In West Virginia, already one of the poorest states in the nation, consumer electric bills are soaring. The state’s elected officials’ devotion to the coal-mining industry is the cause.

Remarkably, the state’s politically-appointed utility regulatory board is arguing that the state’s electric costs are higher because its electric utilities (especially American Electric Power, AEP) are not using their coal power plants enough. It’s a demonstrably false argument, driven by the money-fueled dedication of the state’s elected officials to propping up the coal industry at all costs. Even the utilities’ own analyses—backed by neutral analysts and renewable-energy advocates alike—show that the state’s shrinking number of electric customers would save hundreds of millions of dollars by shutting down aging coal plants. 

Coal still produces 91% of West Virginia’s electricity (as of 2021), compared to 22% nationally. No other state comes close to this percentage. As a result of this economically- and environmentally-insane devotion to coal, West Virginia’s residents have seen their electric rates rise 180% over the past 15 years, five times the average increase for ratepayers nationwide over the same period. Read more of this analysis from Inside Climate News for more details on the origins and impacts of this situation. 

The plight of West Virginia’s electricity-using families is an extreme case, but the arguments used in justifying the policies which created that disaster are still being echoed by fossil-fuel lobbies in North Carolina and other states. The ongoing tragedy of West Virginia stands as the poster-child warning for the urgent need to phase out and ultimately eliminate dependence on fossil fuel-generated electric power.