Owner of failed nuclear plant might use golden parachute fund in settlement

Agreement contingent on Dominion Energy purchasing the South Carolina energy company, Ars Technica , MEGAN GEUSS – 11/27/2018,
Today, South Carolina energy company SCANA and its potential purchaser Dominion Energy reached a settlement with class-action litigants to offer a significant energy bill rate cut in exchange for the litigants dropping a lawsuit over $2 billion in energy bill fees. Attorneys for the class-action members told The Post and Courier that they will accept the deal if it’s approA class-action lawsuit representing these customers argued that they should not have to pay for an unfinished nuclear plant. Interestingly, the deal calls for SCANA to partially pay the settlement with its $115 million “golden parachute” fund, usually reserved to give high-level executives generous severance payments on their way out.

The deal must be approved by a judge, and it’s also contingent on SCANA being purchased by Virginia company Dominion Energy. Dominion appears motivated to purchase SCANA, and as part of today’s proposed settlement, Dominion would offer SCG&E customers a 15-percent customer rate cut that Utility Dive says could cut bills by more than $22 per month. Dominion’s acquisition of SCANA has secured approval from six state and federal regulatory agencies, and now the company is only waiting on approval from South Carolina’s Public Services Commission. South Carolina PSC says it wants to see a 33-percent rate cut for customers.

Even if this settlement is approved, SCANA still faces a shareholder lawsuit saying it misled investors on the progress of Summer’s reactor construction. Additionally, the $2 billion settlement would still leave customers on the hook for an additional “$2.3 billion for two unfinished reactors over the next two decades,” according to The Post and Courier.

The Post and Courier also notes that the settlement and Dominion’s acquisition deal don’t help out customers of Santee Cooper, which was another major owner of the Summer reactor expansion. Additionally, the settlement does not relieve the costs borne by the state’s 20 electric cooperatives, which also shared ownership in the project. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/2-billion-class-action-lawsuit-over-failed-nuclear-plant-sees-settlement-offer/ved

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Energy efficiency – theme for July 2019

Energy efficiency represents the single largest potential contributor to global emissions reduction, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2017). It should be a key part of the global energy strategy, for several reasons:

It could reduce global electric demand by more than 20 per cent, based on current rates in the U.S. power sector, while maintaining high levels of services such as heating and lighting.
It avoids the need for increased energy, capacity and grid services, making it the least expensive way to decarbonise at scale.
It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes.

A dramatic example of the power of energy efficiency is lighting. In 2017 the United States passed the milestone of 1 billion LED and CFL lights installed, avoiding 142 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions, at a cost of about $7 per ton of avoided carbon dioxide. In contrast, the cumulative installed capacity of rooftop solar reached 8,000 MW in 2017, saving 8 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, at a cost of $360 per ton. Lighting efficiency thus yielded almost 18 times the avoided carbon dioxide, at about 2 per cent the cost per ton of rooftop solar.

Google provides another example of the power of energy efficiency. Its data centers now use 50 per cent less energy than the average data center, according to the company. Google also developed an improved chip, the TPU, which performs 83 times better than standard CPUs. The new chip allowed Google to reduce power consumption at its data centers by a factor of 30—far exceeding the effect on Google’s carbon footprint of all of the company’s renewable energy purchases. ” – John Woolard, Eco Business, 10 June 2019

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