The Earth is in for severe impacts by 2030, and worse by 2050

From an Announcement by FirstEnergy Corp., Akron, Ohio, November 9, 2020

AKRON, Ohio, Nov. 9, 2020 — Aligned with its mission to help build a brighter and more sustainable future for the communities it serves, FirstEnergy Corp. today announced a pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The company also set an interim goal for a 30% reduction in greenhouse gases within the company’s direct operational control by 2030, based on 2019 levels.

“We believe climate change is among the most important issues of our time,” said President and Acting Chief Executive Officer Steven E. Strah. “We will help address this challenge by building a more climate-resilient energy system and supporting the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. Our ambitious new carbon goal and comprehensive climate strategy are fully aligned with our regulated business strategy and support our commitments to our customers, communities and investors, as well as environmental stewardship.”

FirstEnergy’s comprehensive Climate Position and Strategy Statement outlines the company’s aggressive, business-wide plans to mitigate risks from climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enable its customers and communities to thrive in a carbon-neutral economy. Actions to achieve these goals include:

>>> Hardening its transmission and distribution systems to reduce the physical risks of climate change
>>> Replacing conventional utility trucks with electric and hybrid vehicles and responsibly replacing other aging equipment that emits greenhouse gasses
>>> Reducing emissions at its small regulated generation fleet, while preparing for the transition away from coal-fired power in West Virginia by 2050
>>> Supporting renewable and distributed energy resources, including seeking approval in 2021 to construct a solar generation source of at least 50 megawatts in West Virginia
>>> Utilizing advanced technology to enable customers to manage their energy use
>>> Integrating carbon pricing into financial forecasting
>>> Empowering employees to identify opportunities that drive environmental responsibility
>>> Oversight, accountability and risk mitigation for the climate policy will be provided by an executive steering committee in partnership with the Board and company leadership.

In 2015, FirstEnergy announced plans to achieve a 90% reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 2005 levels by 2045. To date, the company has reduced CO2 emissions by approximately 80% by implementing new technologies and retiring or transferring generation assets. The new goals represent a significant expansion of this target and reflect FirstEnergy’s transformation to a fully regulated utility.

FirstEnergy is dedicated to safety, reliability and operational excellence. Its 10 electric distribution companies form one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. The company’s transmission subsidiaries operate more than 24,500 miles of transmission lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.

Follow FirstEnergy online at www.firstenergycorp.com

Another natural gas fired power plant is proposed, for Monongalia County north of Morgantown and very near Pennsylvania

From the Opinion Editor, The Dominion Post, October 30, 2019

Maybe they’ll listen to him or maybe not. They don’t listen to us. They belittle environmentalists. They scoff at facts. They don’t even pay attention to markets.

But last week, the CEO of Longview Power, Jeff Keffler, made it clear: “The writing is on the wall” for coal-fired power plants in West Virginia.

He noted that the average age of most of those plants in West Virginia is about 45 years and seven of the top generating eight locations could be retired in the next few years.

Those coal-fired plants represented virtually all — more than 92% — of the state’s electric generation in 2018.

But the aging fleet of coal-fired plants in our state is not the only thing our political leaders have not been reading on that wall in recent days and years.

Murray Energy Corp., on Tuesday, became the fifth large coal company to throw in the towel to bankruptcy court this year. Coal once fueled about half of all U.S. electricity; now it powers less than a quarter.

Coal miners’ numbers have dropped to about 14,000 — about 12% of the 125,000 miners in West Virginia in 1950.

We applaud Longview’s CEO for being willing to not just say that our state’s coal industry is in transition. Because it’s not in transition, it’s sinking like a ship.

And he’s just not talking the talk, either. His company is actually in the process of building a new, $1.1 billion electric-generating facility based on a combination of natural gas and solar generating units.

But just for a moment, let’s suspend our disbelief again that all it was going to take is an executive order, or 10, from the president to revive the coal industry.

Let’s also take the glut of cheaper and available natural gas out of the equation along with increasingly cheaper and available renewables.

Also forget that despite coal-fired plants accounting for 92% of our state’s electricity, less than a third of state residents heat their homes with that coal-fired electricity.

Or that some West Virginia power plants import up to 50% of their coal from other states, due to the price.

Set all of that aside, because according to President Trump, with a sweep of his pen, undoing the Clean Power Plan, quitting the Paris Climate Accord and gutting environmental regulations he would revive the coal industry. Remember?

Or if you want to believe our aged congressional delegation, whose re-election always takes precedence to the truth, there’s still hope for the coal industry.

