Hotlist: May 8, 2025
Friends,
As the gavel falls on the 2025 legislative session, we want to reflect on a season of hard work, spirited debate, and determined advocacy for the people and places that make South Carolina special.
This year, CVSC embarked on an agenda rooted in a vision for a thriving, vibrant future for all South Carolinians. From championing sustainable planning tools through our SC Prosper & Preserve initiative to securing additional funding for PFAS remediation and improving energy policy, our team has worked tirelessly to advance policies that protect our air, land, water, and quality of life.
We are deeply grateful to the lawmakers, community leaders, and advocates who supported these efforts. Your partnership has been invaluable. At the same time, we recognize that progress is built not just through agreement, but also through discussion, and we remain committed to fostering collaboration with all who care about the future of the Palmetto State.
Below is a summary of many of the issues we were tracking this legislative session. Read more to see where we ended up and what’s next!
South Carolina’s energy future
At the start of the year, the House reintroduced H.3309—the same dangerous, widely criticized energy bill we opposed last session. It revived harmful provisions that would weaken oversight, reduce accountability for monopoly utilities, and lock South Carolina into a dirty, expensive energy future.
Throughout the committee process, conservation groups, community members, and consumer advocates gave hours of testimony urging legislators to reject the anti-customer and anti-environment provisions and adopt innovative solutions that would protect customers, promote competition, advance clean energy, and protect our environment.
Yesterday, H.3309 passed both chambers and now heads to the Governor’s desk. Thanks to persistent advocacy, many of the bill’s most damaging elements were removed, preserving key consumer and environmental protections and supporting continued clean energy growth. Still, the final bill remains a mixed bag—it includes policies that will lead to annual increases in electric bills while also paving the way for costly, fossil fuel-heavy projects.
So, let’s unpack this mixed bag.
The Good: A number of positive provisions made it into the final version of legislation that now heads to the Governor’s desk, including:
- Policies that increase competition and advance clean energy by requiring utilities to pursue low-cost solar and storage projects identified in their long-term plans. This ‘competitive procurement’ process will hold utilities accountable and drive down costs by ensuring they compete on price, helping meet South Carolina’s energy needs while reducing pollution.
- Provisions that preserve existing protections for customers and the environment by closing major loopholes from earlier drafts of legislation that could have undermined South Carolina’s environmental permitting system. In addition, a robust coalition successfully advocated for the removal of provisions that would have weakened oversight of monopoly utilities at the Public Service Commission (PSC) and stripped citizens of their right to challenge harmful projects threatening their air, water, and health.
- Elements that expand business access to clean energy by making it easier for South Carolina companies to generate their own electricity. These changes, like increasing the size limit on ‘net metering’ projects, give more businesses who generate their own power a fair deal.
The Bad: In addition to the positive advancements noted above, the final bill contains several dirty, dangerous, and expensive provisions that CVSC continues to have concerns about. We opposed these provisions throughout the entire legislative session and will continue to fight their implementation once they become law. These provisions include:
- Allowing automatic, annual rate increases under the “Electric Rate Stabilization” section of the bill, which allows monopoly utilities like Duke and Dominion to automatically raise customer rates if their profits dip, avoiding the traditional regulatory process. Guaranteeing profits in this way discourages common-sense cost savings and efficiency efforts, biasing energy decisions towards expensive infrastructure over low-cost clean energy solutions.
- Authorizing Dominion and Santee Cooper to jointly pursue a massive natural gas project in Canadys, SC. While the final version no longer includes language that would have short-circuited regulatory review, the project could still lock South Carolina into decades of expensive, polluting infrastructure. Thankfully, the bill’s language still allows regulators at the Office of Regulatory Staff and the PSC to fully evaluate lower-cost, lower-impact alternatives that better protect surrounding communities and the environment. CVSC and our partners will engage heavily in the permitting and implementation process around this facility to ensure community voices are heard and the environment, including the ACE Basin, is protected.
Unfinished Business: The debate regarding this far-reaching energy bill included many topics. While many were included in the final bill, a number of key provisions that CVSC and our partners supported ended up on the cutting room floor. We were encouraged by debate from our allies in the Senate and House regarding these provisions and secured commitments from many to continue work on these issues next year and beyond. These areas of unfinished business include:
- Strong energy efficiency language that will help thousands of South Carolinians lower their energy bills and reduce the need to build expensive new power plants and infrastructure. With South Carolina consistently ranking near the bottom in energy efficiency, bold action is needed to benefit both customers and the environment.
