“Right now, West Virginia has 16 gigawatts of baseload generating capacity,” he said. “So it’s important for part of our economic development to have a strategic plan to change that. Not just to arrest the decline that we inherited, but to grow really fast.”

The “50 by ’50” plan will focus on increasing the uses of “stable sources of fuel,” Morrisey said.

“Primarily coal, natural gas and nuclear,” he said. “By maintaining and building out our grid, our ‘50 by ’50’ initiative, that’s going to make West Virginia by far the leading per-capita exporter of energy in the nation.”

The initiative will also include “developing and expanding economical uses for coal” other than power generation, Morrisey said.

His administration plans to set up meetings “in the very near future” related to developing nuclear power-generating facilities in the state and will prioritize construction of additional power transmission lines, he said.

Increasing the state’s power-generating capacity will give it a competitive advantage for attracting economic development opportunities, Morrisey said.

“That’s going to position us to encourage investment in all parts of West Virginia and make sure that we’re tying that to the prime sites for technology and advanced manufacturing,” he said.

The governor said he plans to make a more “formal” announcement regarding the initiative in the coming weeks.

Todd Johnston, the governor’s deputy chief of staff and energy, infrastructure and competitiveness director, spoke about the plan in “broad strokes” on Wednesday.

“We’re going to explore everything from refurbishing our existing coal-fired plants to possibly building new coal (plants); there does seem to be an interest in that,” he said.

The Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia (GO-WV) issued a statement applauding the governor’s initiative.

“West Virginia’s natural gas industry remains ready to meet the moment and put our low-cost, reliable resources to work in realizing Governor Morrisey’s ‘50 by 50’ vision,” President Charlie Burd said. “Make no mistake, amid soaring power demand forecasts, there’s a fundamental need for affordable, dispatchable baseload generation — the type of generation that natural gas is suited to deliver. We look forward to working with the governor’s team on policies and actions to attract the gas-fired generation to our state that’ll grow jobs, grow our tax base and boost our overall economy.”

Johnston’s comments echoed remarks made by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright during a visit to Morgantown in June.

While visiting the National Energy Technology Laboratory facility, Wright called the need to increase the nation’s electrical capacity the “second Manhattan Project,” in reference to the program that created the first atomic weapons.

“AI is the second parallel — a huge innovation where we can’t get second,” he said. “China put on about 90 new coal plants last year, and about a similar amount of new plants will come on this year. They’ve rapidly grown their electricity for industrial processes, also for AI.”

Wright also mentioned the possibility of restarting shuttered coal plants.

“We’re looking at that, and I think you will see some coal plants reopened,” he said.

His department will work to prevent the planned closure of facilities throughout the country, Wright said.

“There are like 40 coal plants that are supposed to close this year — and our biggest impact is going to be to stop the closure of most of those,” he said.

As U.S. energy secretary, he has the authority to prevent the planned closure of some power plants, Wright said.

“It’s been very politically fashionable to close, really for the last 15 or 20 years, coal power plants. Some of them are 100 years old and they should be retired,” he said. “But we’ve closed so many plants that are midstream in their lives that are critical to a secure (electric) grid.”