Gov. John Kasich has signed a two-year freeze on Ohio's "green" energy requirements, following a long and sometimes bitter debate that has put the state in a national spotlight.

Gov. John Kasich has signed a measure that makes Ohio the first state to weaken its renewable energy standards, following a long and sometimes bitter debate that has put the state in a national spotlight.



The governor signed the bill behind closed doors in his office yesterday. There was no accompanying statement from Kasich or his spokesman with the news release saying the bill had been signed.



The leading supporters include the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Timken Co., Alcoa and several electricity utilities.



�Hitting the pause button and taking the time to better consider the impact of Ohio�s energy mandates on jobs and our economy is the smart thing to do,� said Keith Lake, the chamber�s vice president of government affairs, in a statement.



The process that led to the bill was a �myopic legislative misadventure,� said Steve Frenkel, Midwest director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a research group.



The timing is puzzling, he said, coming a little more than a week after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released new rules that will require states meet benchmarks for reducing carbon emissions.



Many states will use renewable energy and energy efficiency to help meet the federal standards, and Ohio is boxing itself in by undermining its state rules, Frenkel said.



State officials have not yet gone into detail about how they intend to respond to the federal rules. During the legislative debate, sponsors said they were not aware of the federal rules or that the rules had no bearing on the proposal.



Senate Bill 310 is a two-year freeze on annual increases in standards for renewable energy and energy efficiency.



The bill also makes changes to the rules when they resume in 2017.



It repeals a rule that says utilities must get half of their renewable energy from in-state sources, which means that the companies can meet the requirements with low-cost options.



Ohio is one of 29 states and the District of Columbia which have some form of a renewable-energy mandate. In 18 of those states, there have been proposals to repeal or reduce the standards, only passing in Ohio, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.



On the energy efficiency rules, Indiana is the only other state to pull back, with a repeal earlier this year.



The push that led to the bill began in the fall of 2012 when FirstEnergy, the Akron-based utility, called for a freeze on energy-efficiency rules, which it said would pushing down electricity sales and would soon have costs that outweighed the benefits. Since then, there have been more than 50 hours of committee hearings and several proposals that led to the one that ultimately passed.



Supporters say the measure is a necessary change. Right now, about $5 of a typical household�s electricity bill goes for programs that are required by the standards, and businesses pay much more.



�At its foundation, it�s a cost issue,� said Matt Brakey, president of Brakey Energy in the Cleveland area, a company that manages energy purchases for businesses.



Opponents include environmentalists, consumer advocates and some businesses, including the Ohio Manufacturers� Association and Honda.



�What the Ohio legislature is doing is taking an issue that requires some subtlety and nuance and taking a sledgehammer to it,� said Ashley Brown, executive director for an electricity policy think tank at Harvard; he was an appointee to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio from 1983 to 1993.



He thinks a serious debate could be had about the merits of renewable-energy subsidies. �In some ways, subsidies are not only stupid, but they are counterproductive,� he said.



But he also thinks the Ohio debate was more about familiar partisan differences than a serious debate, which he said is ultimately bad for the state.



Dispatch Reporter Joe Vardon contributed to this story.



dgearino@dispatch.com



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