West Virginia's Energy Future
On behalf of Synapse used the EnCompass capacity expansion and production cost model to model two different coal retirement scenarios in West Virginia. Synapse modeling examined three West Virginia utilities: Appalachian Power Company (“APCo”), FirstEnergy (consisting of MonPower and Potomac Edison), and Wheeling Power Company (“Wheeling Power”).
In the first scenario, Continued Coal Dependence, all of West Virginia's coal plants remain in operation over the 2021 to 2035 study period. The EnCompass model calculates the cost of operating these existing resources and adds additional resources as necessary over the analysis period to meet peak and annual energy requirements. The second scenario, Ramped Up Renewables, assumes that select coal units are retired over the 2021 to 2035 study period. The replacement options to meet capacity and generation needs were limited to renewable and storage resources, which is consistent with the electric utilities’ goals to reduce carbon emissions. Synapse analyzed the impacts of each of these scenarios on each of the utilities’ revenue requirements, rates and bills, annual capacity, annual energy mix, and CO2 emissions.
In addition, Synapse used IMPLAN to estimate the macroeconomic impacts of the Ramped Up Renewables portfolio in order to assess the cumulative effects of both utility-sector changes (e.g., investments in solar PV and energy storage, reduced spending on fossil generation, decommissioning of coal units) and the economic ramifications of public health benefits. For the latter, used EPA’s COBRA model and existing literature on the macroeconomic costs of premature mortality to impute a macroeconomic benefit associated with avoided emissions in the Ramped Up Renewables scenario.