We don’t believe there is hope for the coal industry or any reason to be hopeful. We want new ideas and new leadership to ensure our past is not our legacy.

When our leaders no longer even express a political will to change, it’s time to vote for a change in 2020.

They will have to listen to that.

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See also: Gas-fired power projects on the rise in WV, Charles Young, WV News — wvnews.com, October 7, 2019

CHARLESTON — While the old adage says coal is king in West Virginia, natural gas is beginning to play a larger role in the state’s energy generation landscape.

Plans for a significant natural gas-fired power plant project are underway in Harrison County, and Longview Power has recently announced its intention to construct a new facility housing one gas-fired and one solar-powered plant in Monongalia County.

Dominion Energy has multiple electric power plants

From an Article by Gregory S. Scheidner, Washington Post, May 7, 2019

Richmond, VA — Nine organizations from across the ideological spectrum have formed an unlikely alliance to call for changes in the way Virginians get their electricity, including breaking up the state’s monopoly utilities and letting customers choose their power providers.

Former state attorney general Ken Cuccinelli (R), who now does work for the libertarian group FreedomWorks, and others from conservative or libertarian groups stood alongside representatives from left-leaning groups such as the Virginia Poverty Law Center on Tuesday to announce the creation of the Virginia Energy Reform Coalition.

The coalition highlights what a lightning rod the political power of Virginia’s electric utilities has become. Dominion Energy is the state’s largest power provider and its biggest corporate political donor, spreading its influence to both major parties and helping to write its own regulatory legislation. The smaller Appalachian Power has similar clout in the southwestern section of the state.

The coalition’s slogan makes its target clear: “It’s Time to Take Back Our Dominion.” Its members said the state should allow monopolies only for the network of wires that distributes energy. Power production should be open to competition, they say.

“In this day and age, when there seem to be more and tougher obstacles to working across party and ideological lines,” Cuccinelli said, “I’m proud to stand here today with a politically eclectic group that is committed to modernizing Virginia’s electricity markets.”

Cuccinelli said the various groups had found unity in the goal of breaking up the insider influence of the utilities and setting up a competitive market.

The current system is built around a “fundamental imbalance,” said Brennan Gilmore, executive director of the liberal group Clean Virginia, which has been encouraging political candidates to refuse contributions from Dominion and Appalachian Power. “Our utilities have taken advantage of Virginians” to protect their “privileged and lucrative” monopolies, Gilmore said.

A spokesman for Dominion warned that the proposals would harm consumers. “Deregulation isn’t the way forward for Virginia’s energy future,” Rayhan Daudani said via email. “In fact, it would be a step backward. Customers in deregulated states pay rates that are more than 40 percent higher on average and don’t receive nearly as much in return.”

Virginia tried deregulation once before, and it didn’t work. The General Assembly restructured the electricity market in 1999, during an era when many states experimented with opening energy markets to competition. But most such markets struggled, and in 2007 the legislature abandoned the experiment.

The State Corporation Commission has authority to oversee Dominion and Appalachian Power, setting rates and issuing rebates to customers when profits get too high. But in the past few years, the General Assembly has diluted the commission’s power. In 2015, with Dominion’s help, lawmakers passed a rate freeze that stripped the SCC of its power.

Faced with increasing political backlash, last year Dominion led the General Assembly in a comprehensive rewrite of regulatory law. The SCC is again restricted in its ability to oversee electricity rates, and the utilities are granted wide latitude to reinvest profits in new technologies and expansion projects.

The members of the Virginia Energy Reform Coalition said states such as Texas and Ohio have devised successful ways to deregulate the energy market and usher in competition that saves money for consumers. They consulted with Pat Wood III, who led the Texas utility commission in the late 1990s and served as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under President George W. Bush.

Wood said at the news conference that the idea is to construct a market that allows consumers to benefit from competitive pressures that can drive down energy prices, just as Dominion and Appalachian Power benefit now from fluctuations in the wholesale market.

In Texas, he said, that involved breaking up the big utilities and selling off their generation plants. As a result, he said, the energy market has evolved faster to embrace new technology and alternative energy sources.

Daudani, the Dominion spokesman, said later that the utility is already embracing renewable energy and modernizing the grid. “This coalition’s collection of grab-bag policies was tried and failed and ultimately led to the bankruptcy of Enron,” he said. “We know how this story ends, and it is wrong for Virginia.”

The coalition was put together by James Presswood of the Earth Stewardship Alliance, a conservative conservation group. Other organizations involved are Appalachian Voices, the Piedmont Environmental Council, the Reason Foundation, R Street Institute and the Virginia Institute for Public Policy.

