Renewables overtook nuclear in 2021 and coal last year, accounting for about 21 percent of the country’s electricity.
Natural gas remains the nation’s top electric power source, at 39 percent last year, up from 37 percent in 2021.
Nuclear declined from 20 percent in 2021 to 19 percent last year due to a plant retirement.
Coal posted the biggest decline, from 23 percent in 2021 to 20 percent last year.
The federal agency forecasts another decline in coal this year to 17 percent as more plants are decommissioned.
Wind and solar’s combined share increased to 14 percent last year from 12 percent. Hydro power contributed another 6 percent to renewables’ share, while geothermal and biomass added another 1 percent.
They visited the site of the Kanawha River Plant, an Appalachian Power facility that operated from 1953 until 2015.
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, brought philanthropist Bill Gates to West Virginia on Monday.
Before they held a town-hall event at the Clay Center in Charleston, Manchin and Gates went to Glasgow, in eastern Kanawha County.
They visited the site of the Kanawha River Plant, an Appalachian Power facility that operated from 1953 until 2015.
Gates is an investor in TerraPower, a company that plans to put small modular nuclear reactors at sites like the Kanawha River Plant, giving them new life and bringing jobs back to the community.
Manchin said that has big potential for places like Glasgow.
“This will be much cleaner. And it will be extremely safe, in that footprint,” he said after the town hall. “So once they understand, and there will be a lot of education, a lot of community involvement to see if that or any other place in West Virginia would be receptive towards this type of technology.”
State lawmakers created that possibility last year when they repealed a decades-old ban on nuclear power.
It could take five or 10 years to make a nuclear plant in West Virginia a reality. The site would need extensive remediation. But it also has something that a nuclear plant needs: a connection to the grid.
“Providing the site, preparing the site, getting it ready and building the site,” Manchin said. “That’s all tremendous for the communities, wherever it happens.”
Manchin said the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed last year, provides numerous incentives for energy companies to come to West Virginia.
“And you had, oh, probably 20 or 30 CEOs here that have made decisions to either invest or are looking very strongly to invest in West Virginia,” he said.
Gates is also an investor in Form Energy, a battery manufacturer that last month announced it would build utility scale storage batteries in Weirton.
Eventually, the Kanawha River Plant – a symbol of the state’s old energy economy – could be part of its future.
State lawmakers wrapped up energy related legislation in the final hours of the session, including a bill to create a Mining Mutual Insurance Company.
The Senate unanimously approved the final version of Senate Bill 1 on Saturday, and it becomes effective immediately when the governor signs it.
SB 1 creates a five-member board to manage at least $50 million in taxpayer funds. Those funds would back mine reclamation bonds.
An audit last year found that the state’s special reclamation fund was not adequate to cover future mine cleanup obligations, potentially exposing the state to hundreds of millions of dollars in liabilities.
Senate President Craig Blair identified SB 1 as one of his top priorities, and in a rare move, he sponsored the bill.
Advanced Batteries
The House sent House Bill 4025 back to the Senate late Saturday with an amendment removed, but the chamber didn’t act on it before the session expired.
The bill would have exempted rare earth minerals mined in the state from severance taxes. Its supporters say that will encourage the development of advanced battery technology for use in electric vehicles and storage batteries for renewable energy.
Carbon Storage
Both chambers finished action earlier this month on House Bill 4491, with the Senate agreeing unanimously to the legislation.
HB 4491 will create a permitting system for underground carbon storage. The system could help carbon-intensive industries, such as power plants, steelmakers and cement companies, meet their carbon-reduction or net-zero goals.
The stored carbon could also be used in the future and meanwhile would not be released into the atmosphere.
Nuclear Power
Senate Bill 4 made it across the finish line and to the governor’s desk last month.
SB 4 repealed the state’s longstanding ban on the construction of new nuclear power facilities. The ban was enacted over concerns about nuclear safety and to protect the state’s coal industry from a competitor.
But times have changed. Gov. Jim Justice, a coal executive, signed the repeal. It will take effect on May 1, 2022.
Mine Safety
A bill to change the state’s mine safety code didn’t get very far.
House Bill 4840 would have made changes that Democrats, many Republicans and the United Mine Workers of America said would have weakened safety.
An intensive lobbying effort by mine workers and their allies effectively sidelined the legislation.
U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the senior Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, asked a panel of experts Wednesday about building out nuclear power.
In a hearing, she asked Maria Korsnick, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, about the feasibility of converting old coal plants to nuclear power.
Korsnick said such sites were well suited for nuclear.
“Repurposing coal plants or other fossil plants is extremely attractive for future nuclear plant siting,” she said. “For one thing, they have the transmission already there. That’s a challenging part of the infrastructure. It’s costly to build.”
Supporters of Senate Bill 4 say their intention is not for nuclear to displace coal in West Virginia but to remove a barrier to energy alternatives.
Nuclear could become a bigger part of the drive to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the electric power sector.
A bill to lift the ban on nuclear power in West Virginia passed the Senate on Tuesday.
Lawmakers voted 24 to 7 to end the ban. West Virginia is one of 13 states that restricts the construction of nuclear power facilities.
The ban was enacted more than 25 years ago at a time when few lawmakers supported any form of energy other than coal.
But as Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell, put it, times have changed.
“I don’t know what the thinking was. I can guess what the thinking was in ‘96,” he said. “But we can’t afford to be protective of any industry at this point.”
Woelfel and other senators noted that Nucor, the steelmaker that is planning to build a plant in Mason County, questioned the ban on nuclear power.
