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Efforts to stick Ohio utility ratepayers with costs of old manufactured gas-plant site cleanups may not be dead even though the provision was yanked from the Ohio House's final version of a mid-biennium budget bill. Very much alive are lawmakers' efforts to revise a 2008 law to freeze energy-efficiency and renewable-energy standards.
(Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer, File)
At least until the General Assembly returns to Columbus after its current recess, public utility ratepayers, and Ohio’s environment, are safer than they were.
Before recessing, Ohio's House, run 60-39 by Republicans, sent the Senate a mid-biennium review bill -- Amended Substitute House Bill 483 – stripped clean of a pro-utility provision. It would have forced Ohio utility consumers to pay for the cleanup of old manufactured gas plant sites that utilities own.
The utility giveaway could yet resurface after legislators' recess.
Meanwhile, more
The Senate went home before acting on Senate Bill 310, which would freeze, at this year's required benchmarks, graduated energy-efficiency and renewable-energy standards that a virtually unanimous General Assembly approved in 2008. The 2008 law stimulated solar and wind power development in Ohio.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson is among those opposing a freeze: "SB 310 as it stands today will harm consumers and slow Cleveland and Ohio's transition to the sustainable economy of the future," he wrote in a letter to state legislators.
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When senators return, they should leave well enough alone by preserving, not gutting, the 2008 law. Utility ratepayers and voters can help by letting their representatives know they want Ohio to remain at the forefront of alternative energy innovation and development.
Lawmakers also should resist the urging of utility lobbyists to stick consumers with the costs of manufactured gas-plant cleanups. Before natural gas became widely available, utilities burned or baked coal or coke to manufacture gas. Duke Energy last year got the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to vote 3-2 to let Duke charge its Ohio ratepayers to clean up two old gas plant sites.
The PUCO’s pro-Duke decision is now tied up in court.
So, predictably, an amendment to H.B. 483 surfaced that would, in effect, have ratified the PUCO’s ruling. That amendment, also predictably, touched off a Statehouse gold rush by other utilities. For a time, H.B. 483 would have expanded the Duke proviso so other utilities, such as Greater Cleveland’s FirstEnergy, could ding their ratepayers for cleanups at an estimated 100-plus other old Ohio gas plant sites.
Luckily for consumers, House Republicans yanked the whole gas-plant giveaway from H.B. 483 before sending the measure to the Senate.
Continued vigilance is advised.