Coal news and updates

The West Virginia Coal Association is pushing back against American Electric Power after the company’s subsidiaries warned in a recent rate case that they may close a coal-fired plant.

 

Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power said in a Dec. 23 filing with the Public Service Commission of West Virginia that the Mitchell coal-fired generating facility in Marshall County would cease operation in 2028 if the companies choose to retire the plant rather than make an additional investment to ensure that the plant complies with federal guidelines limiting wastewater to continue operating beyond that year.

 

“It’s easy to say, ‘Washington’s making us do this,’” West Virginia Coal Association President Chris Hamilton said. “We’re not convinced of that.”

 

The Coal Association weighed in with a petition to intervene in the case Friday in which it said that the demand for coal mined by its members could be “radically altered by the outcome of this proceeding.”

 

“We want to protect all the good that that plant represents … the industrial job base that it sustains and all the working families that are planning their career path around that plant being in place until 2040,” Hamilton said.

 

The companies say they could make modifications to comply with the wastewater rule and a federal rule regulating coal combustion residuals at the Mitchell plant, the John Amos plant in Putnam County and the Mountaineer plant in Mason County that would allow each of those plants to operate until 2040. The filing argues that it would benefit customers to ensure compliance at the John Amos and Mountaineer plants and keep them operating until the end of their projected useful lives in 2040.

 

But the companies report that performing only the coal combustion residual compliance work at Mitchell and retiring the plant in 2028 has “comparable costs and benefits” to making the additional wastewater compliance investment to allow the plant to operate beyond 2028. Replacing a portion of the retired Mitchell capacity with a portion of Appalachian Power’s excess capacity in 2028 would result in savings to West Virginia customers of approximately $27 million annually from 2029 to 2040, the companies said in the Dec. 23 filing.

 

Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power are seeking permission to perform all of the work at all of the plants, which they estimate would cost $317 million, and listed potential project-related residential, commercial and industrial rate increases of 1.59%, 1.52% and 1.72%, respectively. The proposed increased project-related rates and charges would produce $23.5 million annually in additional revenue, according to the companies.

 

The Consumer Advocate Division of the Public Service Commission, which is statutorily required to represent the interests of residential ratepayers in utility rate cases, the West Virginia Energy Users Group and the Sierra Club all previously filed petitions to intervene in the case, as did the West Virginia Citizen Action Group, Solar United Neighbors and Energy Efficient West Virginia together in one filing.

 

The Mitchell plant emitted just over 5 million tons of carbon dioxide, just under 1,900 tons of sulfur dioxide and just over 2,000 tons of nitrogen oxides in 2019, per EIA data.

 

“There are intervenors in practically every PSC case we have, and they often bring valuable perspectives and considerations that help inform the decision-making process,” Appalachian Power spokesman Phil Moye said when asked about the Coal Association’s petition to intervene.

 

Source : https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news