FirstEnergy AND the Akron Beacon Journal caught in a "compromising position" re: the $3 billion coal and nuclear bailout

On July 10, 2015, the Akron Beacon Journal ran the unfortunately titled editorial "A compromising position for FirstEnergy and Ohio." Through some acrobatics, the editorial came out in favor of Ohio ratepayers proping up FirstEnergy's dirty, dangerous, and expensive Davis-Besse atomic reactor, and its Sammis coal burner, to the tune of a $3 billion surcharge.

Perhaps this odd conclusion should not have come as a surpirse, as FirstEnergy is headquartered in Akron. As Upton Sinclair famously wrote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Salary, ad revenues, or other financial favors.

The Hastings Group immediately responded to the editorial with a Tweet, blasting it as "hometown cheerleading."

Beyond Nuclear responded with a letter to the editor, but the paper never ran it nor even acknowledged receipt. So we post our LTE below:

Is your provocative title a tongue-in-cheek finger wag at the “cheeky request” of FirstEnergy? The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel has estimated the proposed bailout could amount to a $3 billion surcharge on Ohioans’ electricity bills, to prop up the dirty, dangerous, and uncompetitive Sammis coal burner and Davis-Besse atomic reactor.

Or is it a Freudian slip, what with FirstEnergy caught in the act, red-handed, attempting to screw ratepayers, yet again?

You wrote “No surprise that environmental groups and consumer advocates have voiced loud opposition to the FirstEnergy request.” Well, it’s also no surprise that your editorial engaged in “hometown cheerleading,” as the Hastings Group tweeted, on behalf of FirstEnergy’s bailout request, as the company is headquartered in Akron. 

I took part in the PUCO’s Akron public hearing last January. It was heartbreaking to hear more than one young person testify that even higher electricity bills could spell homelessness for them. It was good to see an AARP representative speak out on behalf of seniors, who might not live long enough to see any return on their involuntary investment in FirstEnergy’s coveted multi-billion dollar bailout, intended “to ensure the profitable operation of two power plants during the next 15 years.”

What is most ironic is that FirstEnergy lobbied for competitive electricity marketplace rules a decade or moreago. It had hoped to boost profits, by freeing itself from the guaranteed returns of regulated monopoly status. Instead, it now cannot compete, so is seeking to gouge ratepayers.

Did the Brattle Group, commissioned by the nuclear industry-funded Nuclear Matters PR front group, look at the economic losses to Ohio stemming from FirstEnergy’s successful sabotage of energy efficiency, and renewable sources such as solar photovoltaics and wind power?

How many jobs will be lost, as Ohioans subsidize uncompetitive coal and nuclear plants, and businesses seek greener pastures, where the electric rates aren’t so unnecessarily exorbitant?

Won’t the decommissioning of Davis-Besse, the clean up of radioactive contamination on the Great Lakes shore, and the safeguarding of more than 660 tons of high-level radioactive waste stored on-site, mean many hundreds or even thousands of jobs, for decades to come?

The $3 billion bailout would just about replace Davis-Besse’s severely cracked, and worsening, concrete containment shell. Only FirstEnergy has no plan to make that vital safety repair, nor does the Nuclear Regulatory Commission require it. Thus will communities downwind and downstream live in peril of a catastrophic radioactivity release from the age-degraded atomic reactor that has already had more close calls than any other in the country.

You also touted “A coal-burning Sammis plant, equipped with the best-available pollution controls, arguably has a place then.” But FirstEnergy has no plans to install Carbon Capture and Storage at Sammis, for that too would cost many hundreds of millions of dollars.

As the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report has just affirmed, yet again, central station thermal-electric power plants, most especially aged atomic reactors, due to cost and risk (and of course coal burners, due to climate chaos) are on the way out. Renewables and efficiency are the future – if we are to have one. FirstEnergy’s bailout request to PUCO may have seemed to make sense in the 1950s, but it sure doesn’t any more.

Sincerely,

Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear

Beyond Nuclear has intervened against the Davis-Besse 2017-2037 license extension for the past four and a half years.