James Kotcon, Conservation Committee Chairman for the West Virginia Sierra Club, deferred to the Great One when asked his thoughts on the pending 30-year payment in lieu of taxes agreement between the Monongalia County Board of Education, the Monongalia County Commission and daughter companies of Longview Power.
The agreement will allow for the placement of solar array fields generating about 70 megawatts, 20 of which will come from 127 acres of solar arrays in West Virginia. The rest will be placed in Pennsylvania.
The Sierra Club has no issue with this.
The agreement will also allow for the construction of a 1,200 megawatt combined cycle gas facility powered by two high-efficiency, low-heat-rate gas turbines.
The Sierra Club has issues with this.
“I’m reminded of a quote from the hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky, who said ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be.’ ” Kotcon said. “So if we want to invest in the energy of the future, natural gas is 10 years out of date already. That industry is as likely to disappear as fast as the coal industry is.”
Kotcon said he was pleased to see the PILT agreement is actually two agreements, one for the solar facility and another for the gas facility.
“That is useful because we think that addressing greenhouse gasses as aggressively as the world needs to means the Longview plant probably will not be burning natural gas for the 30-year period contemplated by this PILT agreement,” Kotcon said. “President-elect Biden has proposed a clean electric grid, carbon neutral, by 2035, so within 15 years.”
On the other hand, a lot of items were not included in the agreement that the Sierra Club has pushed for, including specific controls on pollutants like carbon dioxide emissions.
The Sierra Club has also called on the commission to include protections in case the cost of the project ends up being more than the $1.1 billion projection.
Kotcon said the original Longview PILT agreement, which paved the way for the company’s existing coal-fired power plant, was negotiated when the cost of the project was anticipated to be around $960 million. It ended up north of $2 billion.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything in these agreements that would help insulate the county commission should Longview be as wrong this time as they were last time,” he said.
The Sierra Club has been outspoken in opposition to what it sees as a tax deal for fossil fuels. The group made its case to the West Virginia Public Service Commission, which approved the projects in April.
The agreements, which were approved by the BOE and will be before the commission Wednesday, would provide the county $58.2 million over 30 years.
The facility agreements and lease and PILT documents are available upon request at info@moncommission.com.
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