Coal

The Ohio Supreme Court overturned the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio’s approval of a FirstEnergy bailout that left customers footing a nearly $600 million bill. The bailout — misleadingly named the Distribution Modernization Rider (DMR) — has cost customers up to $204 million annually since it was approved in 2017, and, as the Supreme Court ruled, provided no guarantees the funds would go to grid modernization, nor that there were proper customer safeguards in place. Instead, those funds could be siphoned off from FirstEnergy’s Ohio utilities, and used to bail FirstEnergy Corp. out of its poor coal and nuclear investments.