nuclear-news

FirstEnergy’s bad math   https://www.toledoblade.com/opinion/editorials/2020/05/15/firstenergy-bad-math-house-bill-6-ohio-nuclear-power-plants/stories/20200513117   Just a year ago, FirstEnergy was crying poor and demanding a $1 billion bailout to save its nuclear power plants and the northwest Ohio jobs that go with them. Now, set to begin taking in the $150 million a year subsidy from its customers, the company plans to spend $800 million on a stock buyback plan to benefit its stockholders.If that math seems a bit fuzzy, that’s because it is.

But FirstEnergy specializes in that kind of bad math. Consider, for instance, that the bankrupt company argued it was in such dire financial straits that only a consumer bailout could save Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants. Without the bailout, FirstEnergy would become insolvent, the plants would close, jobs would be lost, electric bills would climb, they warned.

So the General Assembly approved House Bill 6, which adds a surcharge to bills of Ohio’s electric customers from 2021 to 2027.

But at the same time, FirstEnergy gave $1.88 million to Generation Now Inc. to fight a referendum campaign to roll back the bailout.

FirstEnergy and its employees also contributed more than $1 million to lawmakers, candidates, and other public officials between 2017 and 2019, when the measure to add a bailout charge to consumers’ bill passed the General Assembly.

FirstEnergy has since emerged from bankruptcy and spun off FirstEnergy Solutions, which was then renamed Energy Harbor. That company owns the nuclear power plants.

And its stockholders stand to benefit from the stock buyback plan. Companies use stock buybacks to repurchase their own stock and drive up the price of the rest of the shares.

Energy Harbor officials say the buyback and the bailout are unrelated because the surcharge won’t show up on consumers’ bills until 2021. That explanation doesn’t add up, but keep in mind this company is prone to fishy math.

The stock buyback plan is a brazen slap in the face to every Ohio customer who will have to pony up to subsidize a pair of nuclear power plants that are financially troubled in the age of cheap oil and natural gas.

Ohio’s lawmakers and its utility regulators should comb through every law and agreement relating to Energy Harbor in search of a way to claw back some of the money the company is sucking out of this state.

And failing that, they must, at the very least, remember this episode the next time the energy company comes with hat in hand, demanding its customers cough up even more.