"The number of people employed in Pennsylvania’s gas industry has fallen to just over 16,000 today, down from 30,000 in 2012. But even in its heyday, those employment figures were not enormous. By way of comparison, Walmart employs 60,000 people in the state, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center employs 100,000 people, six times that of the gas industry."
“This is pretty much what we expected from the DEP,” said Lani Wean, the West Virginia field organizer for the nonprofit environmental group Moms Clean Air Force. “They have a pretty consistent pattern of approving permits like these and essentially ignoring community input and concerns.”
“(The West Virginia DEP’s) approval of this air permit represents a rollback of critical pollution safeguards put in place to keep families and children safe from the most damaging impacts of waste incineration. In addition to departing from decades of precedent, the decision also dismisses concerns of local residents and county officials,” said ORVI Chief of Staff Tom Torres in a news release. “With this permit, Clean-Seas West Virginia has reached a critical milestone. However, If its parent company’s past performance and the industry’s track record are any indication, the facility likely faces an uphill climb towards successful commercial operation."
"The Trump administration is committing up to $18.5 million in grant funding to a company incorporated just last year to build a new coal-fired plant in West Virginia.
"The company is planning to use a technology unproven at commercial scale at a site still to be determined as it faces a murky future for the struggling coal industry, 13 years since the last new coal-fired plant was built in the United States as the industry increasingly gets edged out by cheaper energy alternatives.
"'[T]his is a terrible deal for taxpayers,' said Sean O'Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit think tank that has pushed for more sustainable energy deployment in the region.
"...A 2023 study by San Francisco climate policy firm Energy Innovation LLC estimated that 99% of coal plants nationwide are more expensive to run than replacing their generation capacity with either new solar or new wind.
"Energy Innovation said in that report that replacing the American Electric Power-controlled coal-fired Mitchell plant in Marshall County with local solar and battery storage would be roughly 50% cheaper and provide the power reliability the West Virginia Public Service Commission and other proponents of coal have sought while saving ratepayers hundreds of dollars every year."
This is the worst time in history to be paying for construction of a new natural gas-fired power plant. It’s buying when the cost of buying has never been higher.
The biggest story in Appalachian natural gas production is—maybe unsurprisingly—data centers.
The top five hyperscalers announced plans to spend $700 billion in 2026, driven by AI and data center development. This development means significant new demand for electricity, much of which will be supplied by gas. Though exact figures on data center expansion are difficult to nail down, several long-term agreements have made national headlines.
Much of this growth is slated for Appalachia: 8.8 GW of on-site (behind-the-meter) gas-fired power generation is at various stages of development in Pennsylvania, all of which would be fueled by Appalachian gas.
Data center growth in other parts of the country could also mean increased gas production in Appalachia. For example, many of the new gas power plants coming online in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama to replace older plants (including coal-fired ones) could be serviced by gas produced in Appalachia thanks to new pipeline capacity under development (i.e. MVP and several projects along or near Transco and Tennessee Gas Pipeline systems).