OCC Statewide Energy Proposal

The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel (OCC) has developed a proposal that would provide residents and businesses an affordable and environmentally sound energy future by designing and enacting a portfolio of diverse electricity options.

If implemented, Ohio would attain the following goals:
	Develop a portfolio of both short- and long-term electric generation as well as energy efficiency and other demand-related options that better provide for the management of rates.
	Diversify the generation sources used to supply electricity to Ohioans and provide market-based incentives to develop new resources, including clean coal technology and alternative power. Energy efficiency programs to reduce customers’ demand also would be designed and implemented.
	Allow for the construction of these new generation resources while effectively placing a cap on costs to ensure that utilities and other energy companies maximize efficiencies and minimize potential cost overruns, which plagued many of Ohio’s power plant projects in the 1970s and 1980s.
	Reduce price volatility and provide more certainty to energy-intensive businesses, which face major economic decisions about plant locations and job retention.

The OCC believes that competitively bidding for power, encouraging the usage of alternative energy and reducing the demand for electricity through energy efficiency programs would benefit our state far into the future.