Six years ago, it seemed like the Midwest was well on its way to building the first offshore wind farm in the Great Lakes. Then the project withered on the vine \u2014 and a\u00a0civil lawsuit puts the blame on utility FirstEnergy\u2019s bribery scheme in\u00a0Ohio.<\/p>\n
That corruption scandal is best known for leading to the 2019 passage of House Bill 6, a\u00a0law that gutted<\/a> the state\u2019s clean energy standards and forced consumers to pay nearly half a\u00a0billion dollars in subsidies for uneconomical coal plants.<\/p>\n But the bribes also led to a\u00a0regulatory decision that effectively killed the Icebreaker wind farm proposed off Cleveland\u2019s shore, claims the lawsuit filed in July by Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. \u2014 the nonprofit that spent more than a\u00a0decade trying to launch the clean energy project.<\/p>\n The group, known as LEEDCo, zeroes in on FirstEnergy\u2019s bribes to Sam Randazzo, who formerly headed both the state\u2019s Power Siting Board and Public Utilities Commission. LEEDCo argues that those payments led to a\u00a02020 ruling that imposed unworkable restrictions on when the Icebreaker project\u2019s turbines could operate. By the time the restrictions were revoked, funding for Icebreaker had collapsed. The nonprofit is suing FirstEnergy for monetary damages that could top $10 million.<\/p>\n Icebreaker \u200b\u201crepresented a\u00a0generational opportunity for the region,\u201d said Jay Kelley, managing partner at Elk &\u00a0Elk and one of the lawyers representing LEEDCo. \u200b\u201cIt would have positioned Cleveland as a\u00a0national leader in offshore wind, created a\u00a0new advanced-manufacturing supply chain, supported jobs, and strengthened the region\u2019s climate-resilience and economic-development goals.\u201d<\/p>\n How Icebreaker got put on\u00a0ice<\/p>\n The Icebreaker demonstration project<\/a> called for six turbines<\/a> to be built approximately 8\u00a0miles northwest of Cleveland. Although relatively small, its roughly 20\u00a0megawatt<\/a>s of clean electricity would have been enough to power thousands of homes. Just as important to LEEDCo was proving that offshore wind generation was feasible in the freshwater lake. If so, proponents in the public and private sectors hoped to leverage the region\u2019s strengths in engineering, steelmaking, maritime, and other fields to help the sector take off<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big dream was to build an industry here,\u201d recalled Lorry Wagner, who served as LEEDCo\u2019s first executive director until he retired in late\u00a02019.<\/p>\n By that time, the organization had spent millions of dollars on offshore wind studies, and it had lined up the developer Fred. Olsen Renewables to build Icebreaker once approvals came through. In 2018, the project cleared the federal government\u2019s environmental review process<\/a>. LEEDCo was also deep into discussions with several Ohio agencies and had applied for a\u00a0permit<\/a> from the Ohio Power Siting Board.<\/p>\n By May 2019, LEEDCo had agreed to various permit conditions supported by the Power Siting Board\u2019s staff, two environmental groups, a\u00a0trade association, and a\u00a0carpenters\u2019 union. After a\u00a0hearing that autumn on the fairness of that settlement<\/a>, the project\u2019s only remaining hurdle was to get the board\u2019s final approval.<\/p>\n When that ruling finally came in May 2020, the board, led by Randazzo, imposed a\u00a0whole new condition<\/a>: Every night from March through December of each year, Icebreaker\u2019s turbines would have to \u200b\u201cfeather,\u201d or shut\u00a0down.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it came out, everybody was shocked,\u201d Wagner said.<\/p>\n By then, however, Fred. Olsen had withdrawn from the project. According to LEEDCo, that loss of both funding and technical expertise meant it could no longer meet its obligations for a\u00a0grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. When the Ohio Supreme Court<\/a> later upheld<\/a> the permit without the \u200b\u201cpoison pill\u201d in 2022, LEEDCo still didn\u2019t have new funding<\/a>. On Dec. 8, 2023, LEEDCo said it was freezing Icebreaker<\/a>.<\/p>\n What was FirstEnergy\u2019s role?<\/p>\n Just a\u00a0few days before LEEDCo paused Icebreaker, the federal government indicted<\/a> Randazzo on criminal bribery, fraud, and conspiracy charges related to HB 6\u00a0and other matters. He also faced criminal charges<\/a> from the state of Ohio and the prospect of losing his law license<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six years ago, it seemed like the Midwest was well on its way to building the first offshore…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137],"class_list":{"0":"post-58184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-erie","8":"tag-erie","9":"tag-erie-headlines","10":"tag-erie-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}