The two-minute warning has sounded in the high-stakes energy
game Ohio's Republican lawmakers are playing with the state rules requiring
utilities to adopt energy efficiency programs and embrace wind and solar power.
At least three sets of major amendments were submitted late
Friday to the Public Utilities Committee of the Ohio Senate, where Chairman
William Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, has been holding hearings on his bill,
a proposal that opponents say would effectively abolish the five-year-old
regulations.
Seitz had set Friday as the deadline for amendments.
In a notice to interested parties, he proposed to handle the
amendments in a committee meeting next Wednesday and then possibly vote the
bill out of committee.
On Friday, the Ohio Manufacturers Association, accompanied
by an improbable coalition of 10 environmental, consumer and business groups
proposed that Seitz instead gut his bill
In other words, the OMA-led amendments would eliminate the
most controversial language in the Seitz bill that opponents have argued would
cripple in-state wind and solar development and would give electric utilities
big bonuses for running energy efficiency programs.
The coalition did make a peace gesture to the state's
largest industries, some of which have been clamoring for the right to opt out
of compulsory energy efficiency programs designed to help them install
efficient equipment -- but pay higher delivery rates to fund the program. Some
of the big industrial manufacturers have testified they don't need any
help because they are already experts at efficiency.
The OMA-led coalition would give these big power customers
the right to opt out -- provided they bid the power savings their own
programs produce into regional power auctions. Such "negawatt" bids
would help keep power prices low for everyone, the OMA reasons.
Under the OMA-coalition proposal, other companies and
manufacturers that value the assistance to buy and install energy-efficient
equipmentwould still be able to participate, using streamlined applications
similar to what the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio has already put in
place.
"These are proven tools," said Eric Burkland,
president of the OMA, which represents both the largest and the smallest
industries in the state.
"We have been working with a large number of groups to
analyze this bill to find ways to improve it," he said of the amendments.
"We offer these amendments in good faith to participate in the legislative
process."
Other members of the OMA-led coalition include the Ohio
Consumers' Counsel, the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. (LEEDCo), the Ohio
Hospital Association, and the Ohio Environmental Council.
Calling the amendment a "balanced solution," Ohio
Consumers' Counsel Bruce Weston said the proposal offered by the coalition
"is a good idea that asks the Senate to protect Ohio's continued use of
energy efficiency as a way for Ohio consumers and businesses to save money on
their electric bills" while addressing the concerns of the big industries.
Weston was critical of language in the Seitz bill that gives
utilities new ways to profit from energy efficiency programs.
"The utilities' solution is to ask the legislature to
vote for a new law that would increase the electric bills of millions of Ohio
consumers and businesses," he said.
A second coalition including the Environmental Law and Policy
Center, Policy Matters Ohio, Green Peace and Environmental Health Watch sent
Seitz a carefully reasoned 11-page letter reviewing his bill's major impacts on
consumers, utilities and the state's economy, concluding that the bill, as he
has sponsored it, is too flawed to be repaired by amendments.
"The bill, taken as a whole, would prove so harmful to
Ohioans and the state's economy that it is impossible to productively amend in
this process," they concluded, urging Seitz to start over.
In a separate set of amendments, The American Wind Energy
Association, represented by a powerful Columbus-based lobbying group,
Government Edge, suggested a series of alternatives to the bill's current
language that would allow electric utilities to satisfy renewable energy
mandates with power generated anywhere, including power generated by old
Canadian hydro projects.
In place of that, AWEA suggested out-of-state green power be
actually "deliverable" to the state, meaning it would likely have to
come from contiguous states. Because electricity flows where it can, it is
impossible to know for certain that power purchased thousands of miles away is
the power delivered in Ohio.
Also, the wind association suggested that instead of cutting
the ground out from under the current law, the bill allow the state to
"sunset" the current requirement in 2019 that half of all green
power that utilities sell come from Ohio, or that it reduce the percentage in
2015 to 33 percent.
AWEA noted that there are seven wind farm projects that
state regulators have already approved but await the outcome of the Seitz bill.
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