Who Will Do the Energy Efficiency Legwork? “Not I,” said FirstEnergy
FirstEnergy wants the benefits of clean energy, without the pesky up-front effort and investment.
According to a new article from Midwest Energy News, FirstEnergy has a new energy efficiency plan before the PUCO (yes…another terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad request). The proposal “could let the company take credit for work done by others and make millions of dollars as a result — at customers’ expense.”
Here’s how it would work: FirstEnergy would profit (by collecting “shared-savings incentives”) on efficiency projects it didn’t create or wasn’t even involved with – but are in its service territory. This is due to legal provisions that reward utilities for going beyond what the efficiency standard required. Oh, and FirstEnergy’s customers would have to pay the taxes on these profits.
Trish Demeter of the Ohio Environmental Council likened the situation to ‘The Little Red Hen,’ a children’s folk tale in which no one will help the hen make bread, but everybody wants to eat it once it’s ready. In this version, FirstEnergy plays the role of the “lazy dog.”
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