U.S.-China Common Cause; Challenging a FirstEnergy PR Campaign; Galion, Ohio, Takes on AMP-Prairie State

US-ChinaTHE SURPRISE EMISSIONS-CONTROL AGREEMENT BETWEEN CHINA AND THE U.S. IS FRONT-PAGE NEWS across the world this morning—and the lead story in many papers—including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The Financial Times is among the those with useful perspective, including a piece published this morning under the headline: “Q&A: The U.S.-China Plan on Climate Change.”

The FT says the devils are in the details but that it is of historic importance nonetheless.

Excerpts:

  • “The 1997 Kyoto protocol, the world’s only existing legally binding climate treaty, was reasonably ambitious, but not enough countries ratified it to make it effective.”“This is partly why the Paris agreement is shaping up as a looser, less rigid pact that should be easier for countries to back.
  • The U.S. and China have broken a crucial political deadlock.”
  • “It remains to be seen if the price of doing that is a global agreement that is too weak to effectively combat what President Barack Obama has described as a threat that will define the contours of this century more than any other.”

Here’s the full post (registration required).

In Australia, Tim Buckley, IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies, is quoted in a Brisbane Times article picked up by scores of other news outlets in which he explains how the China-U.S. deal is”deliberately timed to put [climate change] on the agenda for the G20.”

“‘It’s not going to be good news for Australia,’ Mr Buckley said, adding that the country was already being seen ‘as a bit of a pariah’ on climate policy.”

Here’s that article (by Phillip Wen, James Massola, Lisa Cox and Peter Hannam).

Separately, IEEFA Director of Finance Tom Sanzillo posted a blog this morning outlining how the deal should be construed by the coal industry as an obvious opportunity to diversify into renewables.

 

FIRSTENERGY IS STACKING THE PUBLIC-COMMENT DECK IN OHIO, according to clean-energy advocates, in a case before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) assuring a guaranteed stream of revenue to its Sammis power plant near Stratton.

Kathiann M. Kowalski has a piece in Midwest Energy News this morning explaining how PUCO has received recent comment from coal producer Murray Energy as part of “a flurry of other support that includes dozens of form letters signed by employees of FirstEnergy’s plants, along with letters from other suppliers and various local governments that talk about the importance of protecting jobs.”

Kowalski notes that those questioning the assertions in the FirstEnergy commentary say “they do not justify subsidizing unregulated power plants that can’t compete effectively in Ohio’s deregulated generation market.”

Additional excerpts:

  • “Workers at noncompetitive power plants and their suppliers would be better served by a forward-looking energy policy that supports and trains workers for fields where jobs are expanding in Ohio.”
  •  “FirstEnergy’s plan would require its Ohio distribution customers to pay for all the output from the Sammis coal plant, the Davis-Besse nuclear station, and FirstEnergy’s share of two older Ohio Valley Electric Corporation plants, which the utilities would then resell.
  • Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that coal plant and coal mining jobs together make up just 0.012 percent of Ohio’s total employment … Research for Advanced Energy Economy Ohio shows that Ohio already supports 25,000 jobs in renewable energy and energy efficiency (or about 0.5 percent of overall employment), and the state has the potential to support thousands more.”

Here’s the full article.

 

RESIDENTS OF GALION, OHIO, ARE PUSHING FOR A REFERENDUM TO COLLECT REFUNDS on overcharges by electricity provided to the city by American Municipal Power (AMP) from Prairie State Energy Campus.

“The tenor of the meeting was education and unity for the residents of communities footing the AMP bill, and unity among the constituent communities as they look to confront the issue,” reporter Andrew Walsh writes in an article posted this morning.

Excerpts:

  • “The problem is that AMP, which was supposed to offer lower power rates, is currently running about 61 percent higher than the open market price.”
  • “Ot is the view of the group this relationship with AMP is unsustainable, and they are dismayed about the lack of cooperation they are getting from the administration when they try to raise these issues.”
  • “There is the feeling that, at best, the administration is burying its head about a vital issue, and, at worst, misleading the community.”

Here’s Walsh’s full article on CrawfordCountyNow.com

 

— Karl Cates
kcates@ieefa.org
Twitter @ieefa_institute

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Categories: American Municipal Power, Coal vs Renewables in China, FirstEnergy, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Prairie State Energy Campus, Wraps

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