McNamee nominated to FERC

From an Article by Gavin Bade, Utility Dive, 10/3/18

>>> President Trump has nominated Bernard McNamee, head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Policy, to fill a vacancy on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission set to open this Friday, Politico reports.

>>> McNamee will take the place of departing Commissioner Robert Powelson, who will step down to head the trade group for America’s private water companies, three unnamed sources told the outlet. The White House, DOE and FERC did not respond to requests for comment.

>>> McNamee helped roll out the DOE’s ill-fated coal and nuclear bailout plan that was unanimously rejected by FERC in January. That DOE bailout plan was a litmus test for potential nominees, according to Politico, but it remains unclear if McNamee’s vetting is complete or when he will be nominated.

Utility Dive Insight:

If confirmed to FERC, McNamee would likely fall more in line with the White House’s energy priorities than Powelson, who routinely criticized the administration’s efforts to save uneconomic nuclear plants from retirement.

McNamee helped pitch the DOE’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which would have provided cost recovery to plants with 90 days of fuel onsite, pumping the plan at regulatory conferences and defending it in front of Senate lawmakers last month.

“A lot of the organized markets have distortions in them that aren’t representative of an actual free-serving market, so the thought is you need to remove some of those distortions and get some more parity,” McNamee said in response to a question from Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

The argument echoes a frequent talking point from Secretary of Energy Rick Perry — namely that there is “no free market” in the energy industry, so saving uneconomic plants from retirement will not undermine market functions.

During the same hearing, McNamee also defended DOE’s authority to keep plants online using its emergency authority under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, saying it has been used in a “variety of contexts,” like the California energy crisis. McNamee’s perspective on 202(c) could be material, since FERC sets the rates for emergency cost recovery if a generator and regional grid operator cannot agree.

McNamee has only been in his current role as the head of DOE’s policy office since May. Before that, he headed the Tenth Amendment center at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank with ties to Perry.

During his time there, McNamee wrote an Earth Day op-ed for The Hill extolling the virtues of fossil fuels, writing that “some suggest that we can replace fossil fuels with renewable resources to meet our needs, but they never explain how.”

Prior to the Texas foundation, McNamee was a deputy general counsel at DOE, chief of staff to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and an aide to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

If nominated to FERC by the White House, McNamee would need to be confirmed by the full Senate after hearings and votes at the Natural Resources Committee. That process could take months, allowing Democrats to deadlock FERC votes in 2-2 ties.

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BACKGROUND SUMMARY

Bernard Leonard McNamee
US DOE (joined: May 28, 2017) Departed Feb. 2, 2018
Deputy General Counsel for Energy Policy, Office of the General Counsel | $179,700

Former Positions Outside Government

BSM Family Trust — Trustee (Uncompensated)
McGuireWoods LLP — Senior Counsel
Office of the Attorney General of Texas — Chief of Staff

Former Compensation Sources

Dominion Resources — Legal services
McGuireWoods LLP — Provided legal representation and advice to the firm’s clients.
Nisource — Legal services
Novi Energy — Legal services
Office of the Attorney General of Texas — Served as Chief of Staff in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas. Helped manage the office, staff, and assist in the development of legal strategy and policy.

PJM Interconnect Includes Marcellus Shale

From an Article by Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg News Service, June 1, 2018

President Donald Trump ordered his energy secretary to take immediate action to stem power plant closures, arguing that a decline in coal and nuclear electricity is putting the nation’s security at risk.

“Impending retirements of fuel-secure power facilities are leading to a rapid depletion of a critical part of our nation’s energy mix and impacting the resilience of our power grid,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in an emailed statement Friday. Trump has directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry “to prepare immediate steps to stop the loss of these resources and looks forward to his recommendations.”

Trump’s directive comes as administration officials search for ways to extend the life of money-losing coal and nuclear power plants that face competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. The plants are considered “fuel-secure” because they house coal and nuclear material on site and are not dependent on pipelines that can be disrupted, wind that stops blowing or a sun that sets.

Coal producers rose on the news, with Peabody Energy Corp. climbing the most since Aug. 1, 2017 and closing up 4.8 percent to $45.35. Arch Coal Inc. rose 2 percent to $83.81. Consol Energy Inc. gained 3.7 percent to $45.70, while Alliance Resource Partners LP was up 1.3 percent to $19.50. The Stowe Global Coal Index was up 1 percent.

