FirstEnergy Solutions plans to change name to Energy Harbor

The Perry nuclear plant in Lake County, seen here, and the Davis Besse plant near Toledo are both owned by FirstEnergy Solutions, which plans to soon rename itself Energy Harbor.

COLUMBUS — "FirstEnergy Solutions, the Akron-based coal and nuclear power generating company, announced Monday it will change its name to Energy Harbor once its bankruptcy restructuring is finalized.

The company, founded in 1997 as a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., runs three nuclear power plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as coal plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The company has been in the news frequently this year, both because of its efforts to emerge from bankruptcy and because of the passage of House Bill 6, under which it will get more than $1 billion from Ohio ratepayers to bail out its Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants in Northern Ohio.

A FirstEnergy Solutions spokeswoman didn’t immediately reply when asked Monday why the company was changing its name.

In a release, FirstEnergy Solutions CEO John Judge said the name Energy Harbor 'reflects a focus on providing our customers and local communities with safe and resilient energy in addition to industry leading service to manage their energy needs.'”

— Jeremy Pelzer, cleveland.com

read more

Congrats Brad!

In early June, we welcomed Brad Holmes as our new Phone Canvass Director at our Cleveland office. Brad is a 2018 graduate of Bowling Green State University and first joined our staff as a field canvasser in May 2018, but quickly moved to become a leading phone organizer.  He is thrilled to take on this leadership role to empower others in the professional realms of activism, politics, and environmental advocacy. He has been involved in community rights and sustainability activism through several student groups, which then tied into his undergraduate education in Environmental Policy, Ethics, and Sociology. He replaces long-time director Stephen Gabor, who was promoted to Membership Director. In only 6 months in his new position, Brad has doubled the size of Ohio Citizen Action's phone canvass staff, and trained them so well that our campaign and fundraising goals have been consistently met, often weeks ahead of schedule.

AEP Ohio solar project suffers setback

COLUMBUS -- "The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) voted Thursday to deny AEP Ohio’s application for a rate hike for customers to finance the 400-megawatt project in Highland County.

A typical AEP Ohio residential consumer who uses 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month would have paid 28 cents per month initially to finance the project, but AEP expected that fee to decrease over time — a forecast disputed by the project’s opponents.

Ohio law requires that the commission determine whether a proposed project to generate electricity is needed."

-- Mark Williams, The Columbus Dispatch

read more