Attorney general appoints CEOs with coal industry ties to energy planning agency

Republican Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman is appointing the former CEO of electric utility East Kentucky Power Cooperative and a CEO of a barge company, both with coal industry ties, to a commission that the state legislature is looking to for advice on energy policy. 

In a Friday release, Coleman said he was appointing “two widely respected individuals” in former East Kentucky Power Cooperative CEO and President Tony Campbell and Crounse Corporation CEO and President Matt Ricketts to the executive committee for the Energy Planning and Inventory Commission, or EPIC. 

“Affordable and reliable energy is Kentucky’s competitive advantage, and it’s the reason so many families and industries come to the commonwealth,” Coleman said in a provided statement.

The GOP-controlled state legislature created EPIC in 2024, empowering the new agency to provide “independent” analysis on energy policy. Kentucky utilities are also required to file requests to retire any fossil fuel-fired power plant to EPIC’s executive committee for the committee to review before filing such requests to the Kentucky Public Service Commission, the state’s longstanding utility regulator. 

At the time of its creation, investor-owned utilities and environmental groups argued EPIC’s creation would put up bureaucratic barriers to replacing outdated coal-fired power plants. Republicans argued they wanted to stop coal-fired power plants from retiring too early. 

Earlier this year, the legislature passed a law reshaping EPIC’s executive committee by stripping away Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s appointments to the committee and giving them to Coleman. The primary sponsor of the law Sen. Robby Mills, R-Henderson, said the move was to ensure “there is less politics in the room” with future energy policy. A Beshear spokesperson called the move politically motivated and unconstitutional. 

Both Campell and Ricketts have ties to the coal industry. Campbell was a member of the reconstituted National Coal Council under the current Trump administration. Matt Ricketts previously served in a “senior role” at Alliance Resource Partners, the sprawling coal mining company whose CEO is Republican megadonor Joe Craft, according to the release from Coleman’s office. 

Both of the appointments would have to be confirmed to their positions by the Kentucky Senate.