Energy efficiency report: S.C. can create 22,000 green jobs, save $5B in utility bills
November 12, 2009 by senatormcconnell
A report released today by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy has crafted an economic development strategy that could create 22,000 jobs in South Carolina by 2025.
The report, titled South Carolina’s Energy Future: Minding its Efficiency Resources, details specific savings and job creation that could come from the state’s efforts toward energy efficiency. It laid out several electricity and water policy recommendations that would help.
“We can use this research to send us on a bright and efficient path,” said S.C. Sen. Glenn McConnell, who was among a group of leaders assembled today at the Half Moon Outfitters distribution center in North Charleston. Read more
S.C. 7th in nation in electricity use
November 12, 2009 by senatormcconnell
South Carolina likes its electricity; on average, a person in South Carolina uses 14,500 kilowatt hours a year compared with the national average of 11,000, the seventh highest in the nation.
A new study released Wednesday said South Carolinians could save $5.1 billion on their electric and water bills through aggressive energy- and water-efficiency programs.
In its report, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy said these programs also could generate 22,000 new jobs by 2025. The group unveiled its study in North Charleston at Half-Moon Outfitters’ warehouse, a building with solar panels and other energy-efficiency features.
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Boeing move could spread across state
November 6, 2009 by senatormcconnell
Boeing Co. delivered a dream to South Carolina on Wednesday, saying it will open a second assembly line for its long-delayed 787 jetliner in North Charleston.
The news was viewed by elected officials and business leaders as an economic shot in the arm unsurpassed since BMW built its only North American manufacturing facility in the Upstate 15 years ago.
Don Schunk, research economist at Coastal Carolina University, said Boeing’s announcement would have the same widespread economic impact on the state that BMW’s did.
While Boeing didn’t specify the amount of its economic investment, or the number of jobs that will be created, two state senators involved in talks with Boeing said the company will employ more than 3,000 in the first year with a capital investment of more than $1 billion.
BMW’s payroll numbered 1,900 with an initial capital investment of $444 million when it began operations in Greer in 1994.
Boeing is expected to begin construction of its plant in the next month, legislators said, and hopes to begin producing jetliners in 2011.
The deal also marks a triumph for Gov. Mark Sanford, who has been under unceasing pressure to resign since he admitted to an extramarital affair in June and questions were raised about his travel practices.
“Boeing’s decision to expand their presence in our state with an infusion of jobs and capital investment — the largest announcement in South Carolina history — represents not only enormously good news for our state’s economy, but also a telling dividend from our state’s continued efforts to better our business climate,” Sanford said.
“Just as the similarly monumental BMW investment catalyzed a now extensive automotive presence across South Carolina more than 15 years ago, we believe Boeing landing decisively in North Charleston will spur on an already growing aerospace hub in our state,” Sanford said. Read more
SC dreams of Boeing supplier boom
November 6, 2009 by senatormcconnell
A big piece of South Carolina’s economic puzzle is in place.
Chicago-based Boeing Co. announced late Wednesday that it will open a second assembly line for its 250-seat 787 Dreamliner jet in North Charleston.
Now the mystery is where all of the other little pieces will fit.
Upstate officials hope Boeing will follow German automaker BMW’s path by bringing a supplier base and thousands of residual jobs to the state.
“We know that we in the Upstate have benefited from BMW from the beginning,” said Darryl Parker, dean of the George Dean Johnson Jr. College of Business and Economics at the University of South Carolina Upstate. “Their announcement was a game-changer for the state. Boeing’s announcement is the first thing I’ve seen since that has that same potential. It remains to be seen whether that potential will be realized, but it definitely has that possibility.”
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Bringing Boeing to S.C.THE ART OF THE DEAL
November 6, 2009 by senatormcconnell
How political rivals, tenacious pursuit, ironclad silence and a little bit of luck produced a monumental victory
This momentous scene — state leaders hugging and crying as Gov. Mark Sanford signed with 10 commemorative pens the legislation that landed Boeing’s plant in North Charleston — came only after six years of patient courtship.
Boeing had considered locating its first 787 Dreamliner assembly line on that chunk of property near Charleston International Airport in 2003. Unable to woo the aerospace giant from its home near Seattle at that time, state business leaders immediately looked toward a second chance.
The tenacious suitor chased its prize at air shows in Paris and London and to hushed meetings in Charleston. The climax arrived Wednesday, with a bold promise made from the Statehouse floor.
Just minutes before the end of that business day, Boeing executives called an unnamed company official as he sat in Sen. Glenn McConnell’s office. He shared the decision that jolted Washington state: For its second assembly line, the company had chosen South Carolina.
Olympus to Gemini
When Boeing first took notice of North Charleston, the deal became known as “Project Olympus.” According to Charleston County economic development director Steve Dykes, most people involved didn’t blame the company for sticking with its Washington roots. The mere consideration paid off later for the Lowcountry, when it attracted Vought Aircraft Industries Inc. and Global Aeronautica to make fuselages for the Dreamliner at the airport site.
“We’ve kind of known ever since Vought landed here that this was a possibility,” Dykes said.
Around the time Boeing took over the Vought plant last summer, Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor called Dykes to notify him that “Project Gemini,” or the second assembly line, had been activated.
While readying the site for Vought years earlier, the Commerce Department’s project manager, Jack Ellenberg, had made sure to get the entire property permitted just in case. Then he and Dykes and others called on Boeing at the European air shows to ask, like an attentive server, if the company needed anything.
