S3E22: State Senator Tom Davis discusses his pro-competitive legislative agenda for South Carolina electricity consumers

State Senator Tom Davis of South Carolina is a rare breed in politics today. At a time when no other state is actively considering competitive reforms to their traditionally monopoly-regulated utility sectors, and many politicians in states already benefiting from competition in electricity are promoting anticompetitive measures, he is leading the push for his state's consumers and economy to benefit from greater customer choice and competition among electricity providers. 

The Republican lawmaker discusses how the multibillion-dollar V.C. Summer nuclear debacle in South Carolina in 2017 jolted him and other Palmetto state lawmakers to take a deep dive into utility regulation. He provides specific details of the electricity reform legislative proposal he will unveil Nov. 30 for consideration by the Legislature during next year's session. A political pragmatist, Davis looks to move the entrenched monopoly steamship by degrees.

"The ideal at the end of the day is going to be a system where providers have to compete and the ones that can generate power most efficiently and most cheaply and most reliably win, and that consumers have choices on their side," Davis says. But he suggests it's not politically realistic to think the ideal outcome can be accomplished in one fell swoop.

"I think it's important for us to move incrementally" in pursuit of the ideal during next year's legislative session, Davis says. Calling politics "the art of the possible," he described a legislative process that ponders, "What can we get across the finish line? What can we get out of subcommittee and full committee and if it gets to the floor, what can we do to overcome anybody who wants to object or to filibuster?"

With 2024 being an election year, Davis says he is hitting the ground running to  accomplish legislative objectives before campaigning and politics become a distraction. "2024 is going to be an incredibly busy year from an electoral perspective. And so that's why it's important right now . . . to focus on some of these issues before we all get swept up in the politics of campaigns and elections," he says. "It's important to dial our energy into, and our focus into, what are some important public policy reforms to accomplish in 2024. That's why I'm placing so much emphasis on this right now because I do think there's a window of opportunity for us."

Regardless of how far along the continuum to a competitive ideal the legislative process allows for next year, it won't be the endgame, Davis suggests, promising that subsequent legislative sessions will see further efforts to reform the state's electricity sector to produce better outcomes for consumers by moving the state ever further along the continuum to a competitive ideal. "It's absolutely essential that we bring to bear on that system of power generation more market forces, more competition, because you're not going to get the best technologies, you're not going to get the lowest costs, you're not going to move toward what I think is a better future if you don't have that dynamic working in that space."

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