This was written by Jeff Bell for Business First:
A new coalition thinks Ohio’s energy efficiency and renewable energy standards are OK and it wants the public and state legislators to stick by the controversial guidelines.
Motivated by a review of the standards by an Ohio Senate committee, Ohioans for Clean Affordable Energy is being launched to protect energy efficiency and renewable energy mandates adopted by the state five years ago.
The coalition is a diverse mix of environmental, clean energy, health advocacy and public policy groups. Fourteen organizations have signed on, including the Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, American Lung Association, Moms Clean Air Force and Policy Matters Ohio.
The standards require Ohio’s four investor-owned electric utilities, including Columbus-based American Electric Power Company Inc., to reduce their customers’ energy use by 22 percent and get 25 percent of their power from renewable sources – such as wind and solar – both by 2025.
The coalition says the standards will lower harmful power plant emissions, improve air quality and reduce respiratory ailments such as asthma.
They benefit everyone in the long run for multiple reasons – health, cost or whatever,” said Laura Burns, a member of the Ohio chapter of Moms Clean Air Force, a national group of parents focused on clean-air issues.
Burns said the costs to care for individuals with asthma can be crippling, noting she knows workers who use all of their allotted sick days because of asthma attacks.
The coalition, she said, is hopeful Ohio lawmakers will listen to its arguments and retain the standards. They are being reviewed by the Senate’s Public Utilities Committee, whose focus so far has been on the energy efficiency standards.
But Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. has been critical of the standards because of big increases in electricity bills. The cost of meeting the mandates, which are being phased in annually, are passed on to customers through a surcharge on their monthly power bills.
Ohioans served by the four electric companies have paid more than $500 million to achieve the mandated 2.3 percent reduction in usage to date, said FirstEnergy spokesman Doug Colafella. Some of the company’s large industrial power users are paying $1 million or more a year in surcharges, he said.
“Our concern,” Colafella said, “is that as the targets get more aggressive, the program will get real expensive for our customers.”
FirstEnergy argues there are ways to moderate the compliance costs while still encouraging efforts to reduce electricity use, he said, and that’s why it is in involved in the discussions at the Statehouse.