Don Haggar, a former South Dakota House speaker pro tem now with Americans for Prosperity, joins Dave Roetman to announce his run for the Public Utilities Commission and discuss state energy policy. Haggar explains that the three-member commission oversees utilities ranging from grain warehousing to cable, internet, electricity and natural gas, and says rising power demand from AI and internet use makes abundant, reliable and affordable power essential. He says he is running for the seat long held by Gary Hanson. Haggar describes South Dakota's power sources, including Missouri River hydropower, natural gas, wind and solar, argues that wind is unreliable without better storage, and mentions small modular nuclear reactors. The two discuss grid failures in Texas and Spain, and Haggar describes the commission's quasi-judicial role and his legislative and business qualifications.
Topics: Public Utilities Commission, PUC campaign, energy policy, reliable power, electricity rates, hydroelectric power, wind energy, coal plants, small modular nuclear, grid reliability, Spain blackout
Don Haggar is a former legislator and Director of Americans for Prosperity of South Dakota.
“There are significant increasing demands in the use of power. Because of AI and because of internet usage. It is very important that we have abundant power, that we have reliable power, and that power is relatively inexpensive in our state for our citizens. And we shouldn’t have to make choices between do we provide electricity to business or do we provide electricity to homes.” - Don Haggar
AFP South Dakota - link
Ballotpedia Don Haggar - link
Full transcript
About this transcript: It was machine-transcribed in-house and then edited for readability. Filler words and false starts are removed, and the meaning is unchanged. [?] marks a word or phrase we’re unsure of. Timestamps are approximate.
[00:00]
Dave Roetman: This is the Making Waves podcast. My name is Dave Roetman. We’re here with Don Haggar. Don, welcome.
Don Haggar: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
Dave Roetman: Don, we’ve known each other for quite some time, been involved in politics. Give us a little background. What do you do? And give us a little background of what you’ve done in politics in the past.
Don Haggar: Well, sure. Again, thanks for having me. I’ve been involved locally in public affairs for a number of years. I was elected to the legislature back, I think, in 2012 and served five years in the House of Representatives. When I left, when I resigned, I was speaker pro tem, so I was involved in leadership there in the legislature. But I left to join an organization called Americans for Prosperity, which is an organization that fights for limited government, lower taxes, less regulation, that sort of thing.
The whole idea behind the organization is to remove obstacles created by government that stand in the way of people achieving their version of the American dream. Values and ideals that I held even as a legislator. And so it was a natural move for me. And I’m still with Americans for Prosperity, but. But that’s a, I think, a chapter in my life that’s going to change soon because I’m going to run for the, I am running for the Public Utilities Commission.
Dave Roetman: I can confirm that AFP is a very grassroots organization which has been very involved in individual rights and more importantly economic freedom so I can confirm that you’re on that side, so you’re running for PUC.
Don Haggar: Yeah, you know so here’s the thing you know our it’s a three-member Commission a lot of people don’t know what the Public Utilities Commission does in South Dakota it’s a three-member Commission and it oversees as the title indicates the utilities that citizens interact with in the state and that can range from grain warehousing, if you’re in agriculture, to your cable. Connections for your internet and but also and probably most importantly to be candid.
Things dealing with electricity and natural gas and power. Utilities. Exactly. What you and I commonly, when we get our bills, we’re paying the utility bill and that’s what we’re talking about here. As I looked at the evolving environment or situation, especially around power, there are significant increasing demands in the use of power because of AI and because of internet usage and it’s very important that we have abundant power. That we have reliable power and that that power is relatively inexpensive in our state for our citizens.
Absolutely. And we shouldn’t have to make choices between do we provide electricity to business or do we provide electricity to homes. And so the key there is to make sure that we have a significant, as I indicated before, an abundant.
Dave Roetman: Energy is very important. Affordable energy is very important, especially for folks on the lower income scale. Without cheap abundant energy, they are the ones who suffer the most, suffer the first, and they’re the ones that can’t get out of economic hole if they don’t have cheap abundant energy whether it’s being able to drive to work. Or power their homes.
Don Haggar: Right. And in our winters? Yes. If people are dependent on electric. It’s a lifesaving issue. And secondly, there are families that maybe have needs for medical reasons to have reliable power. And a brownout might be... A life-endangering situation. And so it is super important in my mind that we make sure that we have reliable power in this state. And I will tell you, our Public Utilities Commission has done a really good job.
We’ve been blessed, really, with a good commission.
[05:00]
And so I’m running for a spot. Gary Hanson has occupied it for actually quite some time, but he’s retired [?]. So I want to maintain that quality leadership and that quality culture that’s been created in the Public Utilities Commission and that’s why I’m running.
Dave Roetman: South Dakota has a really good reputation for having a good utilities commission and being able to protect the consumer in part from federal.
Don Haggar: Overreach. Yeah, that’s correct and understanding the state’s role in this And being advocates for the state in situations like that, I think that’s super important.
