One Of Coal’s Top Foes Looks To Clean Energy Future For State

For a decade, Mary Anne Hitt led the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. 

As West Virginians grapple with the rising cost of maintaining coal’s dominance over the state’s electricity supply, Curtis Tate spoke with her about what’s changed and what hasn’t.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Tate: You said you left the Sierra Club in 2021. What changes have you seen since then?

Hitt: Well, a couple of big changes come to mind. One is we have had this concentrated period of all of these rate increases from AEP (American Electric Power) and First Energy that have really been tied to how much coal the state is insistent on using. And so I think that the public frustration with that has kind of reached a peak that I hadn’t seen before. Multiple rate increases over just a couple of years, and now our electric bills are going up faster than almost any other state in the country. I have seen for the first time people really questioning whether it’s in our financial interest, for our families and for our state, to just keep insisting that we’re going to burn so much coal and refusing to diversify our energy mix. That’s one thing that I feel like is changing. 

Another thing that’s changed is we’ve had the Inflation Reduction Act pass, and that has created an incredible amount of new opportunity here in the state for clean energy. There’s, by one measure, over 5,000 new clean energy jobs in the state. Here in West Virginia, there’s also all of these programs for supporting coal communities as they make an economic transition. I’ve heard some economic development folks in the state call it a once-in-a-generation opportunity to really reinvest in making West Virginia part of the 21st century energy economy.

Tate: Is any of the state’s policy trying to stymie clean energy?

Hitt: Here in West Virginia, there are a lot of hurdles and roadblocks for clean energy. We just have seen over the last few months, the big utilities have tried to reduce net metering. They have tried to reduce what kind of financial benefit you can get from having solar on your rooftop. And so as we are in a time when we need more energy, and we need that energy to be clean, we have our utilities here in West Virginia that are trying to make it harder to build clean energy in the state, and that is certainly the wrong direction to be going. We are going to be grappling with this need for more electricity at a time of a climate crisis, and at a time when we’re all dealing with the effects of air and water pollution. Let’s try to make as much of that energy clean as possible. Let’s not go in the opposite direction here in West Virginia.

Tate: The EPA has issued new, tougher standards for power plants, and they’ve been challenged in court. Where do you see that going?

Hitt: The coal plant operators are never happy about those stronger pollution standards, because it requires them to make financial investments in those plants to clean them up. But we have some of the dirtiest coal plants in the country, here in West Virginia, from both the air pollution and a water pollution standpoint. These are just common sense public health safeguards to deal with the air pollution and the water pollution from these coal plants. And they are, of course, being challenged in the courts. Every single EPA pollution standard has the industry running right to the Supreme Court if they can to try to get them to intervene. But I think the reality is these EPA standards that are dealing with this air and water pollution are really common sense. Kind of bread and butter. EPA doing its job of protecting public health. While they might be challenged in the courts, I think they’ll ultimately be upheld, and that will result in cleaner air and water for people here in West Virginia.

Tate: In addition to coal, West Virginia has an abundance of natural gas. Why shouldn’t we use that to generate electricity?

Hitt: The prices for the gas to fuel power plants has just skyrocketed in recent years, and then it’s crashed, and it skyrocketed, and then it’s crashed, and so that leaves West Virginia families and businesses vulnerable to ever skyrocketing electricity prices. Meanwhile when you look at solar and wind power, the fuel for that electricity is free. It’s the wind, it’s the sun, and so we could lock ourselves into another generation of an energy source that is polluting and is also going to continue to drive up our electricity bills. There’s much more of a volatile price for gas than there is for coal, because it’s sold all around the world, versus starting to make that move towards wind and solar and storing that clean energy where the fuel is coming from the heavens. We can be making and building that clean energy right here at home in West Virginia.

Tate: Gas producers will say it’s needed to balance out the intermittency of renewables. Are they wrong?

Hitt: Obviously you couldn’t turn off every coal and gas plant on the grid today, and only count on renewable energy. But over time, I think it’s a question of where, where are we making investments? Do we want those dollars invested in building out the renewable energy and ways to store that renewable energy? Or do we want to build out new gas resources that are going to lock us into a more polluting and volatile source of energy? For now, yes, coal and gas are part of the mix that is keeping the lights on, but we’re talking about, how do we plan for the future? And West Virginia is very far behind when it comes to clean energy.

Tate: What’s the role of battery storage?

Hitt: There are states across this country, like Texas, California, all over the country that have a lot of battery storage that is now actually quite affordable. Wind or solar with energy storage is cheaper than running an existing coal plant just about everywhere in this country. It’s not just here, but it’s here at the right scale. It’s here at the right cost. This is the kind of exciting opportunity that we can be part of here too in West Virginia. We can also be part of building those batteries and building those solar panels and building those wind turbines to be used all over the country. And the Inflation Reduction Act has a lot of incentives for clean energy manufacturing here in the United States, and a lot of those opportunities are starting to come to West Virginia. So it’s not just about the energy that we’re using in the state, it’s about building the businesses and the industries and the jobs here to be powering the rest of the country, as we have for so long, but powering the 21st century energy economy here in America.

Tate: Are the recent investments in clean energy in West Virginia at risk if there’s a change in the White House or the Congress?

Hitt: While these issues can become partisan around clean energy or climate, once those jobs start to land here at home, I think it becomes less of a partisan issue and more of a hopefully bipartisan economic development opportunity. I hope that we’re turning that corner, and our congressional delegation here in West Virginia and our neighboring states, our state leadership will really see that these incentives are helping us keep our young people in the state, create new economic opportunity, attract new businesses to the state, and that it’s in everybody’s interest to keep them and expand them.