CEO Letter

G. Thomas Upshaw | President & CEO

Palmetto Electric Cooperative is joining with the state’s 19 other electric cooperatives in a plan to invest up to $10 million per year toward renewable energy and energy-efficiency measures. The investment represents up to 1.1 percent of budgeted gross revenue for Central Electric Power Cooperative, which supplies and transmits power to Palmetto Electric Cooperative. “We’re committed to helping our members, our community and our environment,” said G. Thomas Upshaw, president and CEO of Palmetto Electric Cooperative.

The record investment includes a three-pronged approach to improving the environment and saving energy. The following measures represent the beginning of this process.

• Encouraging homegrown renewable energy — Palmetto Electric Cooperative will offer a pilot program for net metering for members who wish to install their own renewable energy generation facilities, such as solar systems, in their homes. Net metering will reward consumers who produce more electricity than they use by allowing them to sell the excess to their cooperative. The program will encourage the entrepreneurial spirit of cooperative members and provide a working laboratory for future renewable generation partnerships.

• Producing efficiencies to save energy and money — Palmetto Electric Cooperative will join with the state’s other cooperatives to develop a program to place energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) in the home of every cooperative member in the state, approximately seven million bulbs within 10 years. CFLs use 75 percent less energy and last up to 10 times longer than standard light bulbs. At completion, the energy savings from the program would equal the energy used by 35,000 homes.

• Investing resources in clean energy research — Palmetto Electric Cooperative has joined with the state’s other cooperatives to invest $2.5 million into a partnership with the University of South Carolina to develop technology that reduces carbon dioxide and other emissions from coal-fired power plants. Coal remains the least expensive and most plentiful resource for generating electricity, but its environmental impact is substantial. Plans call for university researchers to develop affordable technologies that will make coal cleaner and more efficient.

The initiatives follow two major studies commissioned on behalf of Palmetto Electric Cooperative. The first study explored the potential in South Carolina for producing power from renewable resources. The second study researched the amount of energy that cooperatives and their members could save by using energy-efficiency measures.

“These studies give us a starting point,” said Upshaw. “They show us what potential exists for developing and using renewable resources and what measures we can take to increase and encourage the efficient use of energy.”

Renewable resources study — Surprising results came out of the study on the potential for use of renewable resources in South Carolina as a whole. For one, the largest contribution to renewable energy production would come from burning wood biomass, which includes logging residue, commercial thinning and urban wood waste. Biomass is generally accepted as a renewable resource; however, this resource comes with its own significant environmental impact.

A second significant conclusion of the study showed that if the environmental impact could be overcome, the total renewable resources (biomass plus other renewables) that could practically be used would meet only three to five percent of South Carolina’s total electrical energy requirements.

Upshaw said, “From the standpoint of potential, the renewable resources identified in the study located in South Carolina could produce enough energy to meet the energy needs of 200,000 to 300,000 homes. That sounds like a lot and it is. But in 2005, there were approximately two million households in South Carolina, and we’re adding thousands more each year.”

Energy efficiency study — There are encouraging results from the energy-efficiency study which revealed significant energy savings potential for consumers served by Palmetto Electric Cooperative. (This study, unlike the renewable resources study, focused only on electric cooperatives.) The report suggests that the maximum potential, given the necessary incentives and marketing, for cost-effective savings — that is, savings that exceeded implementation costs — would be between 5 and 20 percent of the total projected power sales by 2017.

The report also determined that one of the greatest opportunities for saving energy in electric cooperative members’ homes would be the replacing of standard lighting with energy-efficient lighting such as compact fluorescents.

Upshaw noted, “We know we need to look beyond traditional means for providing power. We also know we need to encourage our members to help us by using energy resources wisely.”