 
|
Signature Sponsor
March 8, 2025 - Over the next two decades, West Virginia may lose two of its remaining coal-fired electric generation power plants in favor of using natural gas instead.
The switch from coal to gas-fired energy generation will likely cause job loss at affected power plants and correspond with job loss for miners. This is a continuation of a trend seen in the industry.
“Ultimately, the switch will mean less jobs connected to the power plant. Gas requires fewer workers than coal. Neither one of them is labor intensive, but gas uses even less labor than coal does. Not only directly at the power plant, but also at the upstream provider there will be fewer jobs associated with it,” said West Virginia University economist John Deskins.
During a fourth-quarter earnings call, FirstEnergy President and CEO Brian Tierney rehashed the company’s plan to retire two coal power plants, one in Monongalia County and one in Harrison County.
Converting the power plants could cost between $4 billion and $6 billion, Tierney said.
West Virginia Coal Association President Chris Hamilton called the announcement “shocking” and “a curveball,” as the industry was recently emboldened with optimism due to the change in political leadership federally as President Donald Trump has long been a proponent of coal.
Coal producers across West Virginia have been gearing up to expand mining operations and energy output in response to an administration more encouraging of fossil fuels, Hamilton said.
According to Hamilton, if the power plants in question were invested in through upgrades, they could continue to produce coal-based electricity for 35 to 40 more years.
Hamilton suggested FirstEnergy should find a buyer for the coal plants and build the new gas-fired plants separately.
For the last several decades, the coal market has shifted from being sold for domestic energy generation to being sold to foreign countries as many states have found it more cost-effective to utilize natural gas or another fuel source for electric generation.
As recently as 15 years ago, the majority of locally produced coal was sold to domestic power plants with a relatively small percentage of total production being sold for export and metallurgical use, Deskins said.
The majority of local coal produced is now exported overseas or used for either foreign or domestic metallurgical use, according to a 2023 report from the West Virginia Coal Association.
“This is just a continuance of what we’ve seen over the last 15 years or so,” he said.
Coal’s peak in U.S. electricity generation was in 2007, when it generated 2,016 billion kilowatt/hours of power and accounted for more than 48% of all electricity generated, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
In 2023, about 16% of all U.S. energy production was generated with coal, while 43% of electricity was generated with natural gas, according to USEIA.
Contrarily, coal-fired electric power plants accounted for 86% of West Virginia’s total electricity generation in the same year.
Deskins said he expects the market to continue to shrink as export markets move in the same direction as domestic markets, but that may be many decades down the road.
Metallurgical-grade coal, which burns much hotter than thermal grade coal, long has been used in the production of steel, but it is not the only material capable of steel production.
Hydrogen-enriched natural gas also can reach the temperatures needed for steel production. And as steel manufacturers are under pressure to decarbonize, hydrogen technology is becoming more popular.
Hamilton has said it would take decades, if not more than 100 years, to mine all the coal underground in West Virginia.
While this may be the case, each year coal becomes more difficult and more costly to mine.
“We’ve always mined the easier-to-access, cheaper-to-access coal first. Every year that you mine, the coal that you’re going after is deeper in the ground, more difficult to access, more costly to access. If you look at that last bit of coal in the ground, it’s never going to be mined because it's just too deep, too hard to access it, too expensive,” Deskins said.
The loss of coal jobs amid future industry decline will not be directly replaced by jobs associated with the expansion of natural gas, as the industries operate in different parts of the state.
The majority of coal jobs lost have been in the southern part of the state, while the majority of natural gas production has been in the northern and northwestern part of the state.
Since jobs are not being replaced, and skill sets among coal industry professionals and those working in the natural gas industry do not directly translate, Deskins called for more retraining efforts and for the state to pursue economic development strategies to bring new jobs to the parts of the state most affected by the loss of coal jobs.
Although West Virginia has long been associated with coal production, in 2019, West Virginia’s natural gas production energy value surpassed that of the state’s coal production for the first time, according to the West Virginia Office of Energy.
Consumer energy prices are affected by regulations, but it’s possible a wider shift towards natural gas electric generation could lower energy costs for West Virginia.
“That certainly was the case looking backward, but I’m not sure about the details going forward,” Deskins said.
For years, West Virginia had very low energy costs relative to the rest of the nation.
In 2005, West Virginia had the cheapest price per kilowatt/hour at 6.21 cents, according to the USEIA.
Last December, residential energy was sold to West Virginians at 14.51 cents per kilowatt/hour, or 26th cheapest in the nation.
However, Hamilton said, FirstEnergy’s significant investment into converting the power plants could lead to increased rates for consumers. |
|