Administration officials are still weighing the best approach, Sanders said. The National Security Council was to meet Friday to discuss the Energy Department’s latest idea for shoring up the facilities.

Read More: Trump Said to Prepare Lifeline for Money-Losing Coal Plants

The department’s strategy, outlined in a memo obtained by Bloomberg News, would use authority granted under a pair of federal laws to establish a “strategic electric generation reserve” and compel grid operators to buy electricity from at-risk plants. The steps are necessary, the memo says, to protect national security.

The move comes as Trump uses similar national security arguments to justify market interventions aimed at protecting other treasured political constituencies — steelworkers and automakers — at the expense of U.S. allies.

“National security is being invoked by people who once favored markets,” observed John Shelk, president of Electric Power Supply Association, at a conference in New York. “Everybody loses in a fuels war.”

Two-Year Study Proposed To Delay Closings

The draft plan is meant to buy time for a two-year study of vulnerabilities in the American energy delivery system, extending to natural gas pipelines as well as power plants. The agency argues that power plant closures must be managed for national security reasons, because nuclear and coal-fired facilities can easily be restored after extreme weather events, cyber-attacks and other emergencies.

Trump administration officials have already spent a year contemplating action. After the Energy Department conducted a study of grid reliability last year, Perry proposed a rule to compensate coal and nuclear plants. Federal regulators shot down the idea in January.

A FirstEnergy Corp. subsidiary requested immediate intervention from Perry’s agency in late March, after the Ohio-based company announced it would shut three nuclear power plants feeding the nation’s largest grid, operated by PJM Interconnection LLC.

The FirstEnergy Reaction

FirstEnergy President Charles Jones welcomed the administration’s announcement Friday.

“Baseload coal and nuclear plants help maintain electric system resiliency and national security while also playing an irreplaceable role in the regional economy,” Jones said in an emailed statement. “Preserving these vital facilities is the right thing to do for the industry, the electric grid and our customers.”

The move would represent the president’s most direct effort to bring back coal mining jobs and reward voters who helped put him into office, ahead of pivotal midterm elections that could decide whether Republicans retain control of the House and Senate.

Some 12,000 megawatts of coal-fired power are expected to retire this year, the National Mining Association said.

“Without action, we may pass a reliability and resiliency crisis point of no return,” the trade group said by email. “We need a plan to preserve the reliable, affordable energy that continues to slip away each day, and it is encouraging that this administration is taking the issue seriously.”

Opponents of the new proposal contend the intervention is a solution in search of a problem and that there are other ways to back up the grid.

The Real Barrier to Trump’s Coal Bailout? His Own Appointees

PJM Interconnection said in a statement that the power system is more reliable than ever.

“There is no need for any such drastic action,” the grid operator said. “Any federal intervention in the market to order customers to buy electricity from specific power plants would be damaging to the markets and therefore costly to consumers.”

The administration’s plans drew a swift rebuke from Trump allies in the oil and gas industry, aligning them with renewable power boosters also threatened by the action.

Todd Snitchler, the American Petroleum Institute’s market development group director, said a move to assist power plants “that are struggling to be profitable under the guise of national security would be unprecedented and misguided.”

Environmentalists vowed to file lawsuits combating any potential intervention, arguing it threatened to jeopardize progress in paring greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.

“This is an outrageous ploy to force American taxpayers to bail out coal and nuclear executives who have made bad decisions by investing in dirty and dangerous energy resources,” said Mary Anne Hitt, director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “It will be soundly defeated both in the courts and in the court of public opinion.”

Under the Energy Department’s draft plan, the administration would take action under two laws: the Federal Power Act that allows the government to guarantee profits for power plants amid grid emergencies, and the 68-year-old Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era statute once invoked by President Harry Truman to help the steel industry.

For two years, the Energy Department would direct the purchase of power or electric generation capacity from a designated list of facilities “to forestall any future actions toward retirement, decommissioning or deactivation,” according to the memo. The proposed Energy Department directive also would tell some of those facilities to continue generating and delivering electric power according to their existing or recent contracts with utilities.

It’s not clear that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would go along with the plan. Although the administration could aim to bypass the electric regulators completely, FERC could play a role in any effort to require grid operators to make out-of-market payments to electric generators.

“This might just never even be taken up by FERC,” said John Bartlett, co-portfolio manager of the Reaves Utilities ETF. “Job No. 1 if you’re a FERC commissioner is stay out of court.”

Hickory Run Energy Station

From an Article by Dan O’Brien, Business Journal, Youngstown, OH, May 3, 2018

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — The investment numbers are unlike any the region has witnessed in decades – more than $4.6 billion scattered across four counties in or around the Mahoning Valley where new, nimble and efficient electrical power plants are either in operation, under construction or under consideration.

