As his electricity bill soared in recent years, Martec Washington decided not to replace his broken-down car and started riding the bus. He has taken on multiple jobs, including scheduling surgeries and teaching hip-hop fitness classes. And he is trying to use less energy.
Yet his electric utility bill keeps climbing. In some months, he owes his utility company more than the $750 rent on his house in Charleston, W.Va.
“Electric bills shouldn’t be equal to rent or mortgage,” said Mr. Washington, a community activist who in 2022 lost the Democratic primary for mayor. “The bill is freaking ridiculous.”
West Virginia is awash in coal, natural gas and oil, making it the fifth-leading producer of energy in the United States. Yet the state’s electricity costs have risen much faster than the national average. Some energy experts say West Virginia is a harbinger of what could happen as President Trump champions fossil fuels and throttles renewable energy.
Trump administration officials have ordered aging coal power plants to stay open and pushed for the quick approval of new oil and natural gas projects while denying permits or ordering work to be halted on solar and wind energy projects.
On Monday, the Energy Department said it would spend $625 million to upgrade coal power plants and the Interior Department said it would make 13.1 million acres of federal land available to coal mining.
In the past few decades, generating electricity from coal has become much more expensive than other energy sources like natural gas, wind and solar. Coal plants are also relatively inefficient and expensive to maintain.
Mr. Trump’s coal push comes as monthly utility bills are rising from coast to coast. People are paying more because utilities are having to upgrade aging grids and prepare for extreme weather driven by climate change. They are also investing billions of dollars in new power plants and lines to meet the voracious energy demands of artificial intelligence data centers.
In West Virginia, the situation is even worse.
Over the past 15 years, electricity rates in the state have risen almost twice as fast as the national average.
Many residents are buckling under the strain. American Electric Power, a company that owns two utilities in the state, told state regulators last year that nearly one in every five of its customers in West Virginia, or 84,000 households, is typically behind on its electric bill every month.
Regulatory filings show that those two utilities, Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power, cut power to 56,000 households for not paying what they owed in 2023, the most recent year for which data were available. That is up from 3,300 during the pandemic in 2020. The company’s disconnections were more than 10 times that of a typical state, said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.
“Shutting them off from power is not a humane solution,” Mr. Wolfe said. “It forces people to choose between buying food and paying their energy bill.”
Appalachian Power is locked into contracts that require it to buy coal at relatively high prices. Rates are also high because they include the cost of the expensive turbines and other equipment that burn coal to generate electricity.
Coal provides about 86 percent of West Virginia’s electricity, a number that has not decreased much even as the United States has reduced its reliance on coal to less than 20 percent of all electricity, from two-thirds, several decades ago.
The state’s utilities could invest in new wind and solar farms that generate power more cheaply, but the utility and its customers would still be paying off its coal plants for years to come.
“There was a time some years ago when West Virginia had some of the lowest rates in the country,” said Jim Kotcon, chairman of the West Virginia Sierra Club. Now, he added, the state is in such a pickle that “even the utilities will testify to the Legislature that they have no plans to build a new coal plant.”
But Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican ally of Mr. Trump’s, remains committed to coal. “Baseload generation from coal, natural gas and nuclear are critical to our way of life,” he said this month, a reference to the amount of power needed to meet fundamental demands.
Higher Prices, Lower Incomes
In June 2010, West Virginia’s electricity rates were more than 30 percent lower than the national average. That gap closed to just 10 percent this June, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
A household in West Virginia using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity — a rough estimate of an average American home’s monthly consumption — will pay almost $160 a month, compared with the national average of $175.
But that does not account for weather or the insulation of homes. Actual electricity bills for many West Virginians can run into the hundreds of dollars when it is very hot or cold.
In addition, residents there usually earn much less than elsewhere. The median household income in West Virginia last year was about $61,000, compared with about $84,000 nationally.
“West Virginia is high up on that list of energy burden,” said Frank Rambo, executive director of Horizon Climate Initiative, an environmental nonprofit based in Charlottesville, Va.
