Today, in a hastily scheduled session, Ohio’s House may vote its concurrence with the Senate version of House Bill 6, the FirstEnergy Solutions nuclear subsidy plan. That would send the bill to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk for his expected signature.
Or, the House could request a conference committee with the state Senate to, in effect, rewrite the Senate’s rewrite of HB 6.
The facts demand a conference committee, not concurrence. It’s no overstatement to say the state’s future is at stake.
Are we going to be a state mired in the past, unable to set the stage for a more sustainable energy future that will excite and attract the next generation -- a state beholden more to lobbyists than to innovation and progress? That’s what a “yes” vote on the current HB 6 legislation would signal.
Or, are we a state that genuinely values clean energy in all its forms -- including energy-efficiency savings and wind, solar and other renewable energy? HB 6 as written claims to be a “clean air” bill, but its subsidies primarily reward only some contributors to clean air, steering most of its subsidies to Ohio’s two nuclear plants. It would undercut and arguably destroy the state’s renewable energy and energy-efficiency requirements for utilities.
Effectively, HB 6 takes resources originally directed by state elected officials to provide Ohio with a more sustainable renewable energy profile and hands that money to two aging nuclear plants and two (non-clean-air) coal plants, one of them in Indiana. Political goal: to hide the cost to Ohioans of the nuclear subsidy by shaving the renewable energy and efficiency charges now wrapped into monthly bills.
That is, HB 6, as it stands, would mortgage Ohioans’ future energy options to prop up aging nuclear and coal plants -- and the utilities operating them. And this sleight of hand means that Ohio consumers’ monthly bills will appear lower than they are now after legislators simply discard most of the renewable and efficient-energy incentives, as they appear intent on doing.
That’s the math. It’s not the science: Legislators can try to postpone health and environmental costs, but they can’t make them go away.
Yes, the bill would keep open and running Ohio’s no-carbon-emissions nuclear plants: Lake County’s Perry nuclear power plant near Cleveland and Ottawa County’s Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Toledo. The nuclear plants’ owner, FirstEnergy Solutions, says they’ll close without the subsidy, so HB 6 will save jobs.
But every Ohio residential electricity customer will be paying about 85 cents a month for this new subsidy – statewide, $43.2 million a year -- with commercial and industrial ratepayers paying more.
According to the Legislative Service Commission, the Senate’s version of HB 6 would cut the Ohio-required share of electricity generated by renewable resources to 8.5 percent in 2026. That’s the share utilities now must meet in 2022. The Senate version also repeals the current law’s solar energy minimum, and it replaces current energy-efficiency and peak demand rules with a gobbledygook “process” likely making it easier for utilities to comply.
But at least the Senate version goes through the motions. The earlier-passed Ohio House version of HB 6 doesn’t. The House version, the LSC reports, repeals Ohio’s renewable energy rules in January “and terminates energy efficiency/peak demand reduction portfolio plans on Dec. 31, 2020.”
Neither version of HB 6 is acceptable. The House should request a conference committee. And the six conferees – three representatives, three senators – must recast HB 6 with Ohio’s future and Ohioans’ health as their foremost considerations.
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