West Virginia PSC
Charlotte Lane chairs the West Virginia Public Service Commission.
Former NARUC President Paul Kjellander, also former Idaho PUC President, is Senior Advisor at Public Utilities Fortnightly.
West Virginia and Wyoming, while separated geographically, are both heavily reliant on extraction industries to make their economies hum. PUF talked with the Chairs of two Commissions, West Virginia and Wyoming, for a bipartisan look.
PUF's Paul Kjellander: Give a perspective on West Virginia. As states move forward with the energy transitions, what are you seeing as a regulator from West Virginia?
Chair Charlotte Lane: What I see is West Virginia is one of the few states being realistic about how to keep the lights on for the country. It's all well and good to be moving to renewable energy, but it's got to be done in a thoughtful way.
That is why in West Virginia we are keeping our coal-fired plants open until at least 2040. We have twelve thousand five hundred megawatts of power that are generated by coal.