House committee meeting on possible House Bill 6 repeal/replacement

The Ohio House select committee tasked with looking into potential repeal and replacement efforts for House Bill 6 meets again Sept. 23.

That hearing will be the third since the House Select Committee on Energy Policy and Oversight was formed in early September, more than a month after (now former) Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder and four others were arrested on federal bribery charges. House Bill 6 is the bill at the center of that investigation. The bill, among other things, subsidizes the state’s two nuclear power plants including the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in North Perry.

As with the previous two hearings held this month, the committee will hear testimony on a pair of House bills seeking to replace House Bill 6 and revive the prior law. According to the Sept. 23 meeting agenda, the committee will also hear invited testimony from the Ohio Manufacturers Association, Ohio Energy Group, Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, and Industrial Energy Users.

One of those bills is House Bill 738, sponsored by Reps. Michael J. O’Brien, D-Warren, and Michael Skindell, D-Lakewood. O’Brien is a member of the select committee.

During sponsor testimony at the Sept. 10 select committee hearing, O’Brien called House Bill 6 the “worst energy legislation of this century.”

House Bill 6, which was signed into law in July 2019, gives the Perry Nuclear Power Plant and Ottawa County’s Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant $150 million annually between 2021 and 2027. The funds are raised through charges paid by residential, commercial and industrial electric customers.

FirstEnergy Solutions, the owner of Ohio’s two nuclear plants, filed for bankruptcy in March 2018 and had plans to shut down both plants by 2021 if it did not receive subsidies. FirstEnergy Solutions officials emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy Feb. 27 as Energy Harbor.

O’Brien said during his testimony that FirstEnergy and other proponents “failed to make the case that bailout legislation was necessary.”

He said during committee hearings last year Democratic legislators consistently requested financial information from FirstEnergy demonstrating the financial need.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, such documents were never provided,” O’Brien said. “Rather the Ohio Consumers Counsel provided information during the hearing process demonstrating that the two nuclear plants were profitable in the year prior to adoption of House Bill 6.”

The other repeal bill, House Bill 746, is sponsored by Reps. Laura Lanese, R-Grove City, and Dave Greenspan, R-Westlake.

Lanese said during her Sept. 10 testimony that by putting the “$1.1 billion heavy hand of government on the free market scales of energy, we have created an exceptionally large disruption for others who compete in the same market.”

“These competitors, the natural gas, petroleum, coal, wind and solar energy industries have employees too,” Lanese said. “We should be careful not to create job losses in those industries as we heavily tip the balance in the favor of another industry.”

Lanese said a full repeal is needed now.

“We can craft a free market-based comprehensive energy policy that includes nuclear, natural gas, oil, solar, wind and any future energy breakthroughs that will make our constituents proud,” she said. “But we cannot do it quickly on the back of HB6. We must do it with transparency, integrity and a comprehensive approach after we repeal House Bill 6.”

During the Sept. 10 meeting, select committee member Rep. Dick Stein, R-Norwalk, said he does not want a repeal of House Bill 6 without a replacement. Stein said that House Bill 6 was not about saving jobs. He said, in his opinion it was about keeping open the plants that produce a large percentage of the state’s carbon-free energy. He also said House Bill 6’s nuclear subsidy costs ratepayers less than other states that have implemented nuclear subsidies, such as Illinois.

House Bill 6, which was signed into law in July 2019, gives the Perry Nuclear Power Plant and Ottawa County’s Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant $150 million annually between 2021 and 2027. industrial electric customers.