West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey wants to build new coal plants and triple his state’s electric capacity to feed data centers across the eastern U.S.
The Republican aims to boost West Virginia’s electrical generation capacity to 50 gigawatts by 2050, compared to roughly 15 GW today, via a rapid expansion of coal- and gas-fired power plants. Morrisey calls the plan “50 by 50.”
It’s the latest declaration by Republicans — and some Democrats — that the U.S. must leverage fossil fuel energy to head off a supply crunch between spiking energy demand and the retirement of older, less efficient coal plants. The trend raises questions about the future of the U.S. power sector, a significant contributor to the country’s planet-warming emissions.
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China’s Coal Sets the Stage for AI Race
By Frank Clemente and Fred Palmer; Coal is the Cornerstone LLC.
Frank Clemente
Fred Palmer
The competition between the United States and China regarding Artificial Intelligence is real and China is steadily eroding the initial gap. China has already taken the research lead in AI and the US is steadily losing talent to the PRC. Daniel Hook, CEO at Digital Science, found that China is now ahead in the development of large language models with an AI talent pool that dwarfs its rivals – 30,000 active AI researchers and a massive graduate student and postdoctoral population. China dominates AI-related patents – filing data show China is outpacing the US tenfold on key indicators. The PRC is the top global AI collaborator with other nations, making China central to international research networks. This latter point is crucial for the future. As Jeffrey Wu, Director at Mindworks, has stated: “The next era of AI leadership won’t be decided by whose models are best – it will be decided by whose models are everywhere”
There is widespread recognition that progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI) will determine a large part of a nation’s future. RAND Corporation projects countries will see their power rise or fall depending on how they manage the development of AI. Scholars at the University of Miami School of Law concluded: “The global race for AI dominance is shaping the future of economies, governance, and national security.” Finally, this cogent comment from Arab News: “Artificial Intelligence is no longer just a technological breakthrough: it is quickly becoming a linchpin of global power”
Thus, the race is on and now we consider the realities:
1. The United States aspires to global dominance in AI. In July, the White House published: Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan and three Executive Orders designed to promote and maintain leadership in AI.
2. China has the same aspiration. Through a series of Five-Year Plans, China has become a formidable technological competitor of the US. As the New York Times put it: China Is Spending Billions to Become an A.I. Superpower.
3. No country will meet their AI goals without reliable and affordable electricity.. Power is the sine qua non of data center operation and the scale of electricity needed for emerging AI models is beyond any nation’s experience. Today’s data centers average about 30 megawatts of electricity. By 2030, individual data centers may need more than 5 gigawatts – the power consumption of Manhattan.
4. The United States has no coherent electricity policy and is moving forward with an ad hoc and untested hodgepodge of wind, solar and batteries coupled with natural gas-- the fuel with the greatest price volatility and questionable supply. In March 2024, the price of gas was $1.49/ Mbtu. In March 2025, the price was $4.12—a 175% increase in just 12 months.
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Trump EPA to Stop Tracking Emissions From Biggest Polluters
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to end standards that compel power plants, industrial facilities, oil refineries and other major polluters to collect and report data on their emissions.
Ending the agency’s long-standing Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which tracks pollution from some 8,000 sites, would make it harder for the public and policymakers to track greenhouse-gas emissions from large swaths of the economy. In all, polluters on the inventory reported some 2.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023.
The move to end the program, which was announced Friday and still needs to be finalized, comes as the agency moves to unwind scores of Biden-era environmental regulations.
“The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement. Ending the program would save businesses up to $2.4 billion in regulatory costs, said the agency.
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WV Senator Speaks on Coal Layoffs and State of Metallurgical Coal Industry
Coal has been king in West Virginia for over a century, but its reign often comes with a bitterness for those who physically work in the industry.
Close to 800 people in mining related jobs have been laid-off in the mountain state this year, with the fear of maintaining their livelihoods in the hearts of many miners.
“It’s plain terrible,” said Senator Jim Justice in an exclusive interview with WVVA.
Jim Justice
The majority of these layoffs are coming on the metallurgical coal side.
Justice says his efforts in helping coal be named as a critical mineral is a step in breathing life into the industry.
“It’s going to be able to provide some tax credits. And those tax credits are saleable tax credits,” said Justice. “And so they can amount to a little bit of money that basically could very well keep some people in a job.”
But the senator concedes that that alone will not save the dwindling workforce in West Virginia.
“They’re not enough, they’re nowhere close to enough,” said Justice. “We have had a total meltdown in the metallurgical coal business of pricing.”
Justice says metallurgical coal was priced at $555 a metric ton FOB Port two and a half year ago. Today that same ton is $175.
“By the time you translate it back to what the operation is getting in the railroad car it’s often less than $100 a ton,” said Justice. “It is an absolute meltdown of price and companies cannot absorb that.”
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Can We Win the AI Race and Shield Consumers from Rising Power Prices?
Every week brings more news about surging power demand, rising electricity prices and the need for more dispatchable power. Political frustration with rising prices is beginning to collide with the desire to win the AI race and build the data center infrastructure needed to support this remarkable technological moment.
In the latest sign of the demand now on the horizon, Wood Mackenzie, a leading energy consultancy, says utilities have 17 gigawatts (GW) of large demand currently under construction with another 99 GW committed. Together, these approaching sources of demand will equal to 15.5% of current U.S. peak power demand. Remarkably, another 32 GW of demand is in advanced consideration and likely to move to construction. Together, we’re adding 20% more demand to a grid that is already maxed out.
Power Demand on Different Scale
Energy and technology guru Mark Mills from the Manhattan Institute recently explained just how unique data center power demand is. He wrote, “The scale of digital power is truly daunting. Consider the energy demands of other big facilities: the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa, requires about 40 megawatts (MW), an electric steel mill about 100 MW, a giant TSMC semiconductor fabrication plant about 200 MW, and a giant oil refinery or LNG export terminal about 500 MW. In the U.S., we’re building only a few such facilities at any given time. Meantime, over the next few years alone—and in just the U.S.—construction is underway on dozens, and soon likely hundreds, of AI-centric data centers, each requiring 200 MW to 1,000 MW.”
As Mills so brilliantly illustrates, these facilities simply are on another stratosphere of power demand and they’re going from the drawing board to operational in a fraction of the time it takes to site and build power generating capacity. The scale of data centers also continues to grow. Consider Meta’s Hyperion data center in Louisiana. Expected to begin operation next year, it will eventually reach 5 GW of demand.
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