The Energy and Policy Institute reports Ohio lawmakers have introduced a bill that would make it illegal for utilities to charge their customers for political activities.

The bill would introduce new transparency requirements to prevent utilities from secretly spending ratepayers’ funds on politics. The proposal comes after a wide-ranging bribery scandal that saw FirstEnergy spend $60 million in dark money and led to the conviction of the state’s speaker of the House earlier this year. 

Senate Bill 149 is the latest in a growing trend of efforts around the country to protect customers from footing the bill for their utilities’ political influence activities. Like the Ohio bill, Colorado, Connecticut, and Maine all passed laws this year which prohibit utilities from charging customers for lobbying, trade association memberships, charitable contributions, advertising, and campaign contributions.

Investor-owned utilities have been at the forefront of numerous political scandals and ecological disasters. There is an alternative.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans get their electricity from for-profit corporations granted a monopoly over electricity distribution. In theory, state regulation protects those consumers from the excesses of these private companies. In practice, weak laws, poor oversight, and the swelling power of consolidation allow state-sponsored utility monopolies to cut corners and choke off competition in order to maximize profits.

This behavior has made us more vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, through power outages, wildfires, and other calamities. At the same time, monopoly utilities have been a persistent obstacle to the clean-energy transition that we urgently need to stop climate change from getting worse.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has released a proposed decision that would undermine the value of rooftop solar for renters in multifamily housing, farms and schools if enacted. The proposal poses a serious threat to California’s climate and energy equity pledges and risks putting solar power out of reach for the state’s nearly 17 million renters.

The proposed rule would establish limits on how much electricity produced by rooftop solar systems can be used at multi-meter properties. The policy effectively forces customers to sell solar-generated electricity to the local investor-owned utility and then makes them buy it back at higher rates.

The Washington Post summarizes recent moves by state legislators to crack down on Big Utility corruption and increase transparency and protection for consumers by prohibiting utilities from charging ratepayers for political activities. Excerpts from The Washington Post:

Utilities across the country use money collected from customers’ monthly bills to fund their political activities, including lobbying, advertisements and trade association membership dues.

That’s about to change in three states — Colorado, Connecticut and Maine — that recently passed laws to prohibit this practice.

Proponents of the measures, which garnered bipartisan support, say they will prevent customers from footing the bill for political activities they might oppose, including lobbying against climate policies. They acknowledge the measures probably won’t save individual consumers much money, but say they’re important transparency steps.

Heatmap correspondent Matthew Zeitlin checked in with Josh Rhodes at the University of Texas about the positive role wind and solar power are playing on the Texas grid in the latest heat wave after electricity prices recently spiked at over $4,400 per megawatt hour.

The past few days have shown that, at least so far, Texas’s deregulated, renewable-and-gas heavy electric grid can stand up to the extreme summer heat.

Late Thursday afternoon, wind and solar were providing 40 percent of the power on operator ERCOT’s grid — around 30,000 megawatts, about even with the amount of power coming from natural gas. At the same time, prices in Texas stayed relatively low. This impressive production from solar and wind comes amid a heat wave that, earlier this week, caused record-breaking demand on the Texas grid. While Texas has a unique combination of systemic electricity reliability issues and high renewables usage, the question of if and how renewables can shoulder the load of spiking electricity demand is one being asked across the country as the grid begins to decarbonize.

AUSTIN, TX — Addressing the life-threatening heat dome that has settled over Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced Thursday that a backup prayer system had been added to the state electricity grid. “To prevent the deadly outages we’ve experienced over the last few years, these new reserves will kick in to supply affected residents with prayers to our Lord and Savior,” said Abbott, adding that as soon as the power grid failed, God would be called upon to provide electricity to the millions of homes that have lost power. “The dozens of regional prayer circles we have set up will kneel and immediately begin to mitigate the strain on our current inefficient electrical system. Residents can rest assured that as soon as a blackout occurs, our new system will ask our Heavenly Father to return power so that no one dies of heat stroke.” At press time, several Texans were shocked to discover that they had already been charged tens of thousands of dollars for backup prayer usage.

The New York Times recently covered the big reliability and cost benefits solar power is bringing to Texas’ electricity grid, despite the socialist efforts of the state’s Republicans to prop up coal and natural gas. From the New York Times:

Strafed by powerful storms and superheated by a dome of hot air, Texas has been enduring a dangerous early heat wave this week that has broken temperature records and strained the state’s independent power grid.

But the lights and air conditioning have stayed on across the state, in large part because of an unlikely new reality in the nation’s premier oil and gas state: Texas is fast becoming a leader in solar power.

The amount of solar energy generated in Texas has doubled since the start of last year. And it is set to roughly double again by the end of next year, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Already, the state rivals California in how much power it gets from commercial solar farms, which are sprouting across Texas at a rapid pace, from the baked-dry ranches of West Texas to the booming suburbs southwest of Houston.

