Energy Choice Coalition Wishes You a Happy Memorial Day Weekend

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

It’s been a busy month here at the Energy Choice Coalition, so I am as happy for the arrival of the long Memorial Day weekend as anyone. It may be the first holiday for many people to see friends and family after more than a year of isolation at home because of the pandemic. I hope those reunions are joyous.

I hope you will also take a moment on Monday to remember those men and women who could not be reunited with their loved ones because they made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. They deserve to be honored and their families deserve our respect and appreciation.

In this month’s newsletter, we look at the growing catalog of bad behavior by monopoly utilities, which includes lots of new media coverage of the ongoing fallout in Ohio from the 2020 bribery scandal related to the now-repealed House Bill 6. The scandal may eventually cost Ohio Rep. Larry Householder, the former Speaker of the House, his seat. Two resolutions calling for his ouster were introduced this week. We have the latest on the FirstEnergy bribery scandal below and will be keeping tabs on it in the weeks to come. We are also watching a new bill – HB 317 – introduced in the Ohio House by Rep. Shane Wilkin for potential chicanery.

Landon Stevens and Mark Pischea over at Conservatives Energy Network have a great commentary on the playbook of dirty tricks used by monopoly utilities to keep competitors at bay. A snippet of their editorial is below with a link to the full piece.

One would think all this attention on utility corruption would be a sufficient incentive for the monopolies to clean up their act. Some folks never learn, though. In North Carolina, Duke Energy is accused of standing up a dark money front group to fight a legislative effort to create a study commission to look at competitive reforms. Not an actual reform bill, mind you, just a study committee. Is energy choice really all that scary to monopolies? We hope so.

What can we expect from the same people that were part of the utility cabal that thought up the Southeast Energy Exchange Market Agreement, which SEEMs like a competitive market but isn’t. FERC called the proposal “deficient.” Deceptive is probably a better word, but why quibble.

Southeast states continuously have some of the highest electricity bills in the nation. It’s no coincidence that those same states remain locked in outdated monopoly markets that offer consumers little choice of where to purchase their power. SEEM is designed to sideline independent and small developers and allow the region’s big incumbent utilities to keep on doing business as they have for decades – buying political access and passing the cost on to ratepayers.

Thank you for supporting the effort to expand competitive market reforms and spread energy freedom from sea to shining sea. Have a wonderful and safe holiday weekend.

Robert Dillon, Executive Director

Senate Clean Energy Incentives Package Includes Storage Tax Credit

The Senate Finance Committee this week highlighted the importance of energy storage in achieving the transition to a zero-carbon power sector with the advancement of a $259.5 billion clean energy package that includes tax incentives for stand-alone storage and combined solar and storage projects.

The Clean Energy for America Act by Oregon Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden seeks to streamline the tax code to make clean energy tax credits more accessible and effective. The Wyden package differs from President Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which also included an investment tax credit for storage, in that it would replace the current patchwork of 40 clean energy credits with three categories of technology-neutral incentives for zero-emission generation.

In addition to making the investment tax credit (ITC) and production tax credit (PTC) available to storage, the package would:

Provide developers of clean energy projects the option to claim credits upfront in the form of a direct payout, reducing the need to sell the credits on an exchange to raise capital;
Makes homeowners who install renewable energy generation, including rooftop solar or wind turbines, eligible for a 30 percent tax credit under the ITC;
Imposes a ban on clean energy equipment imports from China over its suspected use of forced labor; and,
Extends the $12,500 tax credit for consumers to purchase U.S.-made electric vehicles, while eliminating tax credits for fossil fuels.

That last point is likely to trip up the bill on the floor where even moderate Republicans have strong oil industry ties, but there’s a good chance that many of its provisions can be added to other packages by the end of the year – similar to the convoluted path the Senate took last year to pass a major energy package.

Exposing the Monopoly Utility Playbook of Dirty Tricks: Ratepayers Stuck Holding Bill for Utility Corruption

Landon Stevens and Mark Pischea of the Conservative Energy Network wrote this week in Utility Diive about the underlying flaws in the monopoly model that inevitably leads incumbent utilities to try and rig the system in their favor.

In 2020, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was arrested and subsequently resigned his speakership after an FBI investigation found that the influential lawmaker accepted $61 million dollars from electric utility FirstEnergy in exchange for passage of a nuclear bailout bill. The legislation sought to subsidize two of the company's failing nuclear plants by charging Ohioans a monthly fee.

Another recent scandal in Illinois saw Michael Madigan, the longest-serving state Speaker of the House in U.S. history, lose his position when the state's largest utility, ComEd, confessed to giving jobs and contracts to Madigan associates for nearly a decade in an effort to sway legislation at the state capitol.

