Janine Migden Ostrander is a former Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the top lawyer for residential utility customers. She is a Fellow at Pace University Law School’s Energy and Climate Center.
Pari Sabety is a former Director of the Ohio Office of Budget and Management and a current Fellow at the National Academy for Public Administration.
As downtown Columbus experiences a stubborn glut of unoccupied office space, AEP hinted the problem could worsen because financial challenges might cause it to move out of its pricey downtown headquarters.
This relocation threat became public just days before The Columbus Dispatch told us August 8 that the electric company made record profits. A few weeks later, we learned that AEP CEO Bill Fehrman’s $36.6 million salary makes him America’s highest paid utility executive.
As Fehrman’s salary rose, so did our electric bills.
Around the same time, JobsOhio, the state’s job-creation agency, advanced a new, $100 million fund that could benefit AEP by helping it bring expensive Small Modular Reactors to Ohio.
AEP has been angling to add these mini-nukes to its portfolio in other states, and it recently advertised to fill a new position in Ohio: vice president for nuclear development government affairs.
The $100 million is intended to help utilities defray the costs of Small Modular Reactors site development and worker training.
Gov. Mike DeWine touted the new fund as necessary for Ohio to “have an energy policy that ensures we have the supply we need for current and future demand, which will keep costs reasonable.”
Why we may not ever know what’s really going on
The new fund comes as utilities and their allies insist that Ohio faces an imminent power shortage.
The extent of the shortage is debatable. However, only two Small Modular Reactors have been deployed worldwide – one in Russia, the other in China. Because they are expensive and take years to become operational, it’s unlikely that authorizing any in Ohio would keep costs reasonable or mitigate any imminent shortage of energy from incoming data centers.
So what prompted creation of the new fund? Did AEP play any role? Did JobsOhio Board Chair Josh Rubin advocate for it? While Rubin chairs the JobsOhio Board, his firm, the CJR Group, lobbies for AEP. Did those who authorized the new fund know of Rubin’s possible conflict?
Because JobsOhio records are exempt from public scrutiny, we might never know.
More importantly, why are Ohio leaders using public money to help advance expensive nuclear power, while continuing to undermine less-expensive wind and solar alternatives?
And why aren’t they restoring the energy efficiency standard that required utilities to help customers save money? Lawmakers removed the pro-consumer provision when they passed House Bill 6, the power plant bailout that sent a former Ohio House speaker to prison for racketeering.
Hostility toward green energy
Ohio policy-makers have obstructed more than 5.3 gigawatts of solar and wind development over the past decade, projects that a new analysis states could have gone a long way toward meeting demand, lowering bills and reducing pollution.
Despite hostility to renewables, Ohio ranks among the top 10 states for green job growth, remains a national leader in wind-related manufacturing and is home to more than 250 solar companies.
Still, it appears as if both wind and solar are ineligible for a slice of the $100 million from JobsOhio because the fund is to help companies “offset costs related to natural gas and nuclear power production in Ohio.’’
An unrelated JobsOhio scandal that cost Ted Carter his presidency at Ohio State University prompted bipartisan legislation to force more transparency at JobsOhio. House Bill 779 recently had its first hearing.
Many top Ohio business leaders oppose the proposed reforms.
In a recent column defending the status quo, the leaders insisted that “JobsOhio has positioned our state as a national leader in economic development.’’ Those signing it include heads of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Ohio Business Roundtable, Ohio chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, and Ohio Council of Retail Merchants.
Conspicuously absent from the signatories is the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, which has reproached AEP for exaggerating forecasts of future electricity needs and leads a new coalition advocating for passage of the Electricity Forecast Integrity Act.
In these too-polarized political times, Ohio leaders must work together to boost our state’s use of renewable energy and pass both the OMA-backed truth-in-forecasting law and the bipartisan bill to make JobsOhio more accountable.
These reforms would improve Ohio’s economy, environment and ethics – goals that should unite us all.
Janine Migden Ostrander is a former Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the top lawyer for residential utility customers. She is a Fellow at Pace University Law School’s Energy and Climate Center.
Pari Sabety is a former Director of the Ohio Office of Budget and Management and a current Fellow at the National Academy for Public Administration.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Mysterious $100M energy fund shows why JobsOhio’s books should be forced open | Opinion
Reporting by Janine Migden Ostrander and Pari Sabety, Guest Columnist / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Janine Migden Ostrander and Pari Sabety, Guest Columnist | USA TODAY Network
