Note to every American: Keeping coal plants open – never mind bringing more online – kills people.
And closing coal plants saves lives.
It also saves communities. It makes air and water cleaner and safer. It saves households money on their electricity bills. And it makes way for growth in renewable energy, which is better for the environment, makes power grids more resilient and reliable, and creates more jobs than coal ever will – or ever should – again.
West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey needs to pay attention.
In a recent interview with Fox News, Gov. Morrisey extolled the virtues of coal in US competition with China in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race, “advanced manufacturing,” and energy. He is wrong on all counts. The way we compete with China and ensure American economic leadership in this century – while also building an economy that lifts all boats at home – is by accelerating our transition away from dirty and unnecessary fossil fuels like coal.
As Mountain State Spotlight pointed out in its recap of Morrisey’s State of the State address last month, to double down on coal “is to continue the tradition of the same extractive industries that have left streams polluted, men dying in their 50s, and towns with soot in their attics.”
Gov. Morrisey should be embracing clean energy like other big coal states have done. He and the other public officials keeping West Virginia anchored to coal are prioritizing coal executives’ profits over the state’s working families.
A report released this past summer by Energy Innovation Policy and Technology showed West Virginia’s stubborn reliance on coal is the reason increases in the state’s electricity costs have outpaced inflation. The report’s author, Brendan Pierpont pointed out that even when “utilities have conducted analyses that suggest that these coal plants should retire, regulators have pushed uneconomic plans to stay online, push the utilities to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment in those plants and requiring those coal plants to run even when there’s cheaper power available on the market. So these costs are all costs that are going to electricity consumers.”
Appalachian Power, one of West Virginia’s main energy providers, has increased monthly residential prices by at least 30 percent since 2013. That is 30 times more than the relative one percent increase in average residential electricity prices across the country over the same time period. The Center for Economic and Policy Research says that is because “West Virginia’s energy providers rely heavily on inefficient coal plants.”
instead of clinging to coal, West Virginia needs to stand up for its ratepayers – as well as West Virginians’ health and jobs – like other major coal states have done. West Virginia is the country’s second largest producer of coal. Pennsylvania is third and Illinois is fourth.
As of 2023, Pennsylvania had roughly 4,800 people working in the coal mining industry and more than 96,000 employed in clean energy jobs. In the same year, the Illinois coal industry employed a hair over 2,300 people and had nearly 129,000 clean energy jobs. Progress is happening in West Virginia too, where even the state’s dogged devotion to coal could not keep the benefits of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) from reaching the state. At least 5,768 clean energy jobs have been added just since passage of the IRA in 2022. And while as of 2023 there were still 14,000 coal mining jobs in West Virginia, you could still hear the sound of coal’s death knell when you realize that figure is down from more than 21,000 coal jobs in 2010.
More numbers from 2023: coal accounted for just 5.4 percent of Pennsylvania’s utility-scale electricity generation that year and 15.3 percent of Illinois’, whereas West Virginia’s was a whopping 85.6 percent – the highest in the nation. This is in part due to a 2021 directive issued by the West Virginia Public Service Commission that requires coal plants in the state to operate at a minimum capacity factor of 69 percent – a mindbogglingly backwards policy that illustrates West Virginia’s addiction to kowtowing to the coal industry and carries a steep cost West Virginia households.
Since 2010, 389 coal-fired power plants have been retired or had their retirements announced. Internal Sierra Club analysis based on the Clean Air Task Force’s “Toll from Coal” study shows this reduction in coal burning has prevented nearly 62,000 premature deaths and saved Americans $29 BILLION in health care costs.
If West Virginia wants to show it is serious about protecting its people’s health, pocketbooks, and economic opportunity, it needs to get serious about ditching coal.
Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club and a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
