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FirstEnergy Subsidiary To Seek Financial Aid Alone

by M.L. Schultze, WKSU

Akron-based FirstEnergy’s subsidiary will be going it alone in its ongoing fight to get state and federal help to boost customers’ bills to keep its coal and nuclear plants operating. 

FirstEnergy announced two years ago it planned to get out of its unregulated power-generating business, which depends largely on nuclear and coal, unless federal regulators or Ohio legislators stepped in.

So far, they haven’t.

So those long-term plans to cut FirstEnergy Solutions loose came to fruition with the bankruptcy filing this weekend. 

FirstEnergy Corp.’s Tricia Ingraham says the company still believes subsidies are the right thing.

“We still think that it’s a good idea for Ohio and the nation to keep these base-load generating units in service so we do support that, but FirstEnergy Solutions will be taking this (issue) going forward,” she says.

Ingraham says the 12,500 parent-company employees should be largely untouched by the bankruptcy, though the company is undergoing an up-to two year cost study focused primarily of the shared sides of the two businesses.

A new spokesman for FirstEnergy Solutions wouldn’t comment on its 3,000 employees.