PSC Chair To Senate Committee On Bill: We Already Do That

The chair of the West Virginia Public Service Commission (PSC) pushed back on a bill in a Senate committee Thursday.

The Senate Energy, Industry and Mining Committee passed a bill that would encourage, though not require, the PSC to favor fossil fuel and nuclear energy over renewables.

The PSC has not turned down any applications for utilities to build wind and solar. They are intermittent resources, meaning they don’t operate all the time like a coal, natural gas or nuclear plant. But they have become the nation’s cheapest source of electricity.

The stated goal of Senate Bill 505 is to increase reliability, though nearly 90% of West Virginia’s electricity already comes from coal.

In contrast, coal generates only 15% of electricity nationwide, and last year, wind and solar overtook it for the first time.

The commission’s chair, Charlotte Lane, told the committee that the PSC already makes reliability a priority when making decisions about what projects to approve.

“I will first say that this bill, I’m sure, has a really good intention, but to the extent that I’m supposed to understand it, it is very difficult to understand what it is trying to get to,” Lane said. “And having said that, except for the additional administrative burden of filing a lot of reports and keeping all of these reports, everything in this bill we already have currently jurisdiction to do.”

No one testified against SB 505. It now goes to the Government Organization Committee.