Coal Story Archives - Page 2 of 76 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

PSC Chair: EPA Rules Would Threaten W.Va. Power Plant Upgrades

PSC Chair Charlotte Lane said U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules would jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in the state’s coal fleet.

The chair of the West Virginia Public Service Commission (PSC) has joined the effort to block new federal power plant rules.

PSC Chair Charlotte Lane said U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules would jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in the state’s coal fleet.

In 2021, the PSC approved $448 million in upgrades to three Appalachian Power plants to comply with EPA regulations in place at the time. The company’s electricity customers are paying the cost, and the upgrades were supposed to keep the plants operating through 2040.

EPA’s new rules will require them to capture 90 percent of their carbon dioxide or shut down.

In a brief to the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., Lane wrote that carbon capture would be too expensive and the plants would shut down several years earlier than planned.

That would make the investments the PSC approved in 2021 “unnecessary white elephants burdening the ratepayers of West Virginia,” Lane wrote.

In an unsigned order Friday, the D.C. Circuit denied an application for an administrative stay on the power plant rules by Republican states, including West Virginia.

Appalachian Power is an underwriter of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

1st W.Va. Miner Is Killed On The Job This Year In Wyoming County

Virgil Paynter, of Lynco, was fatally injured while operating an excavator at the CM Energy Operations surface mine, Gov. Jim Justice said Thursday.

A coal miner was killed on the job in Wyoming County Thursday morning.

Virgil Paynter, of Lynco, was fatally injured while operating an excavator at the CM Energy Operations surface mine, Gov. Jim Justice said Thursday.

Paynter is the first coal miner to die on the job in West Virginia this year. Only one other mine fatality this year was recorded by the Mine Safety and Health Administration, in Pennsylvania.

According to MSHA, the lowest number of fatalities on record in coal mines – five – occurred in 2020. A decline in coal production related to the COVID-19 pandemic was a likely factor.

Eleven coal miners were killed in 2021 and 2022 as production rebounded. Nine were killed in 2023.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. coal production year to date is down 19.3 percent from 2023.

Mine safety has improved, but the number of miners has also declined, according to MSHA data.

A century ago, miners died by the thousands every year. As recently as the 1960s, hundreds died every year. The last time more than 100 miners perished in any given year was 1984, when the industry employed more than 200,000. Employment has fallen under 100,000 every year since 2015.

Attorney General Sues EPA Over New Power Plant Rules

West Virginia and Indiana are leading a lawsuit, along with 25 other states, against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop new rules on existing coal and new natural gas-fired power plants.

The suit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The EPA’s final rules were released at the end of April. Coal plants will have to ultimately cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 90 percent or shut down. New gas plants will have to also capture 90 percent of their CO2.

The EPA is working on a separate rule to cut carbon emissions from existing gas plants. About 40 percent of U.S. electricity comes from gas.

The new rules include updated limits on mercury and other toxic pollutants from plants that burn coal. They also include changes to how power plants dispose of the wastewater that results from treating coal emissions to remove toxic pollutants.

Finally, the rules require the cleanup of coal ash disposal sites that were closed prior to 2015.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said the rule ignored the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, which said the EPA could not use the Clean Air Act to force coal-fired power plants into retirement.

“This rule strips the states of important discretion while using technologies that don’t work in the real world — this administration packaged this rule with several other rules aimed at destroying traditional energy providers,” Morrisey said. “We are confident we will once again prevail in court against this rogue agency.”

When those rules were announced, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said, “By developing these standards in a clear, transparent, inclusive manner, EPA is cutting pollution while ensuring that power companies can make smart investments and continue to deliver reliable electricity for all Americans.”

The power plant rules align with changes that have been happening in the sector in the past decade. Electric utilities have moved sharply away from coal, largely switching to natural gas, and now, renewables and batteries.

“This year, the United States is projected to build more new electric generation capacity than we have in two decades — and 96 percent of that will be clean,” said White House Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi.

A separate statement from the Natural Resources Defense Council was more blunt.

“While polluters and their allies always complain that whatever technology EPA is requiring is not ready for prime time, in this case their argument is even more ridiculous: In addition to the technology being available, it’s also being supported with billions of dollars of tax incentives via the Inflation Reduction Act.

“Instead of fighting a losing legal battle, power plant owners and states should be locking up their lawyers and turning loose their engineers,” said David Doniger, a senior attorney at the organization.

Morrisey said in a statement that he would also file a motion to stay the new rule as soon as possible.

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming joined the West Virginia- and Indiana-led lawsuit.

Hope Gas Asks PSC To Block Pipeline From Supplying Pleasants Plant

Quantum Pleasants is talking to a pipeline developer, Icon New Energy Pipeline, about an agreement to supply the plant with the volume of gas it needs and at a lower cost.

Hope Gas has asked the Public Service Commission to block another supplier from providing gas to the Pleasants Power Station.

