FirstEnergy

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FirstEnergy Corporation

Type	Public (NYSE: FE)
Headquarters	76 South Main St. Akron, OH 44308
Area served	NJ, OH, PA
Key people	Anthony J. Alexander, CEO
Industry	Electric Producer and Utility
Products	Electricity
Revenue	$12.13 billion (2007)
Net income	▲ $1.31 billion (2007)
Employees	14,534 (2007)
Subsidiaries	Jersey Central Power & Light Metropolitan Edison Ohio Edison Pennsylvania Electric Co. Pennsylvania Power Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. Toledo Edison FirstEnergy Solutions
Website	FirstEnergyCorp.com

FirstEnergy Corp. is a diversified energy company headquartered in Akron, Ohio. Its subsidiaries and affiliates are involved in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity, as well as energy management and other energy-related services. Its seven electric utility operating companies comprise the nation’s fifth largest investor-owned electric system, based on serving 4.5 million customers within a 36,100-square-mile area of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey; its generation subsidiaries control more than 14,000 megawatts of capacity. In 2007, FirstEnergy ranked 212 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest public corporations in America.

FirstEnergy has come under fire for charging prohibitive rates in the Ohio area. In response, the Ohio Public Utility Commission has asked for bids from other energy companies. [1].

CEO compensation

In May 2007, Forbes listed Xcel CEO Anthony J. Alexander as receiving $8.5 million in total compensation for the latest fiscal year, with a four-year total compensation of $23.08 million. He ranked 16th on the list of CEOs in the Utilities industry, and 270th among all CEOs in the United States.

Power portfolio

Out of its total 14,819 MW of electric generating capacity in 2005 (1.39% of the U.S. total), FirstEnergy produces 54.0% from coal, 27.6% from nuclear, 8.6% from natural gas, 6.4% from hydroelectricity, and 3.4% from oil. FirstEnergy owns power plants in Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; 65.9% of the company's generating capacity comes from Ohio.

EPA releases list of 44 "high hazard" coal ash dumps

In response to demands from environmentalists as well as Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California), chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, the EPA made public a list of 44 "high hazard potential" coal waste dumps. The rating applies to sites at which a dam failure would most likely cause loss of human life, but does not include an assessment of the likelihood of such an event. FirstEnergy owns one of the sites, which stores coal combustion waste for the Bruce Mansfield Power Station in Pennsylvania. To see the full list of sites, see Coal waste.

FirstEnergy switching Ohio plant from coal to biomass

On April 1, 2009, FirstEnergy announced that it is retrofitting the R.E. Burger power plant in eastern Ohio to produce electricity from woody biomass instead of coal, which would make it one of the largest such facilities in the U.S. The conversion will cost about $200 million. FirstEnergy had faced an April 2 deadling to either close the plant, install $330 million in pollution controls, or convert to biomass.

Campaign Contributions

FirstEnergy is one of the largest contributors to both Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress. These contributions total $387,550 to the 110th US Congress (as of the third quarter), the largest of which have been to John Boehner (R-OH)for $17,500. Rep. Boehner, for his part, has taken over $113,250 in total coal contributions and has consistently voted with the coal industry on energy bills. Running a close second is Rep. George Voinovich (R-OH), wih $17,200, who has also been consistent in his support for fossil fuels. [2]

Contributions like this from from fossil fuel companies to members of Congress are often seen as a political barrier to pursuing clean energy.

More information on coal industry contributions to Congress can be found at FollowtheCoalMoney.org, a project sponsored by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Oil Change International and Appalachian Voices.

Among the worst

FirstEnergy was named one of "the 10 worst corporations of 2006" by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, in an article in the November / December 2006 issue of Multinational Monitor magazine. "In January 2006," the company "agreed to pay $28 million to settle criminal charges that it made false statements to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission," they wrote. "Under the agreement, the company admitted that the government was able to prove that its employees, acting on its behalf, knowingly made false representations to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the course of attempting to persuade the NRC that its Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station was safe to operate."

Mokhiber and Weissman also pointed to another incident: "In Pennsylvania, the Department of Environmental Protection fined FirstEnergy Generation Corp. $25,000 for a 'stack rain out' that covered more than 300 Beaver County homes and properties in a black, sooty material July 22, 2006. The material came from the tall stack of the company's Bruce Mansfield power plant in Shippingport Borough." The $25,000 fine was "the maximum penalty allowed by the state's Air Pollution Control Act."