Ellenberg, who worked to bring BMW, Michelin and Google to South Carolina, supposes that part of South Carolina’s appeal came from its consistency.
“Companies can pick up the phone if they have a question,” Ellenberg said. “They know who’s going to answer the phone.”
When in August Boeing officials asked if they could have permits ready by Oct. 30 for an assembly line in North Charleston, Ellenberg could tell them he had been ready for years.
As Boeing’s intentions became clear, Ellenberg and Taylor began regularly meeting with Charleston business leaders, including everyone from the obvious economic development players to tourism officials. About 30 people convened at each meeting, bound not to disclose what unfolded inside.
“What we wanted people to do was to not necessarily talk about the company, but to talk about positive things here,” Taylor said. “When people’s neighbors or co-workers had questions, we wanted to make sure there were enough people out there to say we’re working this hard.”
Game of trust
South Carolina had laid a foundation, yes, but its sturdiness remained untested.
Greenville attorney and former federal judge Billy Wilkins heard concerns from state lawmakers that Boeing planned to use South Carolina only as leverage against Washington state and the union that represents its production workers there. The International Association of Machinists last year staged an eight-week strike in the Seattle area that compounded delays that had been dogging the 787 program for two years.
Wilkins relayed that conversation to a top Boeing executive he knew personally and then set up a meeting at his firm’s law office in Charleston. Sen. Larry Grooms, a Bonneau Republican, said that gathering at Nexsen Pruet about two months ago marked a turning point.
Boeing officials “shared with us that they had some concerns over the stability of government in South Carolina,” Grooms said, alluding to the then-recent news of the governor’s extramarital affair in Argentina. “They expressed some dissatisfaction.”
Although Wilkins would not explain his Boeing connection, he served as chief judge of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the company’s general counsel served on the bench. Another Nexsen Pruet attorney, Leighton Lord, said his firm began working with Boeing more than a year ago to represent the company in its takeover of the Vought portion of the fuselage plant.
“People were worried about the governor, and people were worried about a lot of things going on in our state for a couple of months,” Lord said.
Then lawmakers rallied and did so without publicity, and the game changed.
Boeing officials “were really kind of taken aback by it,” Lord said. “I don’t think they were used to it.”
Following the Charleston meeting, the Boeing discussions turned daily among involved lawmakers. They also started an active dialogue with the Commerce Department.
Sanford drew on a personal connection to Boeing Chairman Jim McNerney. The two had developed a business relationship decades earlier, thanks to McNerney’s friendship with first lady Jenny Sanford’s family in Chicago, where the aerospace giant is now headquartered.
Meanwhile, without knowing the story playing out behind the scenes, local machinists at the existing North Charleston plant voted to sever ties with the union that walked out on Boeing for eight weeks last year in Washington.
The leader in the local movement, Dennis Murray, said the timing had nothing to do with luring a factory, only that the labor contract with Vought ended when Boeing took over.
“It wasn’t until we were well into this that we heard about a second assembly line,” Murray said. “That was never a factor. We were being totally selfish. We were fighting for ourselves.”
As he put it, “Boeing unknowingly helped us.” But some would argue that the workers unknowingly helped Boeing make its choice.
Crunching numbers
Of all the leaders standing behind Sanford as he signed the incentives legislation Friday morning, none received as many hugs and handshakes as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman, a Florence Republican. At the meeting between Boeing and lawmakers, one company official had singled out Leatherman and Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, a Charleston Republican.
Leatherman remembered the Boeing representative saying, “I want to look the two of you in the eyeballs” as they discussed the potential factory.
A few weeks after the meeting at Nexsen Pruet, Leatherman met one-on-one with the Boeing representative to talk further. He and McConnell reconvened at the Renaissance Charleston hotel on Wentworth Street that Saturday morning.
McConnell remembered a few residents stopping by their table near the lounge window to joke about state business taking place. He thought, “Little do they know, this is big state business.”
Without placing an order, the two senators looked at spreadsheets and talked numbers for an incentives package that could lure big business without hurting the state financially.
Days later, Leatherman left on an economic development trip to Japan but remained in e-mail communication with his Boeing contact.
A few days back in the country, he had a meeting at his Senate office Monday night.
Leatherman said there they ironed out an incentives package and then brought in their attorneys for a few more hours. As midnight neared, they had reached an agreement.
Their $450 million proposal was tentatively approved on a unanimous vote Tuesday in the Senate. It got final approval Wednesday and, in unprecedented time, moved to the House, which also gave its unanimous approval.
No one knew Boeing’s final decision until McConnell, Leatherman, House Speaker Bobby Harrell, a company official and four attorneys met in McConnell’s office shortly before 5 p.m. Wednesday. The Boeing representative took a call from top executives that sent lawmakers rushing to the Senate floor.
McConnell said Boeing representatives sat in the balcony but requested anonymity. As he stepped to the podium, McConnell said he thought, “The members can read our faces. We don’t have to utter a word.”
Allyson Bird
Post and Courier
McConnell & Leatherman: Responding To Policy Council’s Flawed Research
November 3, 2009 by senatormcconnell
We feel compelled to respond to the flawed research that the South Carolina Policy Council released yesterday relating to the decision of Boeing to bring thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of investment to our state. They claim that bringing Boeing to South Carolina is bad public policy. We can think of no better public policy for our state to have than bringing jobs to our citizens. Sadly, the Policy Council’s report is full of inaccuracies that paint both a false picture of how this deal came about and what it means for South Carolina.
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