South Carolina

Energy/Power is most stressed: the legislative debate repeatedly centers on who pays for new generation, transmission, and distribution, plus whether utilities can shift large-load costs onto residential customers. Water/Geology is the secondary pressure point: bills require water reporting and contingency plans, while ACE Basin and Marion County disputes focus on water use and drought resilience.

Governor: Rom Reddy (R) has publicly opposed data centers and framed them as a state sovereignty issue in a May 2026 viewpoint; Mullins McLeod (D) attacked proposed data centers in Colleton County as "death stars" in Dec. 2025. Commissioner of Agriculture: Republican candidates Fred West, Danny Lee Ford, and Jeremy Cannon discussed protecting farmland, water, and farm economics from data center development in an April 2026 forum. No 2026 U.S. Senate or U.S. House race with a clearly documented data-center-specific campaign posture was identified.

State-level moratorium is pending, not enacted: H.5286 would bar final approvals, permits, incentives, and related actions for new data centers until Jan. 1, 2028, and was introduced Feb. 26, 2026 and remained in the House as of the latest status. H.5526 is a related House moratorium bill described by MASC as prohibiting governmental entities from acting on data-center permits until the General Assembly creates a comprehensive oversight process. No enacted statewide ban was identified. Local opposition and litigation in Colleton County have functioned as de facto pauses on major projects, but no nationally significant local moratorium was identified.

S.867 (Data Center Development Act) would put PSC in charge of utility rates and cost-allocation for data centers, require financial assurances, and protect existing ratepayers from infrastructure cost allocation; it received a favorable Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources report on Apr. 28, 2026 and remained under consideration. H.5215 (Ratepayer Protection and Large Load Customer Infrastructure Accountability Act) would prohibit utilities from recovering incremental large-load costs from other customer classes, require 20-year minimum service commitments, demand-response participation or higher firm-service charges, annual reporting, public hearings, local zoning certification, and water plans; it remained in the House. Senate budget language in April 2026 also sought to block state incentives for new data centers and require monthly water-use reporting, but the incentive ban did not advance into the final Senate budget posture.

None identified.

1) Eagle Rock Partners / Thomas & Hutton campus, Colleton County near Walterboro: ~850-acre proposed data center campus in the ACE Basin; contested by SELC, landowners, and local residents; litigation filed against county ordinance; status contested and not fully resolved. 2) TigerDC / Project Spero, Spartanburg County (Tyger River Industrial Park): proposed ~$3 billion AI data center; drew protests and public backlash; later withdrawn/abandoned by the developer. 3) Stream Data Centers / Eagle Myra / Project Liberty, Marion County off Industrial Park Road near Highway 501: county approved ordinance/FILOT in Jan. 2026; project triggered resident backlash over secrecy and water/power concerns; status proposed/approved locally but controversial.

Southern Environmental Law Center; South Carolina Environmental Law Project; South Carolina Energy Justice Coalition; League of Women Voters of South Carolina; local resident coalitions in Colleton County, Spartanburg County, and Marion County.

Inclusion criteria satisfied: Construction labor. Upstate (Greenville/Spartanburg) and Lowcountry hyperscale buildouts; SC building trades positions. Primary-source verification pending — full content in v1.2. Sub-state and labor-market analysis available in the full RAIL briefing.

Emerging cluster. South Carolina has multiple large proposed projects and active statewide legislation, but it is still smaller than major national hubs; reported project pipeline includes at least several very large campuses and a state project tally of roughly 6 projects / about 1.6 GW of announced load in one industry tracking source.

"Google or Facebook do not need state incentives to come here at all" — Sen. Ed Sutton, quoted by The State on Apr. 25, 2026, while arguing for a budget proviso to block new state incentives for data centers.

South Carolina Legislature S.867, South Carolina Legislature H.5215, South Carolina Legislature H.5286, The State, Southern Environmental Law Project, ABC News 4