A vigorous grassroots campaign has led to surrender and retreat in an Ohio-based energy company’s attempt to transfer the costs of its struggling coal-burning power plant onto West Virginia ratepayers.
Like many of the nation’s coal operators, FirstEnergy Corp., a backer of Pr*sident Trump’s pro-coal agenda, has been having financial difficulties as a consequence of the lower costs of electricity-generated by natural gas, solar, and wind.
One of those plants, Pleasants power station in Willow Island,West Virginia, is owned by FirstEnergy’s unregulated subsidiary Allegheny Energy Supply. FirstEnergy wanted to transfer it to Monongahela Power (Mon Power) and Potomac Edison, the company’s regulated utilities. This would place all the plant’s costs and financial risks on West Virginia ratepayers and guarantee the company a revenue stream from the plant’s operations. It would, in effect, amount to a subsidy from ratepayers. Energy consultants and environmental advocates put the long-term extra cost to customers at $470 million over 15 years. That would average about $69 a year for each customer.
But in a Monday letter to the state’s utility-regulating Public Service Commission, Mon Power and Potomac Edison said they would no longer seek the transfer.
The first blow came last month when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission nixed the transfer. West Virginia’s Consumer Advocate Division had asked FERC to reject the deal, arguing that it was being sought so FirstEnergy “could avoid a further write off of its investment in an aging coal plant that is no longer economic in wholesale markets” and stick customers with the bill.
The second blow came as a result of the efforts of some 2,500 people, businesses, cities, and activists who passed municipal resolutions, filed protest letters, and attended three jam-packed public hearings. A coalition called the West Virginians For Energy Freedom fought the proposal from the get-go.
The PSC responded by okaying the transfer, but it placed conditions on it shielding customers from legal and financial risks. Those conditions were too much for the company to accept, hence this week’s letter saying the transfer was off.
Emmett Pepper, executive director of Energy Efficient West Virginia, said:
“This is a major win for the 530,000 Mon Power and Potomac Edison consumers in West Virginia. This deal was bad from the beginning and the extensive evidence presented at the PSC proceeding made clear that the proposed transfer would benefit FirstEnergy and hurt West Virginians struggling to survive in today’s economy.”