July 17, 2019
STATEMENT BY ROB KELTER
SENIOR ATTORNEY, ENVIRONMENTAL LAW & POLICY CENTER
“House Bill 6 represents a giant leap backwards for Ohioans, moving the state away from a potential clean energy future and staying stuck in its dirty energy past. This Bill bails out the economically uncompetitive First Energy Solutions nuclear plants and OVEC coal plants, pares back renewable energy legislation, and eliminates energy efficiency after 2020.
Worst of all, this legislation claims to save customers money by reducing the energy efficiency charge on customers’ bills to pay for the power plant bailouts. The reality is that when you reduce efficiency costs you increase the amount of money that customers have to pay for generation by far more than what you save. Energy efficiency is not an additional charge on top of generation, it replaces generation. Hence, customers will now pay to bail out nuclear plants, pay to bail out coal plants, and their monthly bills will increase even more because the utilities will replace low-cost efficiency with higher-cost generation. House Bill 6 will now mean higher bills and higher pollution – a lose-lose proposition for Ohio consumers.”
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