Morrisey's office shrugs off EPA nixing program behind $106M support for WV solar

Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s office has shrugged off the Trump administration’s termination of a program through which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year selected the West Virginia Office of Energy to receive $106.1 million to deliver solar power to low-income and disadvantaged residents.

Morrisey’s office isn’t heeding West Virginia consumer and environmental advocates’ call to do something about the cancellation.

The EPA on Aug. 7 announced it is terminating the Solar for All program, through which the Office of Energy’s $106.1 million award was expected to lower residential energy bills for state consumers. The award was one of 49 state-level awards the EPA had announced under the Biden administration in April 2024 through the Solar for All program totaling $5.5 billion. Eleven more awards to serve multistate recipients and tribes totaled another $1.5 billion.

But EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Aug. 7 claimed his agency no longer has authority to administer the program — despite funds having been obligated under binding agreements.

The Solar for All cancellation, likely to be challenged in court, is one of many Trump administration moves designed to choke off supply of renewable energy regarded as a source of more affordable energy — especially in West Virginia, where electricity prices have increased sharply amid the state’s nation-highest dependence on increasingly uneconomic coal-fired power.

Twelve West Virginia-focused consumer and environmental advocacy groups urged Morrisey and state Attorney General John “JB” McCuskey to “use every tool at your disposal to push back against” the EPA’s Solar for All termination in a letter dated Tuesday.

The groups called the Solar for All program “a historic investment in energy affordability and economic development” that would provide access to low-cost, reliable solar energy, lowering electricity bills for homeowners and renters throughout West Virginia.

The 12 groups listed in the letter are:

• American Friends Service Committee — West Virginia
• Appalachian Voices
• Christians for the Mountains
• Citizens’ Climate Lobby — West Virginia
• Energy Efficient West Virginia
• Mountain View Solar
• Sierra Club — West Virginia Chapter
• Solar United Neighbors
• West Virginia Citizen Action Group
• West Virginia Climate Alliance
• West Virginia Environmental Council
• West Virginians for Energy Freedom

The organizations called the Trump administration’s move to terminate Solar for All support “baffling” given the administration’s stated commitment to lowering energy costs.

Under the Biden administration, the EPA said it would evaluate applicants on the quality of their plans to ensure all households benefiting from Solar for All save at least 20% on their average utility bills.

The EPA estimated under Biden that the average low-income household benefiting from a Solar for All program would experience approximately $400 in annual savings from their electricity bills. Low-income households across the country would realize over $350 million in annual household savings from all 60 grant recipients’ programs, totaling over $8 billion in cumulative savings for over a standard solar project 25-year life, the EPA had projected.

In their letter to Morrisey and McCuskey, the community and environmental groups argued investments through Solar for All in West Virginia would be “a vital tool” for combating rising energy prices, noting a pending $250.5 million rate increase proposal by Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power before the state Public Service Commission.

The groups predicted terminating the Office of Energy’s grant would deny families and small businesses the benefits of federal investments and negatively impact West Virginia’s economy, depriving the state of energy jobs through what they called a “shortsighted powergrab.”

But Drew Galang, deputy press secretary for Morrisey’s office, didn’t share the groups’ concern in response to a request for comment on their letter.

Galang, in a Wednesday email, called Solar for All “more beneficial for states that have abundant solar resources like Arizona and Florida” and “not as beneficial for states that have limited solar resources like West Virginia.”

West Virginia’s solar resources have been limited by state leaders through them not enabling community solar, an arrangement other states have approved that has slashed energy costs. Community solar arrangements allow customers to receive solar energy without having to install their own solar energy system. Customers typically benefit from energy generated at an offsite array.

West Virginia is not among 24 states that have legislation enabling community solar.

Consumer proponents have criticized Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power for proposing in their pending rate hike request to make more unfavorable the terms of customers’ net metering, an arrangement in which a residential customer owns or leases and operates an energy resource — typically solar — connected on their side of the utility meter.

Galang did not directly address electricity affordability concerns in his response.

“West Virginia needs to be focused on providing reliable baseload generation because that is what residents and businesses need,” Galang said. “Our office supports initiatives to build baseload generation instead of intermittent renewable sources.”

Baseload power sources like coal and nuclear power plants are designed to produce large, reliable amounts of electricity, but — typically — not to respond to abrupt changes in demand.

Researchers from the German National Academy of Science and Engineering found in a report published last year that solar and wind-driven energy systems don’t need baseload generation stations to ensure secure power supply. The report disputed a prevalent notion that baseload power stations are needed for providing continuous electricity.

