After cutting off testimony by the chairwoman of the Public Service Commission for a vote, senators advanced a bill characterized as ensuring power system reliability is a key factor when regulators determine if utility costs are fair and reasonable for ratepayers.

In a few minutes of testimony before being cut off, PSC Chairwoman Charlotte Lane, who is a former Republican lawmaker, said the legislation doesn’t add up to anything the commission isn’t already doing — although she said it does mandate additional bureaucratic work.

The West Virginia Coal Association celebrated the bill’s advance from the Senate Energy Committee to the Senate Government Organization Committee with a press conference that included red “Friends of Coal” hats.

“This is all about our grid reliability,” said Senate President Randy Smith, a retired coal miner who was wearing one of the red ball caps at the press conference.

Senate Bill 505, “Ensuring Reliable and Affordable Electricity Act,” includes guidelines for utilities seeking rate adjustments, particularly when they’re adding or removing generation and transmission assets. The focus is on their impact on grid reliability during peak demand.

Utilities would need to provide detailed evaluations of asset capabilities, and the PSC would be mandated to make explicit findings on whether the requirements are met, potentially disallowing cost recovery for assets considered unreliable.

Lane, the PSC commissioner, was not summoned to testify but instead appeared before the Senate Energy Committee as a voluntary witness.

“Our main job at the Public Service Commission is to make sure the lights stay on,” she said. “We are very cognizant of the fact that reliability is very, very important.”

However, Lane said, “This bill, I’m sure, has a really good intention. But to the extent that I’m supposed to understand it, it is very difficult to understand what it is trying to get to.

“Except for the additional administrative burden of filing a lot of reports, everything in this bill we already have, currently, jurisdiction to do.”

A few minutes into Lane’s remarks, Senator Jay Taylor, R-Taylor, called the question — which means halting discussion and moving immediately to a vote. Observers in the room said another meeting was about to start. Taylor later said he’d made the procedural motion because other committees were underway.

A majority of the committee voted to advance the bill to the next committee, Senate Government Organization. A combination press conference-celebration started about an hour later.

Speaking in the event, Senate Energy Chairman Chris Rose, R-Monongalia, said the legislation goes beyond the authority already lying with the Public Service Commission.

“What this bill does is, it changes the way an electric utility will think. If they want to use a type of energy that’s not available all the time, that’s their right to choose. But they do not have the right to make us pay for every penny of that cost when it’s not being generated to us,” said Rose, a coal miner who was wearing a hardhat.

“It’s a pay for what you get model. So if they want to use a gas plant or a coal plant that’s available 95% of the time, they’ll be able to recuperate that cost. But if they want to use something that’s a lot less efficient, not available, then that’s their right to choose that — but they don’t have the right to make the consumer eat that cost.”

Rose related the economic decisions in power generation to current national debates over social issues like environmental, social, and governance policies or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“You know, Grandma can’t afford this. Grandma cannot afford us to continue to keep forcing her rates to go up to meet some type of DEI or ESG initiative of unreliable energy. We want merit-based energy here in West Virginia. If any type of energy source can stand on its own two feet and on its own merit, it’s free to do so,” he said.

The bill is accompanied by Senate Concurrent Resolution 18 , which expresses the legislature’s intent to create the “West Virginia Coal Renaissance Act.”

The resolution outlines a plan for various state entities to develop strategies for increased coal production and consumption within West Virginia, including upgrades to existing plants and the creation of new facilities.

Chris Hamilton, president of the West Virginia Coal Association praised the consideration of the state legislation as well as recent moves by the Trump administration at the national level.

He said the state legislation would “cause and motivate our state coal fired electric generators that provide that base load, reliable and affordable power, to run more frequently. And when they run more frequently, they run more efficiently. They also result in additional coal supplies and coal miners working,” Hamilton said.

“And most importantly, they provide the basis to see our industrial and our residential electric rates to be stabilized at the minimum and perhaps and hopefully even lowered going forward.”

Emmett Pepper, legal and policy director for Energy Efficient West Virginia, said the “Reliable and Affordable Electricity Act” does nothing to address the significant reliability issues in West Virginia, which he characterized as some of the worst in the nation.

Instead, Pepper said, the legislation would result in less affordable electricity, “so it’s actually the exact opposite of what it says.”

“I hope that our legislature gets serious someday about lowering electric bills, as well as empowering people to take control of their energy bills on their own, instead of forcing us to keep subsidizing monopoly-owned power plants,” Pepper said.

“But here we are. Another bill to subsidize power plants that can’t survive on the free market, and that we have to keep subsidizing them, apparently forever.”