September 17, 2021 - “The name of our coalition in South Carolina is the South Carolinians for Affordable, Reliable, Clean Electricity (SCARCE),” said Randy Eminger, Executive Director of the Energy Policy Network, in addressing the West Virginia Coal Association, Annual Membership Meeting, held August 5-7, 2021 at The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, WV.   

Randy Eminger

“Just look at me as I'm the guy that squares off against the Sierra Club “Beyond Coal Campaign”. So, that's what I do, where I go to save coal-fueled power plants. Obviously, this is not needed in West Virginia, but I am needed outside of this area to protect your market into the other states, and in the east and the southeast, especially,” said Eminger.

Sierra Club's main mission is to look at 100% renewables and their “Mission 2020” is to close all coal fuel power plants by 2030. It is to make sure there's no new natural gas plants built and build out clean energy at a much faster rate. They did their own survey back in February this year, and the good news is what they found is that by 2030, only 25% of the existing coal- fueled generation is looking at possible retirement. Of those major utilities that use coal, only 17% of their generation, are looking at closing by 2030. 

Also, EIA forecasts an increase in coal production of 102 million metric tons of nationwide thermal coal and 38 million metric tons was east of the Mississippi. If gas prices stay above $4 maybe that figure will be met or even bettered. 

So why the Carolinas? One of the reasons is South Carolina's a very red state, and SCARCE did work with Dominion Energy (South Carolina). Not all the Dominion Energy company is pro-coal, and efforts are being made to keep to the three coal-fueled power plants in operation. Dominion even said in their first integrated resource plan to the Commission that they did not need to close these plants as they're paid for and need an excess capacity in place. 

What we've found is that the Public Service Commission in South Carolina have seven public service commissioners. They're the only state that they're elected by the General Assembly, by the state legislature. The state legislators each have one vote. There are seven new ones. Two years ago, all of the seven were kicked off by the state legislature, because of the defunct nuclear plant. They were building a nuclear plant, invested heavily in it, got halfway into it, and then decided not to complete it. They turned around and billed the consumers in South Carolina for a lot of capacity that was never in place. 

South Carolina is headed for a disaster in its energy policy, if it goes forward with what it's trying to do in that state. Of course, the Sierra Club is there big time. If they can pick off a red state, like South Carolina, they feel very emboldened in a number of other states. So, we track where they go and what they do and what their priorities are. What Dominion (South Carolina) did was provide seven different resource plans to the Public Service Commission. None of them included closing any of their coal-fueled power plants. The Commission came back and said no, we're not satisfied with that. We want you to do an Eighth Resource Plan, which shows closing all three of these plants by 2030. Dominion complied and sure enough, the Commission is now looking at adopting that plan. Sierra Club's big there. The solar industry is really big there. They're pushing hard for this Plan Number Eight. So, we felt like we needed to step in and make sure that we represented the consumers and industry in that state. 

A lot of times when we go into a state with a campaign, we work closely with the industrial energy consumers in the state. There are several steel mills in the state together with the auto manufacturers and others that want to keep plant electricity reliable and low cost. We have them to work with and we usually partner with them as well as some of the others. The final note is there are limited natural gas pipelines through South Carolina so you have to really look at reliability. What Dominion Plan Number Eight would do would be close all three coal plants, build two natural gas plants and put in 8,000 megawatts of solar generation, and 150 megawatts of backup battery technology by 2030. 

Battery backup is what every utility is going to but there's only 200 megawatts of battery backup nationwide today in operation. To come up with somewhere around 4,000 megawatts in the next seven or eight years are going to be very tough to do. The Public Service Commission is following Biden's Green New Deal, basically to close all coal plants by 2030. Increased electric rates of $2 billion is what Dominion says it will cost to build the two gas plants and put in all the solar. There are major reliability concerns here. 

The SCARCE team includes Energy Ventures Analysis, with Seth Schwartz and their crew, and they do an excellent job of representation. The Biden administration is looking at lowering emissions of greenhouse gases from electricity generation by 50 to 52% below the 2005 levels by 2030. The Sierra Club has the 2030 mark as well to close all coal-fueled power plants and the South Carolina Public Service Commission is now on the same track to look at closing all the coal plants in the state by 2030. 