It’s a signature of where growth in new energy will develop in America and what it will look like. This section of northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania – with its abundance of natural gas from the Utica and Marcellus shales – has emerged as the fulcrum for the industry’s future.

As older, less efficient power plants are retired or shut down, they’re being replaced with smaller, more cost-efficient combined-cycle plants that use natural gas and steam – not coal or nuclear power – to generate electricity for homes and businesses.

“What’s happening in the industry right now is equivalent to the automobile replacing the horse and buggy,” says Bill Siderewicz, president of Massachusetts-based Clean Energy Future LLC, which developed the Lordstown Energy Center, under construction, and is working to secure a second project for Lordstown, the Trumbull Energy Center.

“What’s happening is companies like FirstEnergy had these plants and failed to modernize them. And now companies like ourselves are finding a market to produce electricity more efficiently and at less cost,” Siderewicz says.

FirstEnergy Corp. announced March 28 that it would close all three of its nuclear power plants – the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant and the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Ohio, and the Beaver Valley Power Station in western Pennsylvania – over the next three years, as well as its two remaining coal-fired power plants.

“Though the plants have taken aggressive measures to cut costs, the market challenges facing these units are beyond their control,” said Don Moul, president of FES Generation Companies.

Then on March 31, two of FirstEnergy’s subsidiaries – FirstEnergy Solutions, which operates its coal-fired plants, and First Energy Nuclear Operating Co. – filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. On April 23, the parent company announced an agreement with key creditors that could allow for a quick exit from Chapter 11.

Part of the agreement provides FirstEnergy Solutions and First Energy Operating Nuclear Co. with help from FirstEnergy on “key business matters” as it undergoes reorganization, the company said.

Siderewicz says that the bottom line is that these older plants are simply uncompetitive and will remain so. “They’re sitting on these antiquated coal plants. These plants have 100% higher costs than a combined-cycle plant,” he says. “It’s simply uneconomical for coal. And there’s no way to salvage them.”

So it came as no surprise to Siderewicz that the FirstEnergy subsidiaries filed Chapter 11 and that it has targeted three nuclear plants for shutdown, eventually eliminating 4,000 megawatts of power generation – most of it in Ohio – the equivalent of providing electricity to four million homes.

That power generation has to be replaced by other sources, Siderewicz says, and companies such as Clean Energy are queued to help fill that gap. “That’s why we came to Ohio,” he says. “There are tremendous opportunities for projects like the Trumbull Energy Center and other new plants.”

Clean Energy Future LLC was responsible for development of the Lordstown Energy Center at the Lordstown Industrial Park. That $890 million plant was sold to majority owner Macquarie, an international investment firm, and is under construction to open late this year.

But efforts to build a second plant of similar scope – the Trumbull Energy Center – adjacent to the one under construction are compromised because of a protracted legal battle between Clean Energy Future and the owners of the Lordstown Energy Center. Together, the plants would generate enough electricity to supply power to just less than two million homes.

Clean Energy Future was also the lead developer of a natural gas fired power plant – the Oregon Clean Energy Center – in Lucas County. A second plant is permitted and planned for the Lucas County site and is projected to be commissioned by 2020.

What attracts power generation projects to Ohio is the abundance of low-cost natural gas derived from the Utica and Marcellus shale plays. Across Ohio, 11 new combined-cycle electrical generation plants worth an estimated $10.5 billion are either recently completed, under construction or in the planning or permit stages (CLICK HERE to see chart in May print edition).

Of that number, about $4.6 billion is devoted to new energy production plants in or around the Mahoning Valley. In addition to the two Lordstown projects – they’re valued at about $890 million each – new power plants are operating in Carroll County, proposed for Columbiana County in Ohio and under construction Lawrence County in western Pennsylvania, all within the footprint of the Utica shale.

One of the largest projects is Advanced Power’s South Field Energy plant near Wellsville in Columbiana County. The company, which earlier this year commenced operations at its Carroll County Energy plant, plans to invest $1.1 billion to build a plant capable of generating 1,170 megawatts of electricity, enough for 1.1 million homes.

“The project is expected to begin construction in the second half of 2018,” reports Zac Gordon, project manager for South Field Energy. Construction is expected to last about three years and the targeted commission date is the second quarter of 2021.

