By Charlotte R. Lane
Chairman Public Service Commission of West Virginia
Welcome to the new year.
The future looks better for developments in West Virginia, with a change in administration taking place in Washington.
Our Commission has engaged in several battles over the past year with the Environmental Protection Agency. Those disagreements primarily involved proposed federal pollution regulations, many adversely affecting our coal-fired plants.
All of them ended up in court, and we lost most, if not all, of the first rounds of arguments. Regardless of one’s stance on pollution controls, coal still remains a vital part of the energy makeup of West Virginia.
Our concern in each of these instances was that increasingly harsh rules, which in some cases included questionable solutions, would prematurely shut down our coal-fired electricity plants.
Those plants are the backbone of ensuring electric reliability.
These plants are essential for the regional electrical grid, of which we are a part, along with a dozen other states and the District of Columbia.
In many of these lawsuits, I gave sworn statements relating to the damage the EPA proposals will have on reliability.
I would like to reiterate that neither I nor our Commission is against permitting nontraditional energy sources to operate in West Virginia.
If you are not aware, our Commission has never turned down an alternative-energy source application. We welcome all applications, as I have said repeatedly.
America’s appetite for energy, particularly electricity, has always been robust, and every indication suggests that the need for additional energy will remain strong well into the future.
We need to ensure that we have a steady source for supplying that energy, while also exploring any and all means of supply. No question, we should always be on the lookout for improving the systems we have.
So, I just wanted to say that I look forward to 2025 with you, and I hope, as does our Commission and all its staff, that this will be a good year for our state, our nation, our economy, and, most especially, for you.