Some of Ohio's heavy industry do not like energy efficiency mandates, but large manufacturers do support it.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- About a dozen or so of Ohio's heavy industries -- led by Alcoa and the Timken Company -- have fiercely campaigned to convince lawmakers that the state's energy efficiency mandates are financially burdensome and unnecessary. But not all large companies in Ohio agree.
More than 20 other large manufacturers employing over 50,000 Ohioans have stepped up to support the six-year-old law that requires electric utilities to develop efficiency programs and to help all customers use less power. They join scores of small companies, which have relied on the Ohio Manufacturers' Association to speak for them.
These large companies, which include the Husky Lima Refinery, the American Honda Motor Co., Owens Corning and PPG Industries, are urging the Ohio House to reject Senate Bill 310, which would freeze the annually increasing efficiency standards through 2016 while lawmakers study whether they are needed.
"SB 310 as passed by the Senate undermines the state's current effective energy efficiency policies and we therefore urge the Committee to reject this legislation in its current form," the companies wrote in a letter to Rep. Peter Stautberg, a Cincinnati Republican who chairs the House public utilities committee. The letter was submitted as official testimony to the committee.
The large manufacturers that oppose the bill are proposing a compromise -- let the large industrials leave the utility efficiency programs if they commit to continue making efficiency upgrades and agree to a new requirement that they bid those efficiency-created demand reductions into a special auction run annually by PJM Interconnection, the company that manages the high voltage grid in Ohio and 12 other states.
State regulators have already ordered utilities to bid into the PJM auction those power reductions that have resulted from utility-sponsored efficiency upgrades. The more reductions that are bid into the auction, the lower wholesale prices become, reflecting the lower demand.
That has rankled some of the utilities, FirstEnergy of Akron for one, which has complained that the efficiency mandates have interfered with normal growth.
Under the current law, utilities must show each year that power has been saved -- that sales are down -- through increasing efficiencies. The big manufacturers are also proposing that the required annual reductions be eased.
"Reduce current 22% efficiency by the end of 2025 to 17.7% total," they suggest to Stautberg in the letter. "Make the (annual) benchmarks more gradual by eliminating (the) 1% to 2% 'spike' in 2018 and gradually rising to the 1.5% rate."
"In the spirit of compromise, we believe this approach strikes a balance that addresses a range of diverse interests expressed in the current legislative process," they wrote.
The group also committed their companies to helping lawmakers improve the legislation by "providing our input on how energy efficiency can continue to benefit Ohio."
The House utilities committee is holding more hearings next week, but there is talk of putting the legislation up for a full vote of the House before Memorial Day.
Here is the full list of the companies that endorsed the letter:
AMG Vanadium, BASF, Campbell Soup Company, Cooper Tire & Rubber Company, DuPont, EnerNoc, Honda, Honeywell, Husky Lima Refinery, Ingersoll Rand, JohnsonControls, Mitsubishi Electric, Navistar, Owens-Corning, PPG Industries, Schneider Electric, Smardt, STERIS, United Technologies, Whirlpool, and ZoneFirst.