The billionaire hopes to extend his hydrogen push to rural West Virginia, but he’s meeting some unexpected resistance.
In the West Virginia town of Rivesville, the giant rusting structure of a decommissioned coal-fired power plant casts a long shadow.
Around the developed world, many governments have been on a mission to close coal-fired power stations as they battle to reduce pollution and meet emissions targets.During this year’s midterm election campaign, the president said “we’re going to be shutting these [coal-fired] plants down all across America and having wind and solar power”.
Billionaire Andrew Forrest with Senator Joe Manchin in Washington. Forrest plans to buy up coal-fired power plants in America and convert them to hydrogen energy. Forrest could potentially buy the Pleasants Power Plant – he has already signed a binding agreement to convert the former Centralia coal mine on America’s west coast into a green hydrogen production facility. The Centralia coal-fired power plant adjacent to the project site is scheduled to close in 2025.
“I can’t see how transforming a power plant to the hydrogen can replace that many jobs. A coal-fired power plant and the coal mine ... you’re talking five to 700 jobs. I can’t see one power plant that would come up with that many jobs, or something close,” Frazier says. Union representative Steve Zimmerman says he will fight hard for wages and jobs in any transition, but that coal miners can adjust to anything.The perceptions across America of the impact of the energy transition are mixed, according to the head of business development at Australian hydrogen company Star Scientific, Matthew Hingerty. He has been crisscrossing America this year gauging the political and regulatory temperature.
It has created the so-called “Interagency working group on coal and power plant communities and economic revitalisation”, which is “dedicated to increasing federal investment in land remediation and reclamation, economic diversification, and workforce training strategies for displaced fossil energy workers in diverse communities across the US”.
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