- Data center customer safeguards that ensure electric customers are not footing the bill for new power plants and infrastructure required by this energy-intensive industry. We hope senators follow through on their commitments to tackle this next year, as other states have already enacted these common-sense protections.
- Basic landowner notification requirements, like public hearings and advanced notice, are required when utilities take private property for energy infrastructure through eminent domain. Without this, landowners may be left in the dark about their property’s fate until it’s too late, with few options for recourse.
We know many feel conflicted by these results, but we need to name the progress where it happened, highlight the failures of the legislation, and shine a spotlight on the areas of continued focus. Thanks to your advocacy, the most harmful parts of this bill were eliminated or weakened. In a political environment where misinformation on clean energy and environmental protection is rampant, the groundswell of public pressure forced the Senate and House to address key issues and adopt several thoughtful improvements.
Through this multi-year energy debate, you and conservation-minded voters from across the state clearly stated that South Carolinians are watching, demanding better, and seeing an essential role for clean energy in our future. This is not the end; it’s a checkpoint. The momentum we built this session gives us something tangible to carry forward. In the months ahead, we will continue our clean energy work with a focus on:
- Accountability: We’ll hold both legislators and utilities accountable, highlighting actions taken by state legislators on this bill, engaging in implementation efforts from this legislation, and pushing back against utility overreach, unnecessary rate increases, and environmental harm.
- Advocacy: We’ll keep fighting for what was left out—stronger energy efficiency policies, affordability protections, and removing barriers to allow South Carolina businesses to meet their own energy needs with clean energy.
- Engagement: We’ll continue organizing, sharing updates, and creating opportunities for you to stay involved in building a clean, affordable energy future for all South Carolinians.
Sustainable growth solutions
Earlier this year, CVSC unveiled SC Prosper & Preserve. This initiative offers a solution to South Carolina’s unprecedented growth and the negative impacts of sprawl on our state’s natural landscapes. It consists of two tools: Concurrent Infrastructure Requirements (CIR) and Transferable Development Rights (TDR), which would allow local governments and municipalities to resist overdevelopment.
Among the proposed TDR bills (H.4146 and S.288), S.288 gained significant traction, successfully advancing to the Senate floor, where a Senator aligned with developers contested the bill, stalling it for now. CVSC will continue to educate the Senate on the value of this bill and build our stakeholder support to overcome that challenge and move to a floor vote next session.
The CIR bills (S.227 and H.4050) also garnered widespread support from stakeholders and legislators on both sides of the aisle. Notably, Tom Davis, the sponsor of S.227, has indicated his interest in further strengthening and emboldening the bill’s language. Similarly, during testimony hearings, H.4050 also received broad stakeholder support from municipal and county government officials, health organizations, and conservation groups. Despite this broad support, the voices of a few developer-friendly special interest groups were able to push back, stalling H.4050 in the House subcommittee until next session. Moving forward, CVSC is committed to amplifying the voices of the people who live and work in communities that are feeling firsthand the effects of this growth.
While neither bill crossed the finish line this year, we are encouraged by the support from stakeholders and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers who see the need to provide local tools to manage growth and prevent overdevelopment urgently. In the months ahead, CVSC will engage with partners, local leaders, and stakeholders to refine these solutions and grow public support.
Success for clean water
Across South Carolina, toxic forever chemicals like PFAS, found in everyday items from non-stick cookware to food packaging, contaminate drinking water sources. These dangerous chemicals are linked to cancer, reproductive health risks, and other serious health hazards. Private well owners and small public water systems are particularly vulnerable yet least equipped for the expensive testing and filtration.
At CVSC, we believe that all South Carolinians should have access to clean, potable water. That’s why we helped establish the PFOS, PFOA, and Emerging Contaminants Remediation Fund (the PFAS Fund) in 2022 to meet a clear funding gap for private well owners and small public water systems. This vital fund has already facilitated testing for over 800 private wells and provided filtration assistance where PFAS levels were dangerously high.
Building on this success, CVSC was able to make changes to the state budget that free up existing money in the PFAS Fund for private well owners and small public water systems, ensuring the PFAS Fund will continue to fill this critical funding gap well into the future and put state dollars to good use. This effort received strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate and now awaits final budget approval in a post-sine die conference committee this summer.
While the session may be over, the work is far from done. Our game plan for next year begins now. In the months ahead, we’ll refine our priorities, strengthen coalitions, and listen closely to the needs of communities across South Carolina. Just as importantly, we’ll provide ways for you to stay engaged and informed on the most pressing environmental issues shaping our state.