“It sounds like the governor’s office has a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of Solar for All,” Quenton King, government affairs specialist at environmental group Appalachian Voices, said in an email. “The idea was to help low-income West Virginian homeowners and renters struggling with their individual power bills by providing free roof solar panels; it was never intended to provide baseload generation for the entirety of the state.”

Attorney General’s Office spokesperson Kallie Cart did not respond to a request for comment.

West Virginia’s nation-highest dependence on coal has become increasingly anachronistic amid electricity costs rising more sharply in the state than in most others.

West Virginia ratepayers faced a 90% climb in average residential electricity retail prices from 2005 to 2020, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Only Michigan had a greater increase by percentage.

Market forces have rendered coal uncompetitive compared with renewable energy and gas.

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. 

West Virginia is more reliant on coal than any other state in the nation, with coal-fired electric power plants accounting for 86% of its total electricity net generation in 2023, according to the EIA.

If approved, the Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power $250.5 million rate hike request before the PSC would impose a $23.74 — or 13.54% — increase in the bill of an average residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month. The request follows a 207% increase from $55.28 in 2005 to $169.69 in 2024 in the average Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power monthly residential utility cost, according to PSC data.

“Given that our state has faced consistent rate hikes from power companies to prop up coal-fired power generation plants, making electricity unaffordable, solar is the solution as the cheapest energy source to make energy affordable again for West Virginians,” Morgan King, West Virginia Citizen Action Group climate and energy program manager, said in an email.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday reported that solar would account for over half of the 64 gigawatts of power that developers plan to bring online this year. Battery storage, wind and natural gas power plants account for virtually all remaining capacity additions projected for 2025, the EIA said.

In June, financial advisory firm Lazard released a report finding that, even without subsidies, utility-scale solar and onshore wind still are the most cost-effective forms of newly built energy generation.

“As such, renewable energy will continue to play a key role in the buildout of new power generation in the U.S. as the lowest-cost and quickest-to-deploy generation,” Lazard predicted.

In April 2024, the EPA said the West Virginia Office of Energy would use Solar for All funding to deploy residential solar roofs, support home energy efficiency and reduce utility costs for low-income residents.

At the time, the EPA said a West Virginia REAL Energy Resilient Roofs Program would reach low-income and disadvantaged residents across West Virginia to deliver solar to residents, communities and college housing, with support from over a dozen organizations, cities and community stakeholders.

Chelsea Morrison, the West Virginia Office of Energy’s communications manager, said on Aug. 6 the office had access to its Solar for All award and remained in the program’s planning phase. Construction efforts wouldn’t start until the program’s implementation phase, so no physical projects have begun, Morrison said.

Morrison said the Office of Energy’s financial team had been drawing down portions of its Solar for All funding as needed to support program planning, staffing and other program-related expenses. Morrison said she couldn’t provide an exact total of funds used due to the drawdown structure.

The Office of Energy previously said it would launch the Solar for All program in 2026, when interested homeowners could complete an online application to determine their eligibility for receiving free or reduced-cost solar panels for their home.

A residential clean energy tax credit approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress through the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 were curtailed by the Republican, West Virginia congressional delegation-supported One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by President Donald Trump last month.

The latter law terminated that credit effective Dec. 31, 2025, hastening an end to the credit offering a 30% credit for taxpayer expenses that included uncapped credit amounts for solar panels, battery storage technology and solar water heaters.

Zeldin has claimed the EPA had no authority to administer Solar for All — which he called a “boondoggle” — because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Zeldin noted the law repealed the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund enacted through the Inflation Reduction Act that appropriated $27 billion to the EPA to enable low-income communities to benefit from zero-emission technologies. Solar for All was housed under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

Solar proponents and other legal advocates say the EPA can’t legally rescind money it has obligated. The Trump administration has already gone after Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund appropriations, freezing grants through the program earlier this year.

Energy Innovation has projected that, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, higher energy costs across West Virginia households totaling $310 million by 2035 would result from more dependence on fossil fuels and higher fossil fuel prices. Energy Innovation made that projection based on changes in a House of Representatives version of the legislation less aggressive in renewable energy cuts than the final version of the law.

West Virginia consumer and environmental allies want Solar for All revived to fend off what they view as the threat of a needlessly costly future of solar for too few.

“EPA’s attempt to terminate West Virginia’s Solar for All program,” the West Virginia groups said in their letter, “is misguided and unjustified.”