The West Virginia Home of Delegates overwhelmingly handed laws Saturday that will require approval from a board rebooted by Gov. Jim Justice to develop coal vegetation for decommissioning or deconstruction of fossil fuel-powered vegetation.
In an 87-5 vote, the Home permitted Senate Invoice 609, which requires Senate concurrence after the Home amended the invoice to specify the invoice applies to present coal, oil or pure gas-fueled vegetation solely. The Senate permitted SB 609 with out opposition final month.
The invoice would require Public Power Authority approval for any present utility or non-utility plant fueled by these energy sources to be decommissioned or deconstructed.
The invoice says the authority board consisting of governor appointees could approve decommissioning or deconstructing a plant after an evaluation by an authority-approved third get together that evaluates the “social, environmental and financial affect at an area and statewide degree” of doing so. Potential alternate options to the decommissioning or deconstruction should even be evaluated underneath SB 609, together with “novel applied sciences and inexperienced applied sciences” as different sources for gas.
Opponents of SB 609 have objected to that invoice going additional than HB 3308 by making use of even to non-utility vegetation and looping within the Public Power Authority, a board Gov. Jim Justice, a coal magnate, stated he reactivated in 2021 partially to develop a “subsequent era” of coal vegetation.
SB 609’s passage comes amid a long-term development of more and more uneconomic coal-fired vegetation shutting down nationwide and with the coal-fired Pleasants Energy Station in Willow Island anticipated to shut this spring.
The Legislature bailed out the Pleasants plant in 2019 by approving $12.5 million in annual tax breaks for it.
“There’s a purpose why these vegetation are making selections to shut,” Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, stated. “Why insert authorities into non-public selections by non-public firms?”
Power Harbor, the impartial energy producer that owns the Pleasants plant, stated its closure is required as the corporate transitions to carbon-free vitality.
Hansen predicted that inserting the Public Power Authority into non-public energy producer plant closure selections probably would trigger electrical charges to maintain going up.
Coal comprised 91% of West Virginia’s electrical energy era in 2021, way over every other state.
West Virginia electrical payments have ballooned because the state has clung to coal. State ratepayers confronted a 90% climb in common residential electrical energy retail worth from 2005 to 2020, in line with U.S. Power Data Administration information. Solely Michigan had a better enhance by proportion.
Derrick Value Williamson, government director of the West Virginia Power Customers Group, a coalition of huge industrial energy customers, stated SB 609 seems to create pointless regulatory redundancy for utility energy plant decommissioning and closure.
Williamson famous partially that authority to approve such closures is included in Home Invoice 3308, a invoice permitted by the Legislature final month that requires Public Service Fee approval for public electrical utility to shut any electrical producing plant or unit. Justice has but to signal HB 3308 into regulation.
“In our view, the difficulty ought to be whether or not such vegetation might be aggressive within the free marketplace for energy,” Williamson stated in an e-mail. “Belt and suspenders regulatory oversight smacks of extra authorities management over outcomes that ought to be resolved via the operation of the free market.”
“Time and again, this Legislature is choosing winners and losers within the vitality sector,” Emmett Pepper, coverage director for Power Environment friendly West Virginia, stated in an e-mail. “It believes it is aware of finest, greater than precise enterprise and property homeowners.”
Delegate Trenton Barnhart, R-Pleasants, stated the Pleasants plant was closing on account of “an assault on the coal business” when requested by Assistant Majority Whip Adam Vance, R-Wyoming, an underground coal miner, whether or not market forces or one thing else was inflicting vegetation like Pleasants to close down.
Vance then claimed that vegetation are shutting right down to get their “pockets padded by simply pulling out” of coal and “going with a inexperienced initiative from the federal authorities.”
A 2020 evaluation from the monetary advisory agency Lazard estimated the continuing value of a brand new photo voltaic vitality venture is $24 to $32 per megawatt hour, $10 to $16 much less per megawatt hour than the associated fee to function an present coal-fired energy plant.
