By Christen Smith
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Monday rejected a draft petition to repeal the state’s nuclear subsidy program via ballot referendum, but the disgruntled parties behind the measure say they aren’t discouraged.
Gene Pierce, spokesperson for Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts, told RTO Insider the development doesn’t change the group’s ultimate goal: overturning House Bill 6 in the November 2020 election.
“We have a plan to get the signatures that we need, and we’ve been lining up the resources that we need to make this happen,” he said. “We are confident that we can make the deadlines to get on the ballot next year.”
The 90-day countdown to get the ballot petition approved began July 23, when Gov. Mike DeWine signed the Ohio Clean Air Act into law. The act replaces the state’s renewable energy mandates with ratepayer surcharges to support FirstEnergy Solutions’ Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants and two Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC) coal plants. (See Ohio Approves Nuke Subsidy.)
The controversial law makes Ohio the third state in PJM to provide subsidies for its nuclear plants as cheap natural gas floods the wholesale power market and drives energy prices down to record low levels. (See Monitor: PJM Markets Remain ‘Under Attack’.) Supporters say keeping the reactors operating will reduce carbon emissions — a primary target of clean energy bills across the country — and provide around-the-clock reliability to support the intermittency of solar and wind power.
Pierce’s group argues the law amounts to a “corporate bailout” that wastes money on less efficient resources at the expense of continuing to expand Ohio’s renewable energy portfolio. And they’ve got some powerful, if not unlikely, allies on their side: the natural gas industry, independent power producers, environmental activists and clean energy groups.
“The bottom line is we will take the attorney general’s suggestions and critiques and work very quickly to provide another draft as soon as possible and hope that we can solve these issues very quickly,” Pierce said.The group filed its revised petition Friday and said the state has 10 business days to certify the draft.
Yost highlighted 21 errors in the petition summary that prevented him from certifying the document as “a fair and truthful statement of the measure to be referred.” The inaccuracies relate to misstated definitions for “electric distribution utility” and “renewable credits,” among other terms, as well as missteps in the way petitioners described the responsibilities, calculations and procedures detailed in the law itself.
“It’s not atypical for a first draft of a petition on a complicated bill like this one was to need some corrections,” Pierce said. “We are still on plan. We know how many signatures we have to get and we know how much time it takes to get them.”
ClearView Energy Partners agrees with Pierce’s cautious optimism, noting that while the 21 errors seem a bit excessive, Yost has rejected four of the last 10 petition drafts submitted to his office. Three of those drafts were subsequently approved upon resubmission — an outcome the analysts believe is likely in this case too, given that Yost expressed no opposition to the petition’s merits.
Timing also appears key for the group, the analysts said. With a broad coalition of allies, the “corporate bailout” narrative and the act’s structure itself — ratepayers won’t see those monthly surcharges until 2021 — ClearView suggests that a ballot referendum could succeed, overturning the subsidies before FirstEnergy and OVEC collect a single penny.
Pierce told RTO Insider that his group will disclose its financial supporters as required by Ohio campaign finance law.
“Until then, I can say that you will find that they are many of the same groups and individuals who testified against the bill in the legislative debate over the bill,” he said.
If the revised petition is approved, Pierce’s group will then begin collecting the roughly 265,000 signatures ahead of the Oct. 21 deadline for inclusion on the ballot next year.