COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Objective standards, not state utility regulators, would determine whether Ohio's electric market is competitive enough under changes to a sweeping energy bill being considered in the Ohio House.
The House also wants to require utilities to meet periodic goals for the amount of alternative energy they use rather than to hit a single target in 2025, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported Thursday.
House Public Utilities Chairman John Hagan said Wednesday that he views the current bill - introduced by Gov. Ted Strickland and revised by the Ohio Senate - as unworkable.
"There will be significant changes," said Hagan, an Alliance Republican.
The state must have new rules for the electricity market in place by the end of the year, when its decade of experimental deregulation is scheduled to end and open electricity sales to competition.
The bill was pitched as a compromise by Strickland, retaining some state control over electric rates for now but providing future opportunities for utilities to set their own wholesale prices if a competitive market can be developed.
It also requires utilities to generate 25 percent of the power they sell from alternative energy sources, which Strickland has defined to include wind, solar and biofuels as well as advanced nuclear and coal technology.
But Hagan said he doesn't believe Strickland's bill is a hybrid between regulation and a free market.
"The bill has elements that stand in the way of going to market," he said. "In other words, the hybrid comment is more of a feel-good thing than reality."
The House would like to create an objective standard for determining whether the market is sufficiently competitive, taking the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio out of the mix.
Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. lobbied for the change, and Ohio Consumers' Counsel Janine Migden-Ostrander has pushed for rates set by the PUCO to be tested against an outside standard.
Interim benchmarks under consideration in the House were intentionally excluded from the administration's bill, though the 25 other states with renewable and advanced-energy standards have them.
Strickland energy adviser Mark Shanahan said most of those states have escape clauses in case the technology isn't available and the administration didn't want to force them to build or buy the technologies until U.S. makers can get established.
James Taylor, senior fellow with the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit group that pushes free-market economics, blasted alternative energy mandates during a panel discussion before the committee Wednesday.
He argued that even if the whole country adopted such a standard it would have no effect on global warming.
Shanahan said the administration didn't make the proposal as an answer to climate change, but as an economic development initiative to create jobs in Ohio.
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