring to the two offices that permit and oversee utilities operating in South Carolina.

Sneed points out that South Carolina is one of the few states that still doesn’t have a “net metering” law requiring utilities to buy back power generated by their customers.

While Santee Cooper does offer a generous loan program through which family homeowners could buy into a solar package, the problem with photovoltaic cell solar has been that it doesn’t make sense financially, according to several sources.

Many argue that by spreading out PV cells to leased spots on the roofs of buildings and private businesses, solar could, through economies of scale, finally become more attractive in the near future.

Varn says a pilot program doing just that has begun at Coastal Carolina University, and that Santee Cooper was scouting the state for more sites. “But before we invest a lot of money into something like this, we want to make sure we’re going to get a lot out of it,” she says.

Verdin says he is all for net metering, or anything along the lines of the “entrepreneurial spirit” that could allow the market to decide.

But can the market decide when the state has given preliminary approval for two more nuclear reactors the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Fairfield County to cost between $10 billion and $12 billion? Can the market decide when one technology gets billions and billions, while alternative energy only gets tens of millions?

Bill Davis is the editor of SC Statehouse Report; he can be reached at billdavis@statehousereport.com. Let us know what you think: Email news@free-times.com.