Practically two-thirds of complete renewable energy era added final yr had decrease prices than the most cost effective fossil gas possibility, in line with a report from the Worldwide Renewable Power Company, a worldwide intergovernmental company that helps nations in vitality transitions.
Home Power and Manufacturing Committee Chairman Invoice Anderson, R-Wooden, stated SB 609 offered a chance for lawmakers to assessment choices to repurpose vegetation headed for closure.
The lead sponsor of SB 609 is Senate Power, Business and Mining Chairman Randy Smith, R-Tucker, a coal miner. Voting in opposition to it Saturday had been 5 of 12 Home Democrats within the Republican-supermajority chamber: Hansen, Minority Chief Professional Tempore Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, West Virginia Democratic Celebration Chairman Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, and Delegates Danielle Walker of Monongalia County and Kayla Younger of Kanawha County.
The Public Power Authority has performed little however hear shows from representatives of vitality industries and customers in its first handful of conferences held since February 2022. Presenters have included talks from proponents of battery vitality storage and initiatives to redevelop coal-fired vegetation with applied sciences that enable them to provide energy whereas emitting much less carbon than they retailer.
Justice introduced he was rebooting the lengthy dormant Public Power Authority on the West Virginia Coal Affiliation’s 2021 annual convention.
Justice has confronted criticism that he has failed to fulfill an obligation underneath state code to nominate a minimum of one board member with vital environmental safety advocacy expertise.
Governor’s Workplace spokesman Jordan Damron has stated the Public Power Authority’s environmental safety appointee is Jeff Herholdt, citing his background as retired director of the West Virginia Division of Power and supervisor of a state vitality effectivity program.
Herholdt emailed a letter of resignation to former board chairman and state Commerce Secretary Ed Gaunch on Feb. 5, writing that he had “assumed incorrectly that the give attention to renewables would stay the identical” as when he beforehand served on the authority board throughout Gov. Joe Manchin’s administration, in line with correspondence offered by the Governor’s Workplace.
However Herholdt has remained on the board and later stated he was inspired by the board’s route after its first assembly in February 2022.
Three months later, West Virginia Coal Affiliation President Chris Hamilton instructed the authority participate possession within the Pleasants plant at a month-to-month authority board assembly.
Hamilton’s PowerPoint presentation additional instructed the Power Authority take into account buying a proportion of fairness or possession in in-state regulated utilities after noting that each of the state’s two main electrical utilities, American Electrical Energy and FirstEnergy, have introduced intentions to transition away from fossil gas vitality.
Gaunch stated the authority wouldn’t train its broad statutory powers underneath state regulation, similar to getting into into administration contracts to function electrical energy and gasoline transmission initiatives or taking property via eminent area.
The West Virginia Home and Senate have adopted resolutions this session urging Mon Energy to purchase the Pleasants Energy Station, citing its giant contribution to the native tax base and calling it “the center and soul of the group.”
In January, the PSC obtained a letter signed by 140 Pleasants Energy Station staff lobbying for Mon Energy and Potomac Edison, one other FirstEnergy subsidiary to purchase the greater than four-decade-old plant.
A witness for the Client Advocate Division, an impartial arm of the fee charged with representing ratepayer pursuits, has beneficial that Mon Energy pursue buying the Pleasants plant after which take into account closing its coal-fired Fort Martin Energy Station in Maidsville, Monongalia County.
The witness, coal procurement analyst Emily Medine of Virginia-based Power Ventures Evaluation Inc., argued in written testimony that the 1,368-megawatt Pleasants plant in Willow Island is supplied with emissions management know-how that the Fort Martin plant lacks and is in a greater location for supply of West Virginia coal.
Medine was the agent for Lexington Coal Co. within the firm’s sale of property in Illinois and Indiana, and was an advisor to and on the board of the Elk Horn Coal Firm till its 2011 sale to Rhino Useful resource Companions LP, a restricted partnership fashioned to function steam and metallurgical coal properties and different non-coal property.