Subsidies for two coal fired power plants put into the 2019 law bailing out the state’s two nuclear plants will end for Ohio ratepayers next week. But as the repeal of those subsidies from House Bill 6 takes effect, the state’s utility watchdog for consumers and Ohio's manufacturers are calling on the Public Utilities Commission to audit the money paid to the plants operated by the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation over the last two years.
Ohioans paid $237 million in subsidies to the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation coal-fired plants in the last two years. The plants are in Gallia County and in Madison, Indiana. OVEC is a company owned by utilities, including American Electric Power, FirstEnergy and Duke Energy and some subsidiaries. The plants have lost hundreds of millions of dollars over the last few years.
Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis said the OCC and the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association want the PUCO to look into the subsidies for OVEC as a law ending them takes effect Aug. 14.
"What consumers should see is that that charge will be taken off their bill, so they won't get future charges for it. But the bill allows charges certainly up to Aug. 14 of this year," Willis said. "It's the 2024 and 2025 charges that we're saying we need to take a look at. We need to make sure that they were reasonably incurred and it was that it was prudent."
The OVEC subsidies were part of House Bill 6. The effort to pass that law resulted in corruption convictions for Republican former House Speaker Larry Householder and former party chair Matt Borges. The nuclear subsidies were repealed
The subsidies for the OVEC plants were pulled back in House Bill 15, a sweeping energy measure which passed nearly unanimously and was signed into law in May.
Willis said she wants to restore the public's confidence in utilities, state regulators and lawmakers following the House Bill 6 scandal.
"It did a lot of damage to the public's trust in not only the legislature, but also in the PUCO," Willis said. "So we're trying to look at how do we get to a point where the regulators are being trusted and people have faith that charges are being looked at and being reviewed."
The OCC has a ticker on its website estimating Ohioans have paid more than $506.7 million dollars to those OVEC plants since the beginning of 2020. Manufacturers are some of the state’s biggest users of electricity. A consultant for the Ohio Manufacturers' Association estimates the plants got $81 million from ratepayers in the first half of this year.
