By Mike Tony
Charleston Gazette-Mail
Gov. Patrick Morrisey opened his second State of the State address before the West Virginia Legislature inside a packed House of Delegates Chamber Wednesday evening by acknowledging that “many West Virginians are still struggling to make ends meet.”
Morrisey observed that West Virginians are having to endure “significant [cost] increases in all forms of energy.”
“I traveled all across West Virginia, and I’ve listened to all of your concerns on affordability,” Morrisey said. “I hear you, and together, I think all the people in this room, we’re prepared to fix them.
But in his nearly hour-long speech, Morrisey offered no plan on how to address West Virginians’ rising power bills. Instead, Morrisey renewed his support for a fossil fuel-heavy status quo for the state’s energy portfolio that has provided the backdrop for sharply rising energy costs.
Morrisey’s State of the State address was in line with lawmaker meetings during the first week of the state’s legislative session that gaveled in Wednesday that signaled the state is likely to stagnate within that energy status quo that has been hostile to renewable energy at the expense of greater and likely more affordable energy choices for West Virginia consumers.
“[T]he path he proposed will repeat the same tired mistakes,” Dani Parent, executive director of West Virginia Citizen Action Group, a progressive advocacy group, said of Morrisey in an emailed statement. “[F]ast-tracking dirty energy, weakening oversight and shutting communities out of decisions.”
Morrisey notes ‘W.Va. has power,’ but costs loom
Morrisey spent minutes touting West Virginia’s coal and gas industries and promoted what he has framed as a fossil fuel-reliant plan to more than triple the state’s power generation capacity by 2050.
The plan, announced in September, calls for a coal-led effort in West Virginia to help the U.S. compete with more prolifically power-producing China and meet an expected sharp rise in national energy demand. Morrisey set a goal for West Virginia to increase its current, roughly 15-gigawatt capacity to 50 gigawatts in the next 25 years.
“Listen, West Virginia has power,” Morrisey said Wednesday evening, “and by God, we’re going to use it now.”
But Morrisey’s plan to embrace coal long-term in sync with what have been a coal-friendly state Public Service Commission and Legislature ignores options to address energy affordability that diversify the state’s energy portfolio.
Upon outlining his 50-gigawatts-by-2050 plan in September, Morrisey said West Virginia officials are working with utilities, coal companies, the PSC and the federal government to develop a plan to upgrade the state’s fleet of aging coal-fired plants.
Morrisey said in September upgrades would make the plants more efficient, more economical to run, and ensure they generate stable baseload power — the minimum amount of power needed over a given period at a steady rate — “for decades to come.”
But coal plants increasingly lose money and make electricity ratepayers lose money.
Cheaper, cleaner energy sources have emerged in the 21st century, causing net coal generation to plummet 68% from 2005 to 2024, ac-cording to U.S. Energy In-formation Administration data.
Read the rest of the story at the Charleston Gazette-Mail