By Steven Allen Adams, The Parkersburg News and Sentinel
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Nearly one year after Gov. Jim Justice celebrated steam rising from the cooling towers at the Pleasants Power Plant after the coal-fired plant nearly closed for good, a national publication raised new questions about a project at the plant to produce graphite and hydrogen.
An article published in the Wall Street Journal Thursday morning questioned the viability of Quantum Pleasants LLC, a project that intends to take coal, superheat it, and separate out graphite for use in manufacturing processes, and use the hydrogen byproduct to generate electricity at Pleasants Power.
Quantum Pleasants, owned by California-based Omnis Fuel Technologies, resumed basic coal-fired electric generation at the wholesale merchant power generator south of St. Marys on Aug. 31, with Justice making the announcement at the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s 86th Annual Meeting and Business Summit at the Justice-owned Greenbrier Resort.
Omnis Fuel Technologies purchased Pleasants Power last summer from Texas-based Energy Transition and Environmental Management, a company that planned to demolish the 1,278-megawatt coal-fired plant in June of that year. Energy Harbor, formerly FirstEnergy Solutions, was leasing the plant from ETEM and produced power up to the end of May 2023 and maintained the plant through the end of June 2023.
During a briefing last September for the state Public Energy Authority, company CEO Simon Hodson told state officials that Omnis planned to spend the next 12-24 months converting Pleasants Power to run on hydrogen produced onsite by the burning of coal at high temperatures in proprietary modules, separating the hydrogen gas and taking the remaining carbon byproduct to create graphene, or graphite, for use in manufacturing and batteries.