The state legislators and Governor McMaster should know that's the direction that the Public Service Commission is currently heading. From an environmental standpoint, South Carolina has already lowered its CO2 levels by 40% below the 2005 levels. Under the Obama Administration, they looked at the Clean Power Plan, and that was to lower CO2 by 32% below the 2005 levels by 2030. South Carolina has already surpassed that and it's on its way to meeting even the Biden Green New Deal scenario.

One of the things we do point out, we have what we call our Climate Calculator. Everybody says there is a great benefit to climate change by closing a coal plant. Under the Obama administration with the Clean Power Plan, they came up with a Climate Calculator that calculated exactly what this would do to temperature if you close this specific power plant, or closed all the power plants in the United States. 

We took that and applied it to each power plant. The coke plant by the year 2100, if you closed it, it would lower the temperature by 0.0002443 degrees. All of these are unmeasurable impacts on global warming. There's absolutely no benefit to closing these as far as temperature is concerned. One of the other things we look at is the cost associated with this and they always put in artificial adders by the Public Service Commission in South Carolina and in North Carolina as well. A lot of times utilities put it in and it's called a Carbon Tax. Basically, they put an artificial adder saying, well, we think there's going to be a Carbon Tax, in 2025 or 2023. So, they threw in a $12-a-ton Carbon Tax. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but there's a lot of carbon that's made that adds $167 million a year to a coal-fueled power plant. They go in and say natural gas and solar is cheaper than keeping the current coal-fueled power plant. It's not. What they've done is artificially added $167 million a year to that coal-fueled power plant by adding that $12 a ton CO2 tax that is not even there. 

There is no way that Congress is going to pass a Carbon Tax in the near future. The President cannot do it without congressional support. Competition is also important currently there's natural gas and coal in the state. If you go strictly to natural gas, then the price of gas goes up. The price of electricity goes up as well. South Carolina has average retail rates which are 8% below the national average, but they're still a little above their surrounding states so, for economic development reasons, they need to keep their prices down.

In Austin in the state of Texas in February for four and a half days without electricity there were 210 individual deaths. The figure ranges from 210 to 700 and these were reported by health examiners in Houston, in San Antonio, and Austin. They report on the deaths from freezing to life support systems and dialysis machines with no backup. You cannot go four and a half days without power so situations occurred where it was really dramatic. Some $17 billion was lost by industry in the state for that four-day period. 

There was a lot of finger pointing including windmills frozen or coal piles frozen up or natural gas couldn't get the pipelines and pumping stations operating but what really happened was the state closed seven coal-fueled power plants and seven natural gas plants for 6,200 megawatts (MW) of generation that went offline in the last five years. That 6,200 MW represents 4.4 million homes. Had they kept that power online, they would not have had those four days. There may have been a few hours of outages, but not four and a half days. That's what's happening in a number of states and that's what's going to happen in South Carolina if they close all of their coal-fueled generation.

SCARCE carries out public relations as well. In Minnesota there are 40 billboards up around Minneapolis and St. Paul. This is to try to save the Sherco coal-fired power plant ,which is an Excel Energy plant that they're looking at closing. The billboards say “do not let Minnesota be the next California or Texas” and this kind of effort will be made in other states. A quantity of 2,000 letters have gone to legislators in the Public Service Commission. There are a lot of grassroots efforts and SCARCE will pour on the grassroots efforts in South Carolina as well. 

Duke is in both North Carolina and South Carolina so what is done in South Carolina will impact their integrated resource plan as well so they are working on South Carolina first. They will be heading up to North Carolina soon. They have to draw a line in the sand and have to find a way to stop these organizations. Michael Bloomberg handed a check for $500 million to the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal Campaign”, so SCARCE is fighting a David versus Goliath battle. They feel like they have a great opportunity to win in certain states in certain areas and are seeking contributions to help with the effort. There are a number of coal companies in South Carolina and Kentucky that have already contributed and these are appreciated very much.