Dave Roetman: What kind of sources of power the South Dakota have? We’re a landlocked state and we don’t have a lot of oil, but we have some natural resources that we use natively. So could you tell us about the sources of power in South Dakota?
Don Haggar: Yeah, so you know we do generate some power. We produce some power in South Dakota primarily From the Missouri River dams. So we have a lot of hydroelectric power, but that goes beyond our state. So we use some of it but other... Portions of it. It’s a federal program, so it goes into the grid, so to speak. We also have some production, whether that be from gas, natural gas, or we have wind, there’s some solar.
So there’s a variety of sources, and I think it’s important. For reliability purposes that we do have a variety of sources of power. That we’re not overly dependent on one type of source or another. And probably the best example of that would be wind. Wind, while it’s been kind of the... It’s been promoted certainly during the last federal administration. It’s been encouraged with tax credits and that sort of thing. But it’s not a reliable source of power because we don’t have really good energy storage solutions yet.
Technology isn’t there yet. So, we should be continually be looking at alternatives and just a variety of sources. Coal plants are amazingly... Amazingly efficient these days. That’s a good source of power and we know how to do it. One thing we have never done in South Dakota and some states are talking more about it is nuclear power on very small scales. They’re called micronukes. That’s a small modular nuclear power. See you might see proposals even in that area going forward as a solution as a potential solution and you know that’s not my role per se to promote that but I’m just saying that’s something that you might see in the near future.
Dave Roetman: We’ve seen the unreliability of wind power when we had the brownout throughout the Midwest a few years ago because of the ice storms down in Texas. And more recently, they had a real issue with renewable energy in Spain, which had a blackout. Yeah.
Don Haggar: The Spain situation was pretty bad. And I’d like to just visit a little bit about that. What happened in Spain was because they were all bought into this whole climate, Green New Deal kind of perspective, and so they invested heavily in solar and in wind and they had nuclear and they even took that offline and then something some sort of technical problem happened where the production failed 60% of the grid in that country went down.
60%. So it created a real problem and it highlights just exactly what I’ve been talking about. That being that we really need a variety of sources to be I think, prudent. It even affected France because France tried to help by sending over power. France was asked to help and that didn’t work out because they weren’t able to gear up quickly to provide the needed. Power to demand, yeah. Yeah, I recall.
Dave Roetman: I even mentioned this to Kristie Fiegen, who was a current PUC commissioner several years ago. My hometown of Rock Rapids had a backup coal power plant, from back from World War II, right?
[10:00]
Perfectly operational. They had a bunch of anthracite, high-quality coal, which they bought cheap because of the backup power plant. But they And they had three power lines that came into the town. And in the past, ice storms have knocked those power lines down, so this backup power plant. Well, the Obama administration [inaudible] them to sell that coal power plant. It was packed up and shipped to China. Now it’s running 24-7 in China, and there’s no backup power plant in my hometown.
Thousands of small towns. Of course. No longer have backup power plants like that. And that’s why brownouts like what happened with Texas. There’s no way, the grid is fragile. And that part is made fragile deliberately by our own federal government. That’s it.
Don Haggar: Some policies, some energy policies have been fairly short-sighted at the federal level and it’s something that we have to watch and be alert and to again advocate for our citizens and make sure that federal policy that would be harmful to our state. We need to voice those concerns when that sort of thing comes up.
Dave Roetman: The PUC really is in many ways a shield.
Don Haggar: Protecting us. It is a shield. Now I will tell you, and we’re talking a lot about policy here, but the PUC does not make policy. The legislature and the [inaudible] pass the policy and the laws that govern how the PUC can operate and so candidly, the PUC commissioners and their role is a I call it kind of a quasi-judicial role, interpreting what the laws are and what the rules are for the You know for the energy producers and energy distributors.
So it’s like I said, it’s almost a judicial. Role is different.
Dave Roetman: That’s an important distinction to make, because they can’t expect too much from the commissioners to make policy that they want. They have to go to the legislature first.
Don Haggar: And I’ll tell you Dave, like I’m uniquely qualified. For this role. First of all, because of my experience in the legislature dealing with the policy side, the law, the legal side of The rules under which they do have to operate but also I have a long business experience, long business career, and I have a master’s degree in business and so I understand the numbers and the numbers are important, the financial numbers are important especially when we talk about things like rate increases and costs of delivering service and the required return for those producers and distributors.
So, I think that’s very helpful. Well, again, I just want to thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation with you and with your listeners. This is a new challenge for me, but again, as I indicated before, I think it’s super important. Is a very important role, especially in the next few years for our state, and I’m going to be asking for people’s support in this role, and hope that I can represent the state again.
Dave Roetman: Well, thanks, Don. You have my vote. Thanks, Dave. This has been the Making Waves Podcast. My name is Dave Roetman. We’ve been here with Don Haggar.
