The MetroNews textline – 304-Talk-304 – is often unvarnished and brutally honest. That’s part of its charm. But sometimes, the opinions flying in are just… wrong. Case in point: a text that came in Friday during our conversation with WV State Energy Office Director Nick Preservati:
“So, we’re spending millions in West Virginia, and once again the cheap gas power goes to other states while we get nothing? Fantastic.”
Delivered minus subtlety — makes for great radio — it misses the mark.
The texter was reacting to last week’s announcement of a 600 MW natural-gas-fired power plant slated for Harrison County. Let’s break this down.
1. “We’re spending millions of dollars.”
Nope. Blackstone Energy is spending $1.2 billion of its own money to build the plant. That investment brings construction jobs, permanent plant jobs, and long-term economic activity. How is a company putting $1.2 billion into West Virginia a bad thing? It isn’t.
2. “Once again, cheap gas and power go to other states while we get nothing.”
Also wrong. Yes, West Virginia often produces natural gas that gets piped elsewhere with minimal in-state value-add. A new natural gas power plant fixes that. Turning our gas into electricity here at home means tax revenue, local jobs, increased demand for WV gas, and more severance tax. Hard to find the downside.
Will the electricity be sold out of state? Yes. Preservati confirmed the output is already contracted to serve data-center demand for Old Dominion Electric Cooperative in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.
But that’s not a problem — that’s an opportunity. West Virginia is an energy state. And today, megawatts are the hottest commodity in the market. Merchant plants like Wolf Summit aren’t owned by utilities, so ratepayers aren’t on the hook if something goes wrong. Yet we get the jobs, the taxes, and the upstream economic activity.
Why would Blackstone make a $1.2 billion bet? Because they see the same thing energy forecasters see: demand is skyrocketing after years of decline. The U.S Department of Energy and associated agencies project electricity use to reach 5,220 TWh by 2045 — a 33% increase over today. We need more power plants — a lot more — to meet that growth. No reason why many of them can’t be built in West Virginia.
West Virginia doesn’t manufacture many products. We don’t churn out consumer goods or make cars. But for more than a century, our product has been energy. Historically, we shipped the raw stuff out for someone else to turn into wealth. Merchant plants flip that script. They let us produce the finished product — electricity — right here.
This is one of the most realistic, scalable paths to economic prosperity our state has. We must not let it slip through our fingers.
So before jumping to the wrong conclusion, understand the opportunity in front of us. We need more merchant plants — not fewer — and we need them built here, not in someone else’s backyard.
West Virginia: We Make Megawatts.
That’s a bumper sticker if I’ve ever seen one.