Santee Cooper Forces South Carolinians to Stick With Coal in 2025 IRP Update

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Santee Cooper has released its 2025 Integrated Resource Plan update, rolling back the retirement of several coal plants while refusing to invest in sufficient low-cost renewable energy.

The big changes in Santee Cooper's updated long-range energy plan released Tuesday include:

• Delaying the Winyah coal-burning power plant's retirement until 2033 and possibly through 2035 under the utility's preferred plan. This move will expose customers to volatile fuel costs and ongoing operation and maintenance costs on an aging and increasingly expensive coal plant. This is the latest in a series of retirement date delays for Winyah, which was supposed to retire in 2028.
• Failing to commit to retiring its costly, polluting Cross coal-burning power plant because the utility wants to hedge against volatile gas costs, which is why Sierra Club has called on the utility to move to fixed-cost renewable energy resources that have no fuel costs.
• Adding a massive amount of new gas-burning power plants with a corresponding decrease in renewable energy; and
• Slashing its solar investment plans from 2,600 megawatts (MW) down to a disappointing 800 megawatts in its latest plan, even though solar developers bid 3,000 MW into Santee Cooper's RFPs. For context, a single megawattcan power between 400-900 homes.

In response, Paul Black, Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Senior Campaign Organizer, released the following statement:

"The people of South Carolina deserve to live without coal plants polluting their air and water and destroying their health. By keeping the Winyah coal plant online until 2035-and giving no retirement date to the Cross coal plant-Santee Cooper is forcing South Carolinians to continue to pay more for their energy, not just in their regular bills, but in the updates these outdated plants will need to function.

"And its plans for the future are no better. Instead of investing in more affordable, renewable energy like solar and wind, Santee Cooper is instead resting its hopes on massive gas plant buildouts that will cost billions of dollars, and leaving families and businesses, who are already struggling in this economy, responsible for paying the bill."

About the Sierra Club

The Sierra Club is America's largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit https://www.sierraclub.org.