Nuclear subsidy bill heads to full House for vote

Several hours-long hearings and substitute versions later, an Ohio House bill that would subsidize the state’s two nuclear power plants set for closure and eliminate existing green energy mandates is headed to the full House for a vote.

House Energy and Natural Resources Committee members voted along party lines May 23 to move the bill forward. The vote came just a day after the latest substitute version of the bill (HB 6) was introduced.

The legislation is being supported by several Lake County area officials. The Perry Nuclear Power Plant is scheduled to close in 2021. The plant employs about 700 people and generates millions of dollars in tax revenue, with Perry Schools being the biggest benefactor.

“The Perry Nuclear Power Plant, along with the DavisBesse nuclear plant in the Toledo area, provides upwards of $30 million in local and state tax revenue,” Perry Schools Superintendent Jack Thompson told committee members earlier this month. “That’s millions of dollars that gets pumped directly back into local communities to support vital programs and services, including education.

“Without these tax revenues, statewide funding for schools and emergency services in particular would be threatened.”

Opponents of the bill have argued that the bill is little more than a bailout for the two nuclear plants and its owner FirstEnergy Solutions, which is currently going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Under this latest proposal, the bill is estimated to generate $70 million for the “Ohio Clean Air Program Fund” in 2020, $169 million in 2021 and then $198 million annually through 2026. The program is administered through the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority, which will award “clean air credits” worth $9 for each megawatt hour of electricity produced. According to analysis by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission, the credits are awarded to “electric generating facilities fueled by nuclear power for their emissions’ attributes.”

In the first year of the program, residential ratepayers would see an estimated monthly charge of 50 cents. Commercials ratepayers would pay $10 a month, industrial would pay $250 and large customers would pay $2,500.

After 2020, monthly charges are estimated at $1 for residential customers and $15 for commercial. Industrial and large customer rates would stay the same.

Supporters of the bill have said that although customers will see new charges on their bills, they’ll be saving money due to the repeal of the existing alternative energy portfolio standards. Under the version that passed through the committee, the repeal of those standards goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2020.

The latest version of the bill also allows the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation to charge up to $2.50 per month (if approved by state regulators) to subsidize to coal-fired plants built in the 1950s. One is southern Ohio, the other is Indiana just over the border from Ohio.

“This is abandoning all pretense that it’s a clean-energy bill,” Rep. Casey Weinstein, D-Hudson, said May 22 according to the Columbus Dispatch. “This is a corporate bailout for the nuclear plants and a coal bailout.”

Weinstein is a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and one of the five Democrats who voted against passing the bill along to the full House. All eight of the committee’s Republican members voted in favor of forwarding the bill.

In his sponsor testimony in April, Rep. Jamie Callender, R-Concord Township, discussed Ohio’s existing renewable energy incentive program that would be eliminated in his proposed bill. A bill passed in 2008 included requirements to have 12.5 percent of the state’s energy come from renewables. Callender said at this point, only 3 percent of energy generated in the state comes from renewables and “a large portion of the funds gathered (from Ohio ratepayers) is going to out-of-state generation facilities.”

“In reviewing the existing program, it is clear that it incentivizes the wrong things, and does not keep Ohioans money in Ohio nor create a cleaner energy generation portfolio in Ohio, two of its primary goals,” Callender said.

House Democrats earlier May 23 unveiled a proposal that instead doubles down on the renewable energy mandates, seeking an increase to 50 percent of the state’s energy coming from renewables by 2050.

“HB 6 is a total flip-flop that started by calling itself a clean air bill and evolved to be a corporate welfare bill that bails out a failing Indiana coal plant,” Assistant Minority Leader Kristin Boggs, D-Columbus, said.