First Energy Witnesses - No, It Wasn't Massive Payoffs - It Was Our Desire To Save Consumers Money!

[hatrack]

On the stand in federal court, one witness after another testified that he supported a massive utility bailout because it would save consumers more than $1 billion. But as they did with so many other claims, prosecutors on Thursday appeared to demolish that one as well. The bailout legislation, House Bill 6, is at the center of the racketeering trial of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges. They’re accused of facilitating a scheme to use $61 million in utility money to make Householder speaker. Fresh off of his election to the post at the start of 2019, Householder rammed through a $1.3 billion bailout that mostly went to prop up failing nuclear and coal plants owned by FirstEnergy Solutions, a subsidiary of Akron-based FirstEnergy.

Through more than five weeks of testimony, a parade of the bailout’s supporters claimed that it was something of a free lunch: Even though it would pay massive ratepayer dollars to the utility, customers would still end up saving money. The supporters pointed to a fiscal note produced by the Legislative Service Commission saying that the savings would come from the bill’s elimination of fees associated with energy efficiency and renewables.

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But as she cross examined Householder on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Glatfelter poked some gaping holes in such claims of consumer savings. One is that the legislative analysis didn’t take into account a $50-million-a-year “decoupling” charge House Bill 6 created. It used FirstEnergy’s best recent year as the basis to create subsidies for FirstEnergy coal plants in the event usage or lower electricity rates forced revenue to drop below what it was in that basis year. In a 2019 conference call with investors, FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones made a comment about the charge showing that the provision placed the interests of shareholders above those of customers. He said the decoupling charge made the company “somewhat recession-proof.” In other words, supporters claimed in court that HB 6 was good for consumers. But one of its provisions meant that if the economy went into the toilet, you could expect your electric bill to go up.

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Then Glatfelter described a pretty big oversight in the legislature’s fiscal analysis of HB 6. It calculated the cost of fees to incentivize energy efficiency without looking at how much customers would save because their homes and appliances were more, well, efficient. Indeed, according to one analysis, efficiency programs actually reduced the average Ohio electric bill by $2 a month. Other research indicates that efficiency not only reduces the amount of electricity you have to pay for. It also produces savings because less infrastructure is needed to carry less power and spewing less carbon into the atmosphere produces potentially profound savings of its own. Asked about that oversight in the fiscal analysis he touted, Householder made a confusing statement about how he’d been told that if lights generate less heat they cause problems with heating and air conditioning units.

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https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/03/06/defenders-claimed-corrupt-energy-bill-would-save-money-prosecutor-smashed-that-claim-too/