Appalachian Power Plans $17B, 3 GW of Gas Plants in West Virginia

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey used yesterday's annual Governor's Energy Summit in Charleston to drop a whopper: Appalachian Power (APCo), a subsidiary of Columbus, Ohio-based American Electric Power (AEP), will spend $17 billion to build three new natural gas-fired power plants in the Mountain State, adding 3 gigawatts (GW) of new generating capacity by 2031. APCo also pledged another $7.5 billion to keep its West Virginia coal plants running through 2050. That's $24.5 billion in all. The governor's office calls the gas piece the largest single power generation announcement by capacity in state history, edging out the ~2.9 GW John Amos coal plant announced in the early 1970s. A lot of Marcellus/Utica gas is about to start burning right where it's produced. But there are some big unanswered questions, too.

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