The Pleasants Power Station was sold last year to a California Company, Omnis Technologies, that plans to produce graphene and graphite and run the power plant on the hydrogen byproduct.

That will require a lot of natural gas: 100 million cubic feet a year by the end of 2025. The plant, now Quantum Pleasants, told the PSC in a Wednesday filing that Hope Gas cannot supply that volume.

Instead, Quantum Pleasants is talking to a pipeline developer, Icon New Energy Pipeline, about an agreement to supply the plant with the volume of gas it needs and at a lower cost than Hope.

Hope wants the PSC to review whether the arrangement would violate state law because the plant is an existing customer.

Omnis said the law doesn’t apply because the company has never been a customer of Hope. It asked the commission to dismiss Hope’s request.

In its own filing Wednesday, Icon said the PSC does not have jurisdiction over the company except for pipeline safety. It told the commission it supported the Omnis motion to dismiss.

The potential closure of the Pleasants Power Station, which dates to 1979, caused considerable outcry from lawmakers.

The plant shut down, briefly, last June but was reactivated when Omnis agreed to buy the plant from Energy Harbor.

State lawmakers had passed a resolution urging Mon Power to purchase the plant. The sale to Omnis made it moot.

WVU Researchers Aim To Convert Mine Water Pollutants Into Industrial Materials

West Virginia University researchers are extracting minerals from toxic mine water runoff and converting it into industry materials, with the help of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Coal mining can expose minerals like pyrite to oxygen from rainwater and the air. In turn, this pyrite creates sulfuric acid — a toxin to aquatic wildlife that frequently enters water runoff.

But new research at West Virginia University (WVU) aims to remove harmful minerals from acid mine drainage, and repurpose them into usable industrial materials.

Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of WVU’s Water Research Institute, began working on the project in 2016. His team has already developed technology to extract minerals like pyrite from local water supplies, effectively ridding it of mine pollutants.

“You have to treat the acid mine drainage… [in] a treatment plant or facility,” he said. “We have a process that basically is a way of treating acid mine drainage while recovering valuable minerals and cleaning up the environment at the same time.”

Ziemkiewicz said that his team helps operate a plant near Grant County that treats from 500 to 1,000 gallons of acid mine drainage per minute. According to Ziemkiewicz, facilities like these help proactively treat drainage before it enters a body of water.

Minerals extracted from this drainage can be repurposed for industrial benefits, which brings additional value to the extraction process, he said.

An additional $5 million in funding secured this week from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) will help the team embark upon part two of the project: converting extracted minerals into industrial materials.

Ziemkiewicz said his team secured the funding after responding to a DOE project solicitation sent out nationally. The group has received funding from the DOE roughly 10 times, he said.

“What we’re doing now is taking that concentrate and developing new processes that are very environmentally friendly, and that will take those mixtures of rare earth and other metals and separate those into individual, usable components,” Ziemkiewicz said.

Rare earth elements are used in a variety of goods ranging from cell phones to alternative energy technology, he said. Many of these elements are primarily imported from China, but Ziemkiewicz said projects like his own could develop methods of obtaining them domestically.

Additionally, state law grants individuals or groups who treat acid mine drainage rights to the usage of extracted materials. This means treatment plants can sell the materials they extract and use them to finance operations, Ziemkiewicz said.

Beyond sustaining environmental upsides, Ziemkiewicz said that the prospect of self-funded treatment plants would also stand to create jobs for coalfield communities devastated by the decline of the mining industry.

“Being able to bring in an industry that cleans up the previously polluted water while creating economic opportunities through the extraction of the rare earth is creating wealth for these communities,” he said. “It creates wealth where previously you had basically environmental degradation.”

PSC Approves Construction Of Gas Power Plant In Doddridge County

The PSC granted a siting certificate to Competitive Power Ventures to build a $3 billion combined-cycle natural gas power plant a few miles southeast of West Union.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission has given its approval for the construction of a gas-fueled power plant in Doddridge County.

The PSC granted a siting certificate to Competitive Power Ventures to build a $3 billion combined-cycle natural gas power plant a few miles southeast of West Union.

The plant will generate 2,060 megawatts of electricity, which will be sent to the regional grid on the wholesale market.

The plant’s Massachusetts based owner also plans to incorporate carbon capture and storage into the operation, with a tax credit that was part of the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022.

Construction is to begin in the fourth quarter of next year.

“West Virginia is pleased to welcome yet another business to our state,” PSC Chairman Charlotte Lane said.

Despite being one of the top U.S. gas producers, West Virginia has no other combined-cycle plants, which are more efficient. In contrast, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia have built dozens, largely displacing coal.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules for power plants announced last week require new gas-fired power plants as well as existing coal ones to capture at least 90 percent of their carbon dioxide emissions.

The plant will be called the CPV Shay Energy Center. Shay is a type of geared steam locomotive used on West Virginia’s logging railroads in the early 20th century.