In 2009, former Gov. Joe Manchin enacted the Alternative and Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (AREPS), which requires certain state utilities to generate 25 percent of their retail sales from alternative or renewable sources by 2025. Municipal utilities, rural electric cooperatives, and utilities serving less than 30,000 residential customers are exempt from the mandate.
Qualifying alternative sources include coal technology, coal bed methane, natural gas, fuel produced by a coal gasification or liquification facility, synthetic gas, integrated gasification combined cycle technologies, waste coal, tire-derived fuel, pumped storage hydroelectric projects.
Qualifying renewable sources include solar, wind, river hydropower, geothermal energy, fuel cells, and certain biomass energy and biologically-derived fuels, and recycled energy.
The law sets a graduated compliance schedule beginning in 2010 when 10 percent of a utilities retail sales must come from alternative or renewable sources, and rises to 25 percent in the final target year of 2025.
The West Virginia Public Service Commission set up an alternative energy credit (AEC) trading system for utilities to buy and sell AECs to meet compliance. More credits are rewarded for renewable energy sources than alternative energy sources.
Source: Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency