July 21, 2024 - Pleasants County Commission President Jay Powell remains confident in the Omnis Pleasants Power Plant in spite of a recent Wall Street Journal questioning whether the plant’s new owner can make good on some big promises.

Powell has been one of the Pleasants Power Station’s most vocal public supporters during its recent tumultuous years, when it’s come close to closure more than once.

The plant appeared saved last summer, when California-based Omnis Fuel Technologies bought the plant and announced their intention to convert it into a first of its kind, emission-free hydrogen-burning plant.

The company’s plan, according to Wall Street Journal article published on July 10, rests on technology that might not even work.

Despite these concerns, Jay Powell said on Sunday he hasn’t lost faith in the project. “I’ve experienced nothing but forthrightness, honesty, passion, and perseverance in an attempt to do something revolutionary with their technology,” he said. “They’re working around the clock, they’re investing millions of dollars to do something no one’s done before.”

The article also cites concerns with the amount of graphite the company says they’ll produce--up to six million tons.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, and as WTAP reported in September of 2023, that exceeds the current global demand for graphite. Powell said he’s been told that the actual demand for graphite is higher.

“My understanding is that the demand is more than they’re able to produce at this point,” Powell said. “So therefor, they’re trying to produce more, because the demand is so high. There’s not enough supply chains right now to produce to that extent.”

Graphite is used as a component in electric vehicle batteries, among other applications, and S&P Global predicts that graphite demand will increase greatly in the coming years.

Still, for Omnis to sell over 6 million tons of graphite a year, they’d have to take over a sizable chunk of the graphite market, as Ohio River Valley Institute researcher Sean O’Leary told WTAP in 2023. “Even when you take into account planned expansion of the market for graphite because of the greater prevalence of electric vehicles, it still is a very doubtful proposition, because it would mean that basically they’re going to take over at least half and probably more of the total graphite market,” he said.

For his part, Powell says he was interviewed for the article, but didn’t make the final edit.

He said he thinks this may be because he was too optimistic. “I kind of get the impression why some of us who were interviewed were not quoted in that final article was because we didn’t give them what they wanted,” Powell said. “They were searching for dirt. They were searching for shadiness. They were searching for pessimism, for negativity. And I couldn’t give them that.”For now, the power plant remains coal-fired and operational.

Powell said a pilot program to test hydrogen energy is nearing completion.