Energy, Power, and Profit: Rep. Robert Reese Challenges South Carolina’s Utility System
- Javar Juarez
- May 24
- 7 min read
Rep. Robert Reese Says Utility Companies Have Been Given “Carte Blanche” While Families Sink Under Rising Bills
By Javar Juarez | CUBNSC | Energy Justice
Hopkins, S.C. — There are moments in politics when a legislator stops sounding like a politician and starts sounding like an alarm bell.
South Carolina State Representative Robert Reese, a first-term Democrat representing House District 70 in Richland and Kershaw Counties, has become exactly that: an alarm bell warning about what he believes is one of the most overlooked economic crises facing working families in South Carolina.
At the center of Reese’s concern is a simple but devastating question: Why are South Carolinians paying increasingly unaffordable utility bills while utility companies continue gaining more authority, flexibility, and leverage over ratepayers?
For Reese, the issue is not abstract policy. It is deeply personal, deeply rural, and increasingly urgent.
“The reason that this legislation came about was because I kept getting complaints from constituents about high utility bills,” Reese explained. “Consumers felt like their energy bills have been skyrocketing.”
Those complaints, he says, came from elderly residents on fixed incomes, rural families already struggling with stagnant wages, and households forced to make impossible choices between medicine, food, and electricity.
“Sometimes it’s medicine, sometimes it’s food, sometimes it’s their phone bill,” Reese said. “They wind up juggling these bills.”
What Reese discovered after entering office shocked him.
A Legislature That Expanded Utility Power
Reese repeatedly points to South Carolina’s Energy Security Act, House Bill 3309, a sweeping energy measure passed during his first year in office that lawmakers said was necessary to prepare the state for rapid population growth, industrial expansion, and rising energy demands tied to artificial intelligence and massive data centers.
Backers of the legislation argued the bill would modernize South Carolina’s energy infrastructure and help utilities build future generating capacity faster. The law expanded pathways for utility companies to recover construction and infrastructure costs from customers while streamlining parts of the regulatory process surrounding future energy projects.
Reese voted against the bill.
He argued at the time that the legislation lacked meaningful consumer protections and handed utility companies too much authority over future rate structures while ordinary South Carolinians were already struggling under rising monthly utility costs.
Now, nearly a year after its passage, Reese says the consequences of the legislation are beginning to come into focus.
In a candid political strategy discussion centered around energy policy and the proposed Dominion Energy and NextEra Energy merger, Reese described the legislation as an “alley oop” for utility companies.
“The energy companies crafted that bill,” Reese said. “They gave themselves carte blanche authority to be able to then go at the ratepayers.”
His criticism is not simply about current utility bills. Reese argues the Energy Security Act fundamentally reshaped South Carolina’s energy economy around future industrial demand rather than the immediate needs of residents.
“The capacity demands are not for residential capacity,” Reese warned. “We got enough energy to fuel all of the residents that we have now… They are talking about capacity for industry… for these data centers.”
According to Reese, South Carolinians are now being positioned to subsidize billions in future infrastructure expansion intended largely to support corporate growth and AI-driven energy consumption.
“Who pays for that building?” Reese asked. “The consumers. South Carolinians.”
The Bill Reese Says Could Change the Conversation
In response, Reese introduced House Bill 5282, the “Utility Billing Accountability and Consumer Protection Act of 2026.”
The legislation represents one of the most aggressive consumer-focused utility reform efforts introduced in South Carolina in recent years.
The bill would prohibit utilities from changing billing or payment practices without approval from the Public Service Commission. It would also require public hearings, customer notifications, quarterly reporting, and independent audits of utility billing systems.
Most notably, the legislation directly addresses something few state policies openly confront: the disproportionate burden utility costs place on rural and low-income communities.
The bill states that residents in rural South Carolina experience “disproportionately high energy burdens” because of lower incomes, aging housing stock, and limited utility choices.
Reese says this reality becomes impossible to ignore once you begin listening to the people actually paying the bills.
“We have lower household incomes,” Reese explained. “So even if South Carolina’s energy costs may appear lower than some neighboring states, that doesn’t mean our residents aren’t paying a higher percentage of their household income just to keep the lights on.”
The legislation would require utilities to disclose data on shutoffs, arrears, reconnections, and payment plans, while mandating audits of unexplained billing increases since 2024.
For Reese, transparency itself is a form of consumer protection.
“If I understand that there’s going to be an increase in my utility bill, I can better plan for that in my own household,” he said. “Citizens of South Carolina should be privy to that information.”
The Merger Looming Over South Carolina
But Reese’s warnings go far beyond billing transparency.
He is increasingly focused on what could become one of the largest energy mergers in the nation: the proposed acquisition involving Dominion Energy and NextEra Energy.
During the recorded discussion, Reese expressed concern that the groundwork for such corporate consolidation may have already been laid through prior legislative action.
NextEra Energy already operates one of the nation’s largest utility and power generation systems. Combined with Dominion’s footprint across the Mid-Atlantic and South Carolina, the merger could dramatically reshape energy governance, infrastructure expansion, and rate-setting authority throughout the region.
For Reese, the issue is not simply corporate growth. It is who ultimately pays for it.
“They haven’t started to use what the energy act has given them the authority to do in rate hikes,” Reese warned. “We got a new company coming to South Carolina with the right to raise rates like they want to.”
Rural South Carolina in the Crosshairs
Perhaps most striking is Reese’s repeated focus on rural communities.
As co-chair of the South Carolina Rural Caucus, Reese sees energy affordability not simply as an economic issue, but as a survival issue for communities already struggling with poverty, housing instability, and aging infrastructure.
He worries that South Carolina’s rush toward industrial energy expansion will disproportionately burden rural and Black communities while wealthier areas resist similar projects locally.
“This is why discussions around data centers are so critically important,” Reese said. “Not only are the electric companies charging us on the front end about building the capacity… when these companies come, they take advantage of our critical resources, water.”
His warning is stark: South Carolina risks becoming a state where ordinary residents absorb rising utility costs so corporations can power AI infrastructure and industrial expansion.
Meanwhile, Reese argues, lawmakers and voters are often distracted by cultural and partisan conflicts while fundamental affordability issues remain unresolved.
“You couldn’t call a special session to lower people’s energy bills or secure the senior property tax homestead exemption,” Reese said during the discussion. “Those are the kinds of things that would actually affect people’s lives on a regular basis.”
A First-Term Legislator Challenging the System
Reese openly admits he entered the legislature without deep expertise in energy policy.
“I’m a first-term legislator,” he said. “I’ve never been in politics before.”
Yet that outsider perspective may be exactly why his warnings are resonating.
Rather than approaching the issue as a career policymaker, Reese speaks about energy costs the way ordinary South Carolinians experience them: as monthly pressure, household anxiety, and an unavoidable expense that never disappears.
“You might pay your house off, you might pay your car off,” Reese said. “But you’re always going to be paying energy costs.”
And if lawmakers fail to act?
“We’re going to find ourselves subjugated to those utility companies and not having much control over how much of our household incomes is going toward energy.”
For Reese, this is no longer simply about utility policy.
It is about who South Carolina’s economy is ultimately being built for — and whether ordinary people will still be able to afford to live in it.
Javar Juarez is an award winning investigative journalist and publisher at the Columbia Urban Broadcast Network (CUBNSC), an independent news outlet covering South Carolina politics, civic affairs, and community issues. He serves as President of Capital City A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI) in South Carolina, where he leads grassroots civic engagement and organizational advocacy. His reporting is rooted in Black American history and the political landscape of the American South.
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