Like the Lordstown plants, South Field and Carroll County use lower-cost natural gas instead of coal as fuel. Moreover, these high-tech facilities use heat – a byproduct of generation – to power a steam turbine that produces additional electricity. The process is much cleaner and causes less harm to the atmosphere and environment.

“The investment in South Field Energy will push Advanced Power’s investment in the region to over $2 billion in the span of approximately five years,” Gordon says. “The investment stimulates the local economy through purchases, creation of jobs and local tax revenue.”

These projects combined have the potential to create thousands of construction jobs, says Linda Nitch, director of economic development for the Lawrence County Regional Chamber in New Castle, Pennsylvania.

Last summer, Tyr Energy, the U.S. subsidiary of the Japanese energy giant Itochu, began construction on its $863 million Hickory Run Energy Station about five miles west of New Castle. The 1,000 megawatt plant is expected to be operating by April 2020. Power generation equipment will be two Siemens H-class gas turbine generators, two heat recovery steam generators and a Siemens steam turbine generator.

“It’s a wonderful investment,” Nitch says. “From the standpoint of construction, there should be about 500 workers there at its peak.” But once the plant is operating, the number of permanent employees is much lower than larger, conventional power-generation facilities such as the Beaver Valley Nuclear Plant. “The new plant probably won’t exceed 50 people employed,” Nitch says.

The Beaver Valley station, on the other hand, employs more than 1,000 workers, many of whom live in Lawrence County and commute to work there. “Closing the nuclear plant will cost a lot of jobs,” Nitch says.

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PJM will study ‘fuel security’ of electric grid as natural gas use rises — Some 40 natural gas power plants proposed in Pennsylvania

North Central West Virginia Business Summit (4/9/18)

Editorial by John Miller (Executive Editor), WV News, April 13, 2018

Since its inception four years ago, we’ve touted the Bridges Without Boundaries Business Summit, which brings together members of four area chambers of commerce: Harrison, Marion, Monongalia and Preston, counties in WV.

The focus of the summit is to bring business and government leaders together to network, looking for opportunities to work together to enhance our economic development efforts.

This year’s event, held Tuesday, was the largest since its beginning and featured a number of guest speakers who shared insight into the region’s economic future as well as ways to partner together.

The summit also featured dozens of booths set up by area businesses, which allowed visitors and participants to stroll the event hall and learn at their own pace.

As would be expected, a good amount of time focused on the region’s role in the Marcellus Shale development, with WVU Energy Institute Director Brian Anderson sharing his expertise.

“We have, in North Central West Virginia, a lot of natural gas resources,” Anderson told the crowd. “There have been some natural gas power plants in various stages of development here in North Central West Virginia. That’s one of the things that could certainly affect the area.”

He stressed the real game changer could be the development of downstream manufacturing associated with the byproducts of the “wet gas” components, which are used in the plastics and chemical industries.

“There’s a real opportunity in the supply chain,” Anderson said. “There’s an opportunity in manufacturing there, because of road connectivity to D.C. and some of the bigger population centers that way across I-68.

“You can imagine that the supply chain goes from (a) cracker near the Ohio River, but then the next level being the dryer and processor can be here in North Central West Virginia. The manufacturer and finished product, as well, and then just ship it into D.C. We can certainly build all of those small manufacturers that are really a big multiplier.”

While Anderson’s vision brings excitement in regards to the region’s potential if parties work together, we were also thrilled to see Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto as a keynote speaker.

That city is one of 20 cities being considered for Amazon’s “second headquarters,” a development that could lead to 50,000 jobs.
Peduto talked about the potential for Pittsburgh to team with the technology sector in North Central West Virginia, based out of the I-79 Technology Park in Fairmont and WVU in Morgantown.

“With the supercomputing center (at the technology park) and with the capacity that it has, it would be a benefit,” Peduto said. “Adding that to our application adds to the potential footprint to come all the way in to West Virginia. On top of that, there are some really great workforce development programs at WVU that have partnered with IBM.

“When you start talking about 50,000 jobs, you’re going to be taking it from a much larger footprint than just one city or county. It’s about having that pipeline of people that they could rely on to be workers. The goal would be to provide as many jobs to people already here as possible.”

If Amazon decides to locate to Pittsburgh, combined with the known uptick coming from natural gas, as well as the state’s commitment to road infrastructure, the demand for good workers will increase dramatically.

That should make West Virginia fertile ground for in-migration, instead of what’s become the norm — people leaving the state.

While we understand much of what was talked about on Tuesday was visionary in nature, the presentations paint a clear picture of what’s possible — if officials and businesses learn to break down traditional walls that constrict us and learn to work together.

