Even as advances in renewable energy continue to make it cheaper and more competitive, and coal continues its long 30-year decline, Ohio lawmakers are proposing legislation that would subsidize two coal-fired power plants – forever.
Ohioans already pay higher electricity rates than residents of 33 other states. But if Ohio’s House Bill 239 is approved, anyone in the state who gets their electricity from the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation could be charged an additional fee to keep two of the company’s coal-fired power plants open. If the plants were profitable, customers could get a credit toward their electrical bill.
This sort of strategy makes sense in the case of solar or other renewable energy power plants, where financial costs are offset by savings in public health and easily justified as investments in sustainable infrastructure. But enabling electrical companies to continue their reliance on dirty and inefficient fossil fuels as the earth continues to warm makes no sense either environmentally or economically.
In an interview with ThinkProgress, the Sierra Club’s Mark Kresowik agreed, saying:
“There is no need for these plants to stick around — and this would essentially charge customers significantly more. Coal is uneconomic in the markets right now.”
If the Ohio bill is approved, it could provide a model for similar legislation elsewhere around the country. PJM, the electrical grid operator for much of the mid-Atlantic and Midwest, has advocated adjusting how resource adequacy analyses are conducted to ensure that power plants get all the resources they need. And Rick Perry, the Secretary of Energy, has undertaken a review of U.S. electrical grid policies with an aim to prop up the coal industry.
Just to put the absurdity of this whole situation in perspective, the Ohio coal plants in question came online in 1955. Now, imagine if we were all watching TVs made in 1955 – those boxy, wooden-framed things. Imagine if we were all driving cars made in 1955. Imagine if we were still using vacuum-tube computers that were the size of an average walk-in closet.
It’s natural for technology to evolve, and it has. Cleaner natural gas and renewable energy sources have been replacing coal across the developed world for years. In Europe, coal consumption has declined almost 50 percent since 1990. Even in the U.S., coal consumption has dropped roughly 35 percent over the last decade. Yet Ohio lawmakers are wrapping their arms around a dying industry.
Artificially extending the lives of dirty coal-fired power plants in 2017 is wrong for Ohio. And since the noxious pollutants pumped into the air by coal plants affect everyone, propping up these coal plants is also wrong for both the country and the world.
Featured image via YouTube video.
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