One of the country’s largest investor-owned electric utilities, with a large presence in the Ohio Valley, has emerged at the center of a $60 million bribery and racketeering scheme related to Ohio’s controversial energy bill that bailed out several struggling nuclear and coal plants.
On Tuesday, federal investigators arrested one of Ohio’s top lawmakers, House Speaker Larry Householder and some of his associates, in connection with the scandal. Dave DeVillers, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, said that in exchange for the $1.5 billion bailout contained in the controversial legislation, known as H.B. 6, utility FirstEnergy Corp., identified as Company A, funneled nearly $61 million into a dark money group controlled by Householder and his political allies.
“Make no mistake, these allegations are bribery, pure and simple,” DeVillers said during a Tuesday press conference.
The investigation has rocked Ohio politics, but it could also impact energy policy in the Ohio Valley, especially as coal and nuclear power generators continue to struggle in the face of low-priced natural gas, the falling cost of renewable energy, and mounting calls for decarbonizing the economy in order to stave off the worst effects of climate change.
House Bill 6
FirstEnergy operates 10 power companies, serving 6 million customers, across Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey. It operates two coal-fired power plants in West Virginia — the Fort Martin Power Station and Harrison Power Station.
Its former subsidiary, FirstEnergy Solutions, which emerged from bankruptcy restructuring as Energy Harbor in February, is the largest beneficiary of H.B. 6. The company operates two nuclear plants in Ohio, one in Pennsylvania, and two coal plants — the W.H. Sammis plant in Stratton, Ohio and the Pleasants Power Station in West Virginia.
Signed into law last July, H.B. 6 provided $150 million annually in subsidies from 2021-2027 to Energy Harbor’s two nuclear generation facilities, the Perry and Davis-Besse plants, funded through new monthly surcharges paid by electricity consumers. The bill also provided financial assistance to the W.H. Sammis coal plant and gutted Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency laws.
The fallout continues from Tuesday’s announcement. In the 82-page criminal complaint, federal prosecutors outlined a rich tapestry of wrongdoing. FirstEnergy confirmed it received several subpoenas.
During its second quarter earnings call on Friday, CEO Charles Jones reiterated the company’s intentions to fully cooperate with investigators.
Credit FirstEnergy
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FirstEnergy
Charles E. Jones, CEO of FirstEnergy.
“I believe that FirstEnergy acted properly in this matter, and we intend to cooperate fully with the investigation to, among other things, ensure our company and our role in supporting House Bill 6 is understood as accurately as possible,” he said.
The future of Ohio’s energy bill remains in flux. Bills are in the works by lawmakers of both parties to repeal it, while Republican Gov. Mike DeWine reversed his position on the bill. After originally stating H.B 6 should stand, on Thursday he switched positions, saying he thinks the law should be repealed.
Clean energy advocates hope if a replacement bill is put forward, it restores cuts to the state’s renewable energy programs.
Credibility Questioned
For regional energy policy watchers, it’s also unclear if the federal investigation will spur greater scrutiny of future energy bills, especially those aiming to provide subsidies to coal and nuclear generators.
H.B. 6 is not the only example of utilities asking for help. A bill in Indiana to help coal plants passed earlier this year. But FirstEnergy has been at the center of the bailout debate — the company unsuccessfully lobbied the Trump administration repeatedly to provide subsidies to coal and nuclear plants often in conjunction with coal magnate Bob Murray.
Jamie Van Nostrand, head of West Virginia University’s Center for Energy and Sustainable Development, said what happened in Ohio should be a warning to other states, including West Virginia.
“Maybe legislators will think twice about just voting unanimously for these things because it’s going to raise the issue as well: Why are you helping out FirstEnergy?,” he said. “Is there something nefarious going on, because obviously there were things nefarious going on in Ohio.”
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice has so far brushed off calls by his Democratic gubernatorial rival, lawyer Ben Salango, for an investigation into the tax break calling it a “terrific decision.”
Credit Brittany Patterson / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
FirstEnergy’s Bruce Mansfield coal-fired power plant, located in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, shut down in November 2019.
After the bill passed, it was reported that a coal company controlled by Justice’s family, Bluestone Energy Sales, was involved in civil litigation with FirstEnergy Solutions. The utility alleges the coal operator owes it $3.1 million for excess coal stockpiles.
“The way FirstEnergy has conducted business with elected officials in our neighboring state of Ohio begs questions about their dealings with Governor Justice and the state of West Virginia,” Salango said. “This absolutely warrants more information from Justice.”
The News & Sentinel newspaper of Parkersburg, West Virginia, reported on Thursday that after the bill passed, Justice received $21,050 in campaign donations in 2019 for his primary and general election races from FirstEnergy’s political action committee and associates of FirstEnergy.
Van Nostrand said he hopes the recent investigation prompts West Virginia lawmakers to be more skeptical of requests from utilities like FirstEnergy.
“FirstEnergy has just outsized influence in West Virginia and the legislature,” he said. “FirstEnergy doesn’t like it, it doesn’t get enacted, and I think legislators ought to think twice about the kind of influence that they’re letting that utility have and whether they ought to be continuing to accept campaign contributions from the utility.”
Dave Anderson, research and communications manager for the Energy Policy Institute, a utility watchdog group, said what happens next in Ohio could help set the tone for how future energy bills are presented in the Buckeye State and beyond.
“Policymakers in Ohio really knew a lot of this last year and they passed the bill anyway,” he said. “So, I guess the question is: does an investigation of this magnitude hold their feet to the fire a little bit more and create change that I think a lot of Ohioans would like to see?”
