Renewable energy companies joined environmental groups and trade associations this week to oppose legislation drawn up by Ohio’s GOP lawmakers to further delay standards requiring power companies to provide green energy and energy efficiency programs for their customers. The bill could be approved as early as next week.
COLUMBUS — “For the second day in a row, businesses, trade groups and environmentalists lined up outside State House committee hearing rooms to testify against a proposal to make Ohio’s green energy mandates voluntary for the next three years.
The mandates requiring power companies to provide an annually increasing percentage of green power were approved by a near-unanimous vote in 2008, but then in 2014 were suspended for two years after months of bitter hearings.
The 2014 legislation included an unusual provision that brings the rules back to life in 2017 unless lawmakers acted again.
That may have been politically palatable at the time, but its impact on business has been a disaster, witness after witness said this morning and Tuesday evening before a Senate committee hearing on Senate Bill 320, a slightly different but parallel proposal. More than 60 testified.”
— John Funk, Cleveland Plain Dealer
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