Denying responsibility for Davis-Besse

In an "attempt to win a $200 million insurance dispute," FirstEnergy publicly reversed course on its responsibility for the near-catastrophe at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo, Ohio. "FirstEnergy has abruptly shrugged off the blame it once accepted for repeatedly missing a football-size rust hole growing in the lid of the radioactive, high-pressure reactor," reported The Plain Dealer. "At the time, the utility paid $33.5 million in criminal and civil fines to acknowledge its culpability for failing to stop the corrosion and for misleading government regulators." [3]

FirstEnergy then claimed that "corrosion ate through the steel lid so quickly -- in four months, not the previously accepted four years -- that normal biennial inspections couldn't have caught it." The "new version of events" was put forward by Exponent Failure Analysis Associates, a consultant to FirstEnergy. But the consultant's report didn't explain "the rivers of rust that workers photographed on the reactor lid in 2000, 18 months before Exponent says major corrosion is supposed to have begun." [4]

On January 20, 2006, FirstEnergy acknowledged a cover-up of serious safety violations by former workers at Davis-Besse, and accepted a plea bargain with the U.S. Department of Justice in lieu of possible federal criminal prosecution. In the agreement, the company agreed to pay fines of $23 million, with an additional $5 million to be contributed toward research on alternative energy sources and to Habitat for Humanity as well as to pay for costs related to the federal investigation. In addition, two former employees and one former contractor were indicted for purposely deceiving Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspectors in multiple documents (including one videotape) over several years, hiding evidence that the reactor pressure vessel was being seriously corroded by boric acid. The maximum penalty for the three is 25 years in prison. The indictment also cites other employees as providing false information to inspectors, but does not name them.

In 2005, the NRC identified two earlier incidents at Davis-Besse as being among the top five events (excluding the actual disaster at Three Mile Island) most likely to have resulted in a nuclear disaster in the event of a subsequent failure.

Coal lobbying

FirstEnergy is a member of the American Coal Ash Association (ACAA), an umbrella lobbying group for all coal ash interests that includes major coal burners Duke Energy, Southern Company and American Electric Power as well as dozens of other companies. The group argues that the so-called "beneficial-use industry" would be eliminated if a "hazardous" designation was given for coal ash waste.

ACAA was set up by a front group called Citizens for Recycling First, which argues that using toxic coal ash as fill in other products is safe, despite evidence to the contrary.

Other notable accidents and incidents

The 2003 North American blackout was caused by the failure of FirstEnergy to trim the trees around their high voltage lines in a certain sector of Ohio; heat and extreme power needs caused the lines to sag, coming into contact with the trees and causing power failure. See 2003 North American blackout for more details.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission voted on January 16, 2004, to investigate FirstEnergy subsidiaries Metropolitan Edison, Pennsylvania Electric and Pennsylvania Power, because their service reliability "may have fallen below established standards." A quarter century earlier, GPU's Three Mile Island was the scene of the worst civilian nuclear accident in U.S. history.

Existing coal-fired power plants

FirstEnergy owned 25 coal-fired generating stations in 2005, with 8,005 MW of capacity. Here is a list of FirstEnergy's coal power plants:

Plant Name	State	County	Year(s) Built	Capacity	2007 CO2 Emissions	2006 SO2 Emissions
Bruce Mansfield	PA	Beaver	1976, 1977, 1980	2741 MW	17,400,000 tons	24,882 tons
W.H. Sammis	OH	Jefferson	1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1967, 1969, 1971	2456 MW	13,800,000 tons	86,392 tons
Eastlake	OH	Lake	1953, 1954, 1956, 1972	1257 MW	6,355,000 tons	82,705 tons
R.E. Burger	OH	Belmont	1944, 1947, 1950, 1955, 1955	541 MW	1,635,000 tons	62,558 tons
Bay Shore	OH	Lucas	1959, 1963, 1968	499 MW	3,979,000 tons	15,207 tons
Ashtabula	OH	Ashtabula	1958	256 MW	1,132,000 tons	67,319 tons
Lake Shore	OH	Cuyahoga	1962	256 MW	895,000 tons	1,433 tons

In 2006, FirstEnergy's 7 coal-fired power plants emitted 45.2 million tons of CO₂ (0.75% of all U.S. CO₂ emissions) and 340,000 tons of SO₂ (2.27% of all U.S. SO₂ emissions).

