As the narrator speaks, images of marching soldiers and President Xi Jinping flash across the screen. It ends with a warning: “Don’t sign the petition allowing China to control Ohio’s power.”
The commercial, which has the air of a political-attack ad, is the latest and most bizarre salvo in a bitter fight over a new Ohio law subsidizing two struggling nuclear power plants owned by bankrupt FirstEnergy Solutions Corp.
The voice on the television ad sounds ominous. “The Chinese government is quietly invading our American electric grid,” it says. “Now they’re coming for our energy jobs.”
As the narrator speaks, images of marching soldiers and President Xi Jinping flash across the screen. It ends with a warning: “Don’t sign the petition allowing China to control Ohio’s power.”
The commercial, which has the air of a political-attack ad, is the latest and most bizarre salvo in a bitter fight over a new Ohio law subsidizing two struggling nuclear power plants owned by bankrupt FirstEnergy Solutions Corp.
The law, enacted last month, carves out $150 million annually for FirstEnergy Solutions’s Davis-Besse and Perry plants, which the company had said it would close without aid. Ohio will fund it by cutting support for wind and solar. The move is unprecedented. While New York, New Jersey and Illinois all subsidize nuclear power as part of their clean-energy strategies, Ohio is the first to do so by directly yanking support from renewables.
Now environmentalists and others are gathering signatures in support of a referendum to repeal it. But the group behind the television ad, Ohioans for Energy Security, says they’re circulating the petition on behalf of China. ……
The group is funded by “dark money,” said Gene Pierce, a spokesman for the organization gathering signatures to repeal the law, Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts. The notion that the financing of gas plants is tantamount to taking over the power grid is far-fetched, he said. …https://time.com/5665336/ohio-nuclear-plant-chin
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