Governor Series - interview with SC Liutenant Governor and Gubnatorial Candidate Pamela Evette - Part 2

00:00 Powered by Guzzling Electric. Once again, Charlie James and Joey Hudson. 00:16 And good afternoon. This is the 98.9 WORD Governor Series. I'm Charlie James along with Joey Hudson. Special thanks to our friends at Gosling Electrical Services. We're being joined this afternoon by Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evitt who is running for Governor of South Carolina. Lieutenant Governor, thank you for being with us. South Carolina faces growing energy demand. have uh growing manufacturing facilities, population. Couple cities here in the upstate of South Carolina, the fastest growing cities. 00:45 in the state, what's your plan to keep energy affordable and reliable over the next decade? Well that is something that I've been really focused on for the last few years. I've traveled around the country with RSLC talking on panels about energy and know energy security is national security. think last year with the energy bill that was passed that was a great kind of shot in the arm for us here in South Carolina. 01:11 Right now today, South Carolina, 58 % of our energy has gotten through nuclear. And so the resurrection of VC Summer was a great thing. All of it being done with private equity dollars, so not going to the rate payers, which is, that was a must after what had happened prior. Brookfield was in my office. Probably, again, my weeks all are merging together, probably about four or five weeks ago. 01:39 And you know, they're saying six to six and a half years, we'll have that up and running two reactors going to four. We have the possibility to six reactors. We have six licenses here in the state. It would be a game changer for us as a state. Turning our coal plants into natural gas plants, something that I'm, something I've really liked, gentlemen, I have loved being Lieutenant Governor because I have been able to travel the state and sit with people and find out what's affecting people. 02:08 in their area, you know, in real time, and that's important. So I was doing a roundtable uh down in Myrtle Beach, and there was a developer there that was talking about the pipeline, and he said to me, he said, Lieutenant Governor, you know, we really didn't, we missed the ball with that piece of legislation. I was like, what part of it? And he said, well, we don't have an increased pipe coming into Horry County. 02:36 And with that means that we can't build vertical, you know, we have an energy problem, people are having to resort to propane, we're having, you know, there's gonna be tanks above ground everywhere, it's gonna be an eyesore. And I was like, that was the first time I had ever heard that. Went back to Columbia, did some research, talked to my friends on that committee, and here, the bill to actually... 03:01 Well, it was a lawsuit that was brought, but it was sitting on one of the Supreme Court justice's desks. It just hadn't been signed yet. That got signed, and a few weeks ago, I was standing out at the site where they were putting in the bigger line, actually to go through Georgetown, through Horry County, Myrtle Beach to North Myrtle Beach, um to actually deliver them the energy they need. That is really important as we grow. 03:25 especially with the careers of tomorrow, I believe we're in the middle of an industrial revolution when it comes to what are the careers of tomorrow gonna look like. And as your next governor, I am really focused on one, how do we have the energy we need to do that, which means we have to put things like expanding nuclear on the table, making sure we have enough natural gas to uh support dispatchable energy. um 03:51 And then making sure that our K through 12 system and our higher education system is prepared to um create that workforce. We cannot be behind the eight ball with this because things are changing fast. But energy is going to play a key role into our growth, the type of industries that can come here. And the fact that we are diversifying in that, Joey, ...