Presidents of Four County Chambers

China has dangled an $84 billion capital investment offer to blind us -- incredible!

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemist & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

While in China, President Trump signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreements talking about investing $250 billion in the U. S. One MOU is for China Energy Investment Corp. to invest $83.7 billion in shale gas development and chemical manufacturing projects in West Virginia over two decades, according to a statement from the WV Department of Commerce. For comparison, West Virginia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the worth of all goods and services produced in the state for a year, is in the neighborhood of $66 billion.

A MOU is not a contract, little more than a statement saying “we are thinking about this project.” We should do a lot of thinking about this one. Over the last 46 years, U. S. capital has flowed to China, and the Chinese have managed to accumulate very substantial capital themselves.

However, the Communist party has maintained firm control and Xi Jinpeng, Trump’s opposite number, was elevated to the same status as Mao Zedong. As thoughtful citizens know, some three-fourths of the disposable part of U. S. tax money goes into our military, designed to resist the advance of Communism, including China and North Korea. Russia is still strongly influenced by Communism.

That U. S. investment has built up China at the same time we have built up a military to defend against them, witness the “pivot to Asia.” Doesn’ this seem to be self-contradictory? The result is that China is a rising power. The headline says “China GDP Growth Eases to 6.8% in Third Quarter 2017.” For the U. S. the corresponding figure is at a more or less constant 2.8%.

Consider the proposed big deal in West Virginia. Chinese companies competing with American companies? Will they bring their own workers, as they have for projects in Africa? Will they hire American workers, pay American wages and benefits, work them American standard hours, etc.? Won’t they want cheap Chinese labor (remember Trump’s statement “I am always going to put America first, the same way that I expect all of you in this room to put your countries first.”) Remember the old adage “ He that pays the piper calls the tune.” Will the Chinese give that up?

Then there is the language problem, and our submerged racial attitude toward our smaller, yellow skinned, brothers with different customs. If they would be forced to give up the advantages of bringing their own labor, they will have to have supervisors in contact with the businesses that do the extraction (or they are less careful managers than all that money justifies). How will American bosses react to having Chinese bosses?

Now to the particular problem in West Virginia. The Chinese need the energy desperately, along with raw materials for the chemical industry that comes up with the gas, such as ethane and propane, and they certainly can use any profit they get, since they still have a huge number of people who haven’t benefitted from their recent economic expansion. And extraction leaves the pollution, sickness, broken roads, contaminated aquifers and other environmental problems, in West Virginia, just as American investment avoided pollution, and the rest of it in China when we sent capital and got their products. You can’t have large scale fossil fuel extraction without those problems. We would build up their strength (against our military) and reduce our mineral reserves, and make this resource colony (our State and Nation) less valuable and less productive for the future.

Ever hear the phrase, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? And doesn’t it seem to apply in this case? It is attributed to Vladimir Lenin. You remember his politics, don’t you? Perhaps a lot of serious thought should be given to this MOU.

See also: Why $84 Billion From China Can’t Buy a U.S. East Gas Hub – Bloomberg

Paradise Gas-fired Plant -- Coal plants in the background

From a Report by Glynis Board, Ohio Valley ReSource, WFPL – NPR, July 17, 2017

‘Where Paradise Lay‘

Coal is showing its age. The average age of coal plants in the U.S. today is about 40 years and for the past couple of decades power companies have faced tough decisions about the investments needed to keep those coal-burners going in a way that meets both environmental requirements and economic competition.

Many are opting to phase out coal and instead invest in cheaper, cleaner natural gas.

Some 8,000 megawatts of coal power generating capacity will likely be retired this year. That’s roughly the equivalent of 11 Longview plants. Last year, 13,000 megawatts of coal were retired, many of those before planned retirement dates.

Economists like Walter Culver with the Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western Reserve University say the boom in the shale gas supply and development of high efficiency technology to burn that gas are combining to force more coal out of the market. “So now the natural efficiency of generating electricity with gas for the same amount of gas energy as coal energy is about half of the costs, basically,” he said.

That was the strong selling point for TVA President and CEO Bill Johnson, who recently addressed a crowd gathered in Paradise, Kentucky. “It’s a big part of our priority here to diversify our fleet to make sure we are making electricity at the lowest feasible rate,” he said.

David Sorrick, TVA’s senior vice president of power operations, stood near the new 1100 megawatt facility. “Directly behind me is the new Paradise combined-cycle facility,” he said. “And it’s co-located with the unit down the hill, which is our Paradise coal facility.”