Bloomberg News is reporting that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised President Joe Biden to pursue permitting reform for energy projects, after the issue was largely dropped from an agreement to lift the debt ceiling:

While the outcome signaled a win for progressives who oppose broad changes to a bedrock environmental law, McCarthy said the continuing effort would include a range of energy issues. He said he pledged to Biden to continue working with the White House and Democrats “because we need energy — all forms of energy, especially for our grid — to double.”

“We made a commitment that we’re not stopping now,” he told reporters at the US Capitol on Sunday. “That would also deal with transmission, it would deal with pipelines, and others. I had that conversation with the president yesterday and with the White House.”

Utilities across the country use money collected from customers’ monthly bills to fund political campaigns and lobbying efforts, often with the goal of blocking climate progress. But in Colorado, that’s about to change. Last week, the state legislature passed the country’s most comprehensive bill to prevent utilities from using customer funds to support political activities.

The legislation was approved on May 8 by the state Senate after clearing the state House two days prior, and it’s expected to be signed by Governor Jared Polis (D) soon. It will prohibit investor-owned utilities from charging their customers — known as ratepayers — for membership dues in trade associations, lobbying expenses, or any other activities influencing legislation, ballot measures, and other regulatory actions. It will also bar utilities from spending ratepayer money on political advertising or any messaging intended to boost the utility’s brand.

A federal jury convicted Larry Householder, the former Speaker of the Ohio House, and Matthew Borges, the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party for their participation in a racketeering conspiracy.

In announcing the March 9 conviction, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio described “nearly $61 million in bribes paid to a 501(c)(4) entity to pass and uphold a billion-dollar nuclear plant bailout.” Householder and Borges face up to 20 years in prison.

“As presented by the trial team, Larry Householder illegally sold the statehouse, and thus he ultimately betrayed the great people of Ohio he was elected to serve,” said U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Parker. “Matt Borges was a willing co-conspirator, who paid bribe money for insider information to assist Householder. Through its verdict today, the jury reaffirmed that the illegal acts committed by both men will not be tolerated and that they should be held accountable.”

The group Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation this week highlighted updates to a 2022 report – “The Impact of Renewables in ERCOT” – showing that the availability of wind and solar power in the state’s energy market saved Texas ratepayers over $11 billion in 2022.

The original October 2022 report by Joshua Rhodes of Ideasmiths, quantified the impact of renewables in ERCOT on wholesale clearing prices and avoided fuel costs, water use, and emissions by comparing how the market would have performed with and without wind and solar from 2010 to August 2022.

A leading energy service provider is looking to expand its rollout of virtual power plant services with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Sunnova, one of the country’s largest residential solar providers, has filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission showing that it is looking to progress its buildout of virtual power plants (VPP) through a $3.3 billion loan from the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Loan Program Office.

Per the Department of Energy, VPPs are “generally considered a connected aggregation of distributed energy resource (DER) technologies, offer deeper integration of renewables and demand flexibility, which in turn offers more Americans cleaner and more affordable power.”

The Dallas Morning News is wondering why Texas legislators would target renewable energy production when it has been such a stellar success in the Lone Star State. It’s a good question. Clean energy has brought more affordable energy to Texans, improved the state’s environmental performance, created jobs, and generated economic activity.

While Texas lawmakers aggressively defend fossil fuels and propose billions in new public spending for natural gas plants, largely with a goal of improving reliability on the electric grid. they’re also targeting renewables, proposing limits on growth and pushing for new requirements that would drive up costs for wind and solar power.

Renewable Energy World is out with an article on the impending implementation of the California Public Utility Commission’s decision to slash net metering rates and the response of one company to continue to encourage adoption of rooftop solar by offering a free battery to consumers as an incentive.

From Renewable Energy World:

California is one month away from implementing a policy that reduces how much customers with solar panels are paid for surplus power sent to the grid. The process, dubbed NEM 3.0, moves the state from a net metering framework to net billing, which incentivizes co-locating battery storage with solar systems.

In response to the policy change which takes effect April 15, Houston-based Sunnova said it would offer a "free" battery, which it valued at $8,000, to new customers.

According to the publication Business North Carolina, a forthcoming report to South Carolina’s General Assembly on electricity market reforms will likely also affect policymakers in North Carolina, as it urges an attempt to create or join a multi-state grid operator “as quickly as possible.”

In 2020 South Carolina passed legislation that looked at the potential benefits of encouraging more competition in energy markets. The draft report, commissioned by South Carolina legislators following the passage of that bill, stresses that the effort should involve both North and South Carolina and claims it could save customers in South Carolina alone upwards of $362 million a year. North Carolina has almost double the number of residents as South Carolina.

Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill are encouraging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate vertically integrated electric utilities for abusing their monopoly power and hindering the transition to clean energy.

 In a February 6 letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan, the group of senators argued that monopoly utilities have engaged in “questionable practices” to stifle competition and undercut technologies such as rooftop solar, threatening the successful implementation of President Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act. The letter is signed by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Read the full letter here.