Sept. 18, 2026
Weston Adams Discusses Data Center Energy Demands with South Carolina Public Radio
South Carolina Business Review
Nelson Mullins partner Weston Adams was featured in the South Carolina Business Review episode, “Protecting consumer utility rates from data center pressure,” discussing what effects data centers will have on utility rates in South Carolina following the Ratepayer Protection Act.
During the interview, Adams discussed proposed legislation aimed at giving state utility commissions greater ability to address the costs associated with power generation, transmission, and distribution for data centers.
“There are parallel bills in the House and Senate. Incidentally, there are actually a number of bills at the state level in South Carolina that sort of get to the same point. But effectively, what the federal bill is trying to do is to enable state utility commissions to address the sharing and allocation of cost around generation of power, transmission of power, and distribution of power. And how do you allocate those costs related to data centers that are either in the generation bucket, the transmission bucket, or the distribution bucket?” Adams said. “And effectively, what these proposed bills are doing is sort of sending down to state utility commissions some guidance in enabling statutory provision to allow those state utility commissions to more easily address these items. And these are very complicated issues.”
He noted that many technology companies and data center developers are already taking steps to cover their share of energy infrastructure costs, while also exploring renewable energy and other generation sources.
During the interview, Adams offered an inside look into how tech companies and developers are offsetting utility concerns.
“You also see that a number of these tech companies have essentially commitments to 100% offset of the natural gas usage on the CCGT units that are being built, and they're offsetting that 100% with renewable power,” shared Adams. “So you often will see a deal where they are building a gas plant or gas plants, but they are offsetting 100% of that through some combination of solar, wind, geothermal.”
Adams also discussed the role nuclear energy could play in meeting growing power demand, pointing to the nuclear expertise already established in South Carolina and North Carolina and the potential for small modular nuclear reactors and the Savannah River Site to contribute to future energy development.
