As Ohio Coal/Nuclear Scam Collapses, Pure Absurdity And Corruption Emerge W. Details

[hatrack]

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At the center of the controversy is House Bill 6, which was approved last year. It featured a customer-paid $1 billion bailout of two FirstEnergy nuclear plants in northern Ohio, and two coal plants, partially owned by the company. It also eliminated the state’s energy efficiency standards and reduced its alternative energy mandates. Federal investigators allege that House Speaker Larry Householder, who was ousted July 30, used a so-called “dark money” group called Generation Now to funnel bribes from companies identified by news outlets as FirstEnergy, and the coal company Murray Energy. Generation Now, which was also indicted, is considered a dark money group because it is a political non-profit and is not required to disclose its donors.

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House Bill 6 officially created the Ohio Clean Air program. “It eviscerated the renewable energy standards in Ohio,” Karpinski said. “And it included a couple coal plants. How could you possibly pass a clean air bill and subsidize coal plants?” Karpinski’s own project, called Icebreaker Wind, would be the first offshore wind project in Lake Erie. He negotiated for years, and signed an agreement with the staff of the Ohio Power Siting Board(OPSB), which authorizes new power projects.

But the final decision in May included a surprise, requiring that the turbines be turned off at night much of the year, to monitor the impact on birds. “We were extremely frustrated with the result,” said Randi Leppla, vice president of energy policy at the Ohio Environmental Council. She assisted with state negotiations for nearly two years, discussing why that condition would make the project unworkable. “It’s yet another example of clean energy efforts being thwarted in the state of Ohio for reasons that we don’t know. It didn’t make sense to us,” Leppla said.

In 2014, the legislature added a last-minute amendment to the budget bill, which effectively tripled how far wind turbines need to be from the nearest property line, crippling the wind industry. And last year, the Ohio Power Siting Board delayed two solar farm projects, and then placed new requirements on them, which Leppla calls unprecedented.
“The Ohio Power Siting Board has taken a tougher line on some of the renewables projects, in our opinion, than on other forms of generation,” she said.

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https://www.alleghenyfront.org/ohio-energy-scandal-vindicates-renewables-advocates/

[Miguelito Loveless]

1. There is a full-blown Astro-Turf

campaign being waged against EVs for years now, that has been stepping up as EVs have become more popular. They have been very successful at fights against tax credits for EVs and charging stations, demonizing EVs with the canard that they are "dirtier" than regular ICE cars or hybrids, that the cobalt in the batteries is all sourced via child slave labor (This is certainly a problem, but many companies are working hard to buy only from ethical sources, while at the same time, reducing the amount of cobalt they use in batteries. Also, these folks, who worry so much about cobalt in batteries, fail to mention that the cobalt used in refineries and in catalytic converters for ICE cars is 5-6x more than used in EVs. They have also been successful at getting states to add fees to EVs to make up for lost gas revenue, which we don't object to, but the fees are so high, we are paying more than if we drove SUVs. The point of the fee is to punish EV drivers.

[progree]

2. They should turn off wind turbines during the day to monitor what it does to local cancer rates

requiring that the turbines be turned off at night much of the year, to monitor the impact on birds.