DevelopOhio

As the two-year freeze of Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards nears expiration, state Republican legislators “have a new proposal that would technically put those standards back in place from 2017 through 2019 — but would make compliance optional,” The Columbus Dispatch reports. Sen. Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati) is the “chief sponsor of the new plan” which will be “introduced as an amendment to Senate Bill 320,” according to the article. Clean-energy rules that went into effect in 2008 require electric utilities to meet yearly benchmarks for renewable energy; those rules were “frozen” in 2014 by the passage of Senate Bill 310 (see our June 13, 2014 blog post). In the current proposal, Sen. Seitz has “made a subtle change to the main part of the bill,” which previously “would have extended the freeze until 2020, and then resumed the annual benchmarks.” The new version would require standards to be met only every three years, which Seitz said “will give utilities more flexibility” and also “allow for time to see whether the federal Clean Power Plant [sic] survives court challenges (see our January 21, 2016 blog post).”