Ricky Junquera, ricky.junquera@sierraclub.org
RICHMOND, VA -- Yesterday, the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) approved the Appalachian Power Company’s (APCo) 2022 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) as reasonable for purposes of planning. The IRP is a planning document for APCo for the next fifteen years and they are required to engage in robust planning in a cost-effective manner. This IRP not only fails to take into consideration major policy decisions coming from Virginia’s next-door neighbor, the West Virginia Public Service Commission, but it also ignored the Inflation Reduction Act and relied on stale data.
In September 2021 the West Virginia Public Service Commission (PSC) issued an order requiring APCo to operate its Amos and Mountaineer coal plants at a 69% capacity factor regardless of whether it is the least cost option energy source for Virginia customers. APCo, in its 2022 IRP, failed to address or even model this 69% mandate and how it will impact its Virginia ratepayers. The Company did not submit to the SCC a plan on how it will keep Virginia ratepayers safe from any potential uneconomic dispatching of its coal plants due to the WV PSC Order. APCo and the SCC ignored the issue altogether, leaving Virginia customers unprotected from hikes in energy bills due to the forced use of less cost-effective energy generation.
In response Mary-Stuart Torbeck, State Representative for Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign in Virginia released the following statement:
“Appalachian Power’s Virginia ratepayers shouldn’t be expected to pay for bad decisions made by out-of-state regulators, but by approving this IRP, the VA SCC has left ratepayers vulnerable to just such a scenario.
“The Virginia SCC has determined that this Integrated Resource Plan is reasonable, despite the fact that Appalachian Power has repeatedly been told by our neighboring regulators in West Virginia to run its plants uneconomically; despite the fact that the Company used outdated numbers in its modeling for this plan; and without even considering the impacts of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act.”
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