A Q&A with West Virginia Energy Experts
Compiled by Emily Rice
West Virginia ranked fifth nationwide in total energy production in 2019, accounting for 5% of the U.S.’s total energy. While riding the waves of the past few years, including a pandemic, global supply chain disruptions and workforce shortages, West Virginians proved their resiliency once again. Despite obstacles decades in the making, advances in technology and the exploration of new opportunities provide excitement within West Virginia’s energy portfolio.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration Independent Statistics & Analysis, coal is responsible for 84% of West Virginia’s energy production, with natural gas accounting for 8%. In 2020, coal-fired electric power plants accounted for 88% of West Virginia’s electricity net generation. Renewable energy resources—primarily hydroelectric power and wind energy—contributed almost 6% and natural gas provided more than 3%.
To learn more about the challenges the energy sector faces and what the state is doing to help these industries reach their full potential, West Virginia Executive magazine sat down with leaders in the state’s energy production.
Kelly Bragg
Charlie Burd
Chris Hamilton
Dr. Samuel Taylor
WVE: How can West Virginia support energy efficiency?
Bragg: Energy efficiency is the cheapest, cleanest form of energy, sometimes called negawatts. It offers domestic jobs that cannot be outsourced because the work is done on buildings that don’t move. This wide-ranging industry needs workers’ hands and brains, from the construction trades to architecture and engineering. West Virginia may support the building performance industry through recruitment, training, mentoring, apprenticeship, continuing education and market development.
WVE: Tell us about West Virginia’s wind turbines and what it means to have a mature wind turbine industry in the state?
Bragg: In the early 2000s, Truewind Solutions studied wind potential for West Virginia and reported the state had the capacity for 3,800 megawatts (MW) of wind on private lands. At the time, there was one operating wind farm with 66 MW of capacity. Today, the state has 742 MW of installed capacity. The industry is mature in the sense that it has a multi-decade history and that developers have built out the easier-to-capture wind. West Virginia’s mountainous geography means excellent wind resources but more difficult construction. There is certainly growth opportunity as developers can repower existing projects. Subtracting the existing 742 MW from the 3,800 MW of potential leaves 3,058 MW.
WVE: How and where do geothermal and hydro energy production fit into West Virginia’s energy portfolio?
Taylor: Geothermal energy is in its infancy in West Virginia. Most installations so far have been ground source heat pumps, which use the relatively constant temperature of the earth as a moderator for seasonal temperature, thus lowering energy use. This is because ground temperatures are warmer than the air in the winter and cooler than the air in the summer. Mine pool geothermal uses a similar approach, using the temperature of water in flooded mines. These technologies are great for increasing energy efficiency for homes, schools or moderately sized facilities.
There is a hot spot for geothermal under West Virginia—if we can identify a technical and economical way to produce that heat, then we could have the ability to provide low- or zero-carbon heat, which could be used to attract businesses, particularly those that have made climate and carbon commitments. That is, in my opinion, the real interest—this heat cannot be shipped out of the state and is likely too low in temperature for effective electricity generation. For a business to use this energy source, they would need to locate where the heat is—here in West Virginia.
WVE: How does PJM Interconnection, Inc. (PJM), a regional transmission organization (RTO), play a role in West Virginia’s energy exports? How does PJM stack up against the other RTOs in terms of different types of energy production?
Bragg: PJM is the RTO to which West Virginia’s electric utilities belong. PJM operates an energy market in all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. The energy market consists of the real-time energy market and day-ahead market.
WVE: Give a brief explanation of RTOs and how they play a part in the energy sector in West Virginia. What happens if there is an outage in an RTO?
Bragg: RTOs and Independent System Operators (ISO) balance supply and demand through markets for buyers and sellers of electricity. This process allows generators to bid into a market to ensure competitive prices. RTOs and ISOs have several strategies to keep prices reasonable when demand is high while ensuring reasonable rates of return for electricity
producers. Prices are weighted for such characteristics as proximity to need, capacity constraints and ease of dispatch in such a way that even in times of an outage at one or more generators, electricity demand is met. PJM is an electricity exporter to other RTOs/ISOs across the country in many cases.
WVE: In West Virginia, coal is our largest export. Where is the potential growth in the market, nationally or globally?
Hamilton: Coal is West Virginia’s fastest growing export product totaling $2.7 billion last year and accounting for 43.5% of West Virginia’s total export products. This level of output sustains thousands of mining and local support jobs throughout our state and contributes immensely to West Virginia’s economy and our nation’s balance of trade. Almost half of the U.S.’s international coal exports are from West Virginia. During calendar year 2021, a total of 28 million tons of high-grade thermal and metallurgical coal was exported to six continents and 49 foreign destinations throughout the world for high-quality steel making, base-load electric and power generation and to shore-up military and defense systems. Even greater opportunities abound for West Virginia and its coal as the Ukraine crisis intensifies and the world places greater attention on national security, energy supplies and trade policies. Most NATO and European countries are looking to replace Russian energy and coal checks all the boxes for reliability, security, safety and cost. West Virginia’s world-class mining operations stand ready to meet this demand as we look to expand coal’s market share and our industry’s contribution to world health, stability and independence.
WVE: What trends do you see in terms of natural gas production and use?
Burd: There is a lot going on globally affecting that. Everything that is going on in Ukraine directly impacts all of us here in the U.S. I think all oil and gas producing states in the country are looking to see where they are and how to embrace the challenge of producing more energy that can be used globally, and obviously the producers of the Gas and Oil Association of WV, Inc. would be no different. The trouble is, there is no overnight answer to a problem that has been exasperated by the administration’s negative view of fossil fuels, shutting down pipelines and restricting the issuance of drilling permits on federal lands. We are all interconnected by one massive series of pipes, so everything that happens globally affects us.
The challenge is to get this product that we produce to market. When you are shutting down pipelines or stopping the construction of pipelines that provide very necessary daily capacity takeaways, that is troublesome. There are parts of our country that are in need of natural gas and oil, a product that can be liquified and then shipped to our allies. When you have yourself dependent on others for the things you need most, that is a dangerous position to be in and that is why the efficient, clean development of oil and natural gas in this country to get us back where we were in 2020—which was not just energy independent but energy dominant in the world—is important. That should be part of our all of the above energy goal.