Gas power produces far less soot, no mercury, and none of the combustion ash that coal power produces. It also produces 40 to 50 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions compared to the coal unit.

Operations technician Kyle Jones conducted a tour at the dedication ceremony, and proudly pointed out the efficiency features. “The combined cycle portion where we’re using all the heat possible is what makes it so efficient,” he explained. “Our exhaust leaving the stack is as cool as we can make it to use all the energy we could, the most heat transfer possible.”

That even reduces the amount of water needed from the nearby Green River. Steam is returned to liquid form in cooling towers. Huge fans pass air over droplets to cool water until it can be reused.

Jones started at the Paradise coal facility a decade ago and worked his way from conveyer operator to unit operator and now a job at the new gas facility.
“I love it,” he said of the new plant. “It’s a whole lot more clean and makes a world of difference in terms of the work I do.”

Others in the community, however, see trouble in Paradise. At the nearby Paradise Cafe, a stone monument to Kentucky’s coal miners greets visitors at the door. Inside, patrons talked over burgers and BLTs about looming concerns over job losses, either at the TVA facility or the nearby coal mine that supplies it.

The TVA is eager to calm those fears. Sorrick pointed out that even though two coal units were retired here, a third one remains in operation and likely will for decades. However, the new gas facility employs fewer people than the coal plant did. Some employees found work elsewhere in the TVA system.

Health Effects of Power Plants

When John Prine put Paradise on the popular culture map, he was writing about the visible effects of strip mining.

But what Prine couldn’t see then were some of the profound public health effects of burning coal, effects that would take years to measure.

The TVA has been burning coal in Paradise for fifty years. But it started burning a lot more of it in the 1980s, after the public’s opinion of nuclear power changed dramatically. “It was completely related to the partial nuclear meltdown of Three Mile Island in 1979,” Carnegie Mellon University researcher Edson Severnini noticed.

When the TVA took some of its nuclear power generators off line, the power gap was met with coal, specifically, a big increase in the output from the Paradise Fossil Plant. That swap in power generation in the mid 80s provided Severnini an opportunity to study public health impacts in places where coal power generation increased.

He found a striking relationship between the uptick in coal burning at Paradise and a decrease in the size of babies born downwind. “Where Paradise coal-fired power plant was located there was a huge increase in coal-fired power generation, a high increase in air pollution,” he said. “And in that particular location there was a decrease in birth weight by 5.4 percent.”

Severnini’s study was published in the journal Nature in April. He looked at recorded birth weight in the first 18 months after the region’s switch to coal. It was accessible data and birth weight is a good indicator of human health outcomes later in life. Severnini explained that low birth weight can be linked to shorter life spans, higher susceptibility to disease, and even a person’s ability to thrive socially.

“What I wanted people to think about is: What are the consequences of energy choices?” he said.

The Paradise coal facility is now far cleaner than it was in the 80s thanks to stronger requirements under the Clean Air Act and pollution control technology TVA installed. But no matter how you burn it, coal is an organic material dug from the ground and will produce emissions. Recent environmental studies indicate that despite progress in pollution control, soot from coal power plants still accounted for an estimated 7,000 premature deaths each year in the U.S. as of 2014. That’s a lot fewer deaths than the country saw just a decade earlier.

“The cleaner you get that carbon-containing compound you’re burning, the better it is,” said University of Pittsburgh physician and public health expert Dr. Bernard Goldstein. “There are cleaner forms of coal, but none of them are as clean as, say, natural gas.”

Goldstein said despite a lack of data to understand the full health effects of the natural gas industry, it is a significantly cleaner fossil fuel to burn. And gas drillers probably face fewer health risks than coal miners.

“Anytime we’ve had areas that have switched from coal to natural gas there are far less particulates in the air and so the pollution levels have decreased because of that switch,” he said.

Uncertainty Exists Over Gas

But while natural gas offers improvements compared to coal, its environmental effects are proving difficult to fully measure.

Goldstein said he thinks the gas industry, which is highly fragmented, has missed opportunities to clearly address concerns about its own environmental effects. Those include air and water pollution near drilling sites, disposal concerns related to drilling waste, and the greenhouse gas emissions that result from methane leakage.

As a result, any health effects remain to be clearly understood. “For natural gas, the major uncertainties are weighing on the people who live next door,” he said.

Next door to gas drilling, that is. Put another way, the health and environmental risks for the industry’s host communities may take years to observe and measure. And the people of the Ohio Valley may well bear the brunt of those effects to come, just as they have with the effects of coal in the past.

See also: Why Are G20 Governments Financing Coal Over Renewables?