For Mr. Washington, 37, it’s a big hardship. He lives in the neighborhood where he grew up, a low-income community near state government offices.
His city is home to the University of Charleston, hip coffee shops and a restaurant helmed by a James Beard Award-winning chef. But Mr. Washington can’t enjoy any of that.
In December, he skipped paying his natural gas bill to cover the nearly $1,000 he owed for electricity.
“I chose to pay a higher electric bill because at least with that one, I can turn the heaters on when we’re in the house and turn them off when we don’t need them,” Mr. Washington said.
But when he was out one day, the home was so cold that a pipe burst because his gas had been shut off.
The Public Service Commission of West Virginia, which regulates Appalachian, Wheeling and other investor-owned utilities, declined to comment for this story.
Across the country, many are in arrears on their electric bills. Missing payments totaled $14.5 billion at the end of 2023, up from roughly $10.5 billion in 2021, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.
A record seven million people have sought help from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. But recent federal budget cuts have meant fewer dollars are available to them.
‘Had Them Over a Barrel’
Electric bills are climbing for various reasons. In addition to increased spending on maintenance by utilities, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted supply chains and drove up prices for coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels. Electricity made from burning such fuels is generally more expensive than from renewable sources, but it becomes much more so during geopolitical crises.
Though West Virginia has a lot of coal, some mining companies have filed for bankruptcy protection or shut mines because of falling demand for their products nationally.
At the same time, state regulators have demanded that West Virginia’s utilities rely more on coal plants, which cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars in construction, maintenance and operation expenses. That led Appalachian Power to enter the expensive long-term contracts for coal.
In addition, the war in Ukraine has hit the state hard, said Robert Williams, the state official who represents utility customers before the West Virginia Public Service Commission.
“There was a global squeeze in the natural gas market and coal market,” Mr. Williams said. And because West Virginia’s utilities are so reliant on coal, the suppliers “had them over a barrel.”
Given the state’s coal mines, West Virginia’s elected officials are reluctant to embrace renewable energy. Its vast mountain ranges are not ideal for large solar farms, though wind power has significant room to grow. The state has no nuclear power plants.
Appalachian Power, the American Electric Power utility that is the state’s largest, said it was “making significant investments in West Virginia to enhance reliability and improve service for all our customers.”
The utility said it was reviewing and proposing ways to reduce customer bills, including by helping the state attract more businesses so the cost of running the system could be spread over more customers.
The utility “is committed to working with state leaders to ensure we can help them achieve their policy goals, while always keeping customer affordability at the forefront of the conversation,” Aaron Walker, Appalachian’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
Drew Galang, a spokesman for Governor Morrisey, said West Virginia could generate more power than it used. By using more of that capacity, including by selling more electricity to other states and data centers, it hopes to lower energy prices for its residents.
Mr. Morrisey has signed legislation to encourage the development of data centers and microgrids to help power them. Officials also plan to push for upgrades to existing power plants to make them more efficient, reducing costs.
“In order to meet these goals, West Virginia will consider all of its options, including nuclear power,” said Mr. Galang. “We must focus on providing reliable and consistent baseload generation. Coal and natural gas generation provides security, which is very important for consumers and businesses.”
But to some energy experts, West Virginia’s experience highlights the potential pitfalls of investing more in fossil fuel power plants, coal in particular. Customers could get stuck paying for them for a while.
Since 2012, U.S. coal plants have collectively lost about $14 billion, according to RMI, a research group formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute. Many of those losses were borne by residents and businesses through their electricity bills.
In West Virginia, electricity bills will probably remain high because customers have to pay the remaining debt on coal plants along with the cost of any new energy sources.
“We’re going to have the coal plants here since they’re on our backs for the next few decades,” Mr. Williams said.
Ivan Penn is a reporter based in Los Angeles and covers the energy industry. His work has included reporting on clean energy, failures in the electric grid and the economics of utility services.
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