September 2010: FirstEnergy to close four plants

On August 12, 2010, FirstEnergy announced it will throttle back power production at four of its smaller, coal-burning power plants, beginning in September and continuing for three-years. The company cited the lackluster economy, low demand for power, and pending federal rules tightening emission standards. The plants are the Lake Shore Plant in Cleveland, OH, all but the largest boiler at the Eastlake Power Plant in Lake County, OH, the Ashtabula Plant, and three of four boilers at the Bay Shore Plant near Toledo, OH. The largest Bay Shore unit, which burns petroleum coke from the nearby BP/Husky oil refinery, will continue operating. The four power plants have not been running flat out for some time; instead, the company has kept them in reserve, ramping up production as needed. Altogether the power plants have a total generating capacity of 1,620 megawatts, they accounted for less than 7 percent of total production in 2009. One megawatt is 1 million watts and enough electricity to power about 800 homes. FirstEnergy said the slowdown will reduce operating costs but could force the company to write off $287 million in the value of its assets, reducing third quarter earnings by 59 cents per share.

FirstEnergy to close Burger Plant units 4 and 5

According to a Nov. 17, 2010 report from Power-Gen Worldwide, FirstEnergy Corp. is planning to permanently shut down two coal-fired units, Units 4 and 5, at the Burger Plant by the end of the year. The units were included in the 2005 Consent Decree settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and FirstEnergy had the option to re-power, install scrubbers, or shut down the units as part of an effort to reduce the company's sulfur dioxide emissions. Rather than refit the Burger plant units, First Energy will complete a $1.8 billion retrofit at its Sammis Plant in Stratton, Ohio, according to the report.

FirstEnergy's Lake Shore Plant and Environmental Justice

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FirstEnergy's Lake Shore Plant is in the Glenville community of Cleveland, Ohio, near Lake Erie and in close proximity to a large population of low income African Americans. Within a three mile radius of the plant, 85% of the 100,000 plus residents are African Americans with an average income of $10,000 per year, raising issues around environmental justice and coal. Lake Shore is among over 100 coal plants near residential areas.

Ohio Edison Company, W.H. Sammis Power Station, Clean Air Act Settlement

On August 12, 2009 Ohio Edision Company, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp., agreed to a consent decree issues by the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. EPA to repower two of the R.E. Burger's coal-fired power plant units using primarily biomass fuels (trees, grasses, agricultural crops and wood products). The decree modifies a 2005 consent decree of a similar nature, requiring Ohio Edison to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from its coal-fired power plants. The EPA estimates that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the plant, along with SO2 and NOx will decrease by approximately 1.3 million tons per year.

FirstEnergy's, as part of a $1.5 billion project to reduce toxic air pollutants, will be installing a flue gas desulfurization devices (scrubbers) on all seven of company's coal-fired units in Ohio by 2011. The consent decree resolved a lawsuit filed in 1999 under the New Source Review provision of the Clean Air Act.

The company's Burger Plant will be the largest coal-fired electric utility in the country to change to a majority biomass fuel plant. Sierra Club and other environmental groups, while commending FirstEnergy for its willingness to abandon coal as the primary energy source, are critical of biomass as a sustainable alternative for the Burger plant because of its sheer size. The consent decree resolved a lawsuit filed in 1999 under the New Source Review provision of the Clean Air Act.

Bay Shore Plant Contaminating Fish

In early June, 2010 Ohio environmental groups stated that the Bay Shore Plant along Maumee Bay is killing more fish than any other plant on the Great Lakes, costing Ohio $29.7 million annually. The Ohio Environmental Council, the Western Lake Erie Waterkeepers Association, Ohio Citizen Action and other groups are urging the Ohio EPA to make FirstEnergy, the owner of the plant, to install cooling towers at the plant -- which touches the Maumee River on one side and the Maumee Bay on the other -- in order to reduce the fish kills.

Personnel

In August 2008, Michael J. Dowling was promoted from vice president of governmental affairs (lobbying) to vice president of communications of FirstEnergy. Dowling's previous experience includes lobbying and PR positions at Ohio Edison, as well as "leadership positions with the Edison Electric Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers."

Contact information

FirstEnergy Corp.
76 South Main Street
Akron, Ohio 44308
Website:www.firstenergycorp.com

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• Anthony J. Alexander
• Ohio and coal
• Pennsylvania and coal
• United States and coal
• Global warming
• Nuclear energy
• EPA Coal Plant Settlements

External articles

• John Mangels and John Funk, "New Davis-Besse report making waves: Some raise questions as utility shifts stand on reactor lid rust hole," The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), May 13, 2007.

Wikipedia also has an article on FirstEnergy. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.