Sadly, stories like these are not new — and they aren't surprising. We've long known that unregulated monopolies necessarily lead to higher costs, less efficiency and limited innovation. The very nature of our monopoly electric utility model leads to companies who are beholden to their shareholders — not their customers.

To compound this issue, bad actors among monopoly companies expend unlimited time, money and resources on achieving regulatory capture. Regulatory capture occurs when the lawmakers and officials who are supposed to protect public interests and regulate these monopolies instead begin working to benefit those very same companies.

Duke Energy Front Group Attempts to Sink Pro-Energy Choice Bill in North Carolina

In North Carolina, Citizens for a Responsible Energy Future (CREF) - a Duke Energy-backed organization - launched a campaign against a recent bill that would require the North Carolina Utilities Commission to study potential power market reforms, Catherine Morehouse reported this week for Utility Dive.

After receiving $500,000 from Duke last year, CREF has lobbied Democrats in North Carolina to sink the study committee bill. Though Duke says it does not direct how groups spend its donations, Democratic legislators say Duke is the only organization in the state to have directly lobbied against the study bill.

Duke has also been involved in secret negotiations with legislators since last year over changes to the current energy market rules. Ratepayers have not been included in those talks, but they are most likely going to the victims.

FOIA Request Shows TVA Misused Funds, Environmental Organizations Say

Four environmental organizations have asked the Tennessee Valley Authority’s internal watchdog to investigate whether the nation’s largest public utility misused ratepayer money for lobbying and litigation that fought federal environmental regulations.

The request to the TVA’s Office of Inspector General comes after the Energy and Policy Institute, an activist group, released more than 500 pages of records it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents prove TVA’s dues to the now-disbanded Utility Air Regulatory Group were used for unauthorized activities, the group said. They point to expense reports showing most of UARG’s money went to a law firm. In lawsuits, the UARG frequently argued against tighter air pollution and climate regulations. TVA CEO Jeff Lyash told Congress in a 2019 letter that the utility had contributed $7.3 million to the Utility Air Regulatory Group since 2001.

Anti-Dominion Mega-donor Faces Backlash from Virginia Democrats

Virginia House Democrats are attacking Charlottesville mega-donor Michael Bills, the multimillionaire who supports candidates who want to limit Dominion Energy’s influence in Virginia politics.

The issue of whether to accept campaign money from monopoly utility Dominion Energy, which has a long history of influencing politicians to write regulatory laws favorable to Dominion’s profits, has divided Democrats in the General Assembly. King is among Democrats who accept money from Dominion Energy.

Two Resolutions Introduced to Expel Rep. Householder, Ohio's former Speaker

Democrats and Republicans in Ohio introduced separate resolutions to expel Rep. Larry Householder, Ohio’s former Speaker of the House, after prosecutors accused him and four other men of illegally conspiring to pass a state bailout of two nuclear power plants. The indictment alleged the men got $61 million in donations from First Energy Corp. and affiliated companies to elect supportive Republicans to office, pass the bailout and then stop opponents from putting the law on the ballot for a vote by all Ohioans.

Forcing Solar Installers to Unionize will Increase the Cost of Clean Power for Consumers

With the White House focused on a massive infrastructure package, Americans are likely to see a rapid uptick in investment in clean energy projects. Ideally, that interest in deploying more clean, renewable energy will provide consumers with even more opportunities to choose where their energy comes from, including from their own homes. Biden’s pledge to spend $2 trillion or more over the next four years as part of his “building back better” plan will provide a major boost to demand for clean energy in service of the transition to a carbon-free power sector, a goal Biden wants to achieve by 2035. As the infrastructure package advances, energy experts, policymakers and unions are weighing in on what the changes will mean for the labor market. Labor unions that rely on dues-paying membership from fossil fuel jobs are starting to reach out to lawmakers with the hopes of offsetting their membership losses from shrinking oil and gas demand with new recruits from the renewables sector. The outcome may impact consumers’ bills.

Ex-Westinghouse Official Pleads Guilty in Utility Nuclear Boondoggle

Carl Churchman, a former Westinghouse official, pleaded guilty t lying to federal officials in a case related to the $9 billion failed South Carolina nuclear project. Churchman is not the first

Churchman’s May 21 plea deal provides the first concrete evidence that investigators with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office for South Carolina are targeting the project’s lead contractor, Westinghouse, in addition to South Carolina utility executives who continued bankrolling the doomed project with ratepayers’ money.

The plea deal requires Churchman, Westinghouse’s top official at the Jenkinsville construction site from May 2015 to October 2017, to cooperate with investigators and potentially testify against other utility executives and construction managers who led the project.