Don't let SCANA kill our veterans' S.C. solar jobs

Over the next several weeks, six state legislators, including Sen. Sean Bennett, R-Summerville; Sen. Hugh Leatherman, R- Florence; and Sen. John Matthews, D-Bowman, are tasked with finalizing the state budget, which includes language to promote solar choice and industry jobs in South Carolina.

What's at stake here, besides promoting more customer choice? Thousands of South Carolina jobs for both civilians and the men and women who served in America's military.

As President Trump has said, "All Americans agree that we must do everything we can to help put our service men and women on a path to success as they leave active duty." These six legislators deciding the future of thousands of solar jobs in South Carolina must be aware: Solar strongly favors veterans, and that's a fact.

This is because as our troops have returned from patrolling the streets of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, they have flooded into America's solar industry. In 2016, while producing only 1.35 percent of electricity nationally, solar employed twice as many veterans as those working in natural gas generation and four times as many as coal power generation.

Here in the Palmetto State, while veterans constitute only 8.2 percent of our state's total workforce, they fill 10.1 percent of South Carolina's solar jobs. Which means that every time a new South Carolina solar job is created, we are 23 percent more likely to be employing a military veteran than for other new jobs. And these are well-paid jobs, with installers averaging $20 to $25 per hour, which is at least $2 more per hour than the national average for high school graduates.

Three thousand people are employed in South Carolina's solar energy industry. This is because solar is a job-generating machine. Consider that solar generates less than 0.5 percent of South Carolina's electricity but employs more than 20 percent of all South Carolinians working in power generation. Here's another way to look at it: Powering 1,000 games at either Williams-Brice Stadium or Death Valley with either natural gas or coal would create only four new jobs. Yet to illuminate either of these stadiums 1,000 times with solar would create thousands of new jobs.

And it would still cost no more money to use solar than coal or natural gas. In fact, just this month a study conducted by President Trump's Department of Energy found that if solar and wind produced half of our national electricity, "U.S. wholesale energy prices could fall 25 percent or more."

Since the V.C. Summer disaster, South Carolinians want energy choice and no more shenanigans from the utilities. We already face the highest electricity bills in the country. We already have to pay for a failed nuclear plant. All of this is thanks to SCANA and its political cronies in Columbia.

Should the six budget negotiators decide not to extend solar customer choice incentives, South Carolina's military veterans will bear a disproportionate share of SCANA's manipulations. We, and our state legislators, owe our veterans more than that. We, and our state legislators, owe our veterans an energy system of the future - one that promotes choice, competition and new ways of doing business.

Jonathan Morgenstein served twice in Iraq with the Marine Corps. He is founder and CEO of Empowerment Solar LLC and is a fellow with the Truman National Security Project. James Koehler is vice president at Charleston-based Palmetto Solar, a faculty member at Georgetown University and a fellow with the Truman National Security Project.