Ohio environmental advocates are questioning the intent of a pending state law that would add nuclear power to the state’s legal definition of “green” energy.

House Bill 308’s sponsors say the legislation is meant to signal that Ohio is open for business when it comes to nuclear power research and development, but critics warn the language could have broader implications in the future.

“Legislators don’t just put something into the code unless it has meaning and purpose and value,” said Megan Hunter, an attorney with Earthjustice, one of several environmental groups challenging a similar 2022 state law that classified natural gas as a “green” energy source. “Why would you do this if it has no impact or meaning or effect?”

Critics fear the language could be used to greenwash power plants or divert public funding from renewable energy projects, though the bill’s sponsors deny that motive.

“It doesn’t promise any incentives or anything beyond simply placing nuclear under the category of green energy in the Ohio Revised Code,” said state Rep. Sean Brennan, a Democrat from Parma who co-sponsored the nuclear legislation with Republican state Rep. Dick Stein of Norwalk. 

The General Assembly passed the nuclear legislation on Dec. 11. As of Thursday it was awaiting Gov. Mike DeWine’s signature.

Brennan said the question of why the language should be in a law instead of just a resolution didn’t come up in discussions with Stein, who initially asked him to cosponsor the bill.

Stein said the legislation is “about sending a signal to the market that Ohio wants to be a partner and won’t be an impediment,” in contrast to other states that don’t want nuclear energy. He said he hopes it will help attract jobs and federal funding, building on last year’s creation of a state nuclear development authority.

Stein would not speculate on follow-up steps lawmakers might take, saying his term in the House of Representatives ends this month.

What the law could do

Ohio does not currently have state incentives or policy preferences for “green” energy. The state’s renewable energy standard essentially ended in 2019 as a result of House Bill 6, the coal and nuclear bailout law at the heart of the state’s ongoing corruption scandal. Opponents testifying against the current legislation, though, said they worry the definition will be used to water down future clean energy policies. 

“HB 308 will enable the manipulation of public funds into private, corporate hands,” said Pat Marida, a coordinator for the Ohio Nuclear-Free Network, in her December 13 testimony. Also, she said, “there is nothing ‘green’ about nuclear power,” referring to radioactive waste, which continues to be stored at power plant sites.

Future state programs might offer funding or other advantages for projects that meet the state’s definition of “green” energy, for example. And even if the definition doesn’t open doors to new government funding, it could provide cover to private companies that want to count gas and nuclear energy toward their climate or clean energy targets, another advocate warned.

“Insidiously, it does potentially become important,” said Nathan Alley, conservation manager for the Sierra Club of Ohio. Many companies have adopted clean energy goals, he noted. “This might telegraph to them that they could invest in nuclear energy and achieve the same climate and/or energy goals as if they invest in solar or wind.”

Ohio lawmakers aren’t the only ones who want to define natural gas and nuclear power as “green energy.” Model legislation finalized by the American Legislative Exchange Council this fall does the same thing. ALEC is a Koch-linked group that has long opposed renewable energy and actions to address climate change.

ALEC’s model bill would have its definition “apply to all programs in the state that fund any ‘green energy’ or ‘clean energy’ initiatives.” Another model ALEC bill would define nuclear energy as “clean energy” and put it on a par with renewable energy.

A coalition of environmental groups is currently challenging House Bill 507, Ohio’s 2022 law that labeled natural gas as “green energy,” arguing in court that the way in which it was passed violated the state constitution. The groups say last-minute amendments violated provisions that require bills to deal with a single subject – the initial two-page bill dealt with chickens – and call for at least three hearings in each house of the General Assembly where lawmakers can hear testimony from supporters and opponents.

That lawsuit has been briefed and is currently awaiting a decision from Judge Kimberly Cocroft at the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. HB 308 should not affect that case, said Hunter and Alley.

As with HB 507, though, lawmakers added last-minute amendments to HB 308. One of those would extend lease terms for drilling under state park and wildlife areas from three years to five years. That was unacceptable to Brennan, who voted against the Senate amendments when it came back to the Ohio House.

Still, he supports what he views as the main purpose of the legislation: attracting more nuclear power to Ohio. In his view, solar and wind won’t be enough to meet growing energy demands while shifting away from fossil fuels in order to address climate change. “I believe nuclear is going to be hugely important for our energy independence, and hopefully Ohio will become an exporter of electricity in the future.”

Hunter wasn’t surprised that lawmakers made last-minute amendments to the bill. For her, it shows the importance of the ongoing litigation over HB 507.

“Those constitutional protections are there for a reason,” she said. “And seeing the General Assembly have blatant disregard for them again and again harms Ohioans. It deprives them of these constitutional rights.”

A symbolic gesture or Trojan horse? Ohio groups question purpose of ‘green’ nuclear bill  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Three Ohio companies are investing in hydrogen fuel cell passenger vehicles even as the U.S. market for electric vehicles continues to grow. Each has an innovative approach to the chicken-and-egg problem of having fuel available when and where drivers need it.

The Ohio companies’ focus on fuel cell passenger vehicles is unique nationwide, especially for a state that doesn’t yet have any public hydrogen fueling stations. California, where almost all of the country’s hydrogen fuel cell cars are registered, still has fewer than 60 public stations. 

“When we see hydrogen transportation deployment projects, it’s really more on the medium- and heavy-duty side,” said Mark Henning, a researcher at Cleveland State University’s Energy Policy Center at the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs.

A hydrogen car is essentially an electric vehicle with an onboard fuel cell providing electricity alongside a battery. General Motors first displayed a prototype for a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle back in the 1960s, but hydrogen cars weren’t available to U.S. consumers until leases for the 2015 Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell began, with sales of the Toyota Mirai starting that fall. 

Hydrogen car sales have been essentially limited to California, where state policy and public funding supported the development of some public fueling stations. Since then, only about 18,000 fuel cell cars have been sold in the U.S.

Yet Ohio companies have been working on hydrogen energy for more than two decades. The state trade association, the Ohio Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Coalition, traces its history back to 2003. 

If successful, the current efforts could eventually provide another option for switching away from gasoline-powered cars. While electric vehicles are comparable in price, hydrogen cars can be refueled quickly — assuming the infrastructure is available — and offer more consistent range in cold weather. But much could hinge on how quickly hydrogen infrastructure develops, as well as how quickly and effectively plug-in electric vehicle makers deal with their own range and charging challenges.

One example of the desire for hydrogen vehicle alternatives comes from DLZ, an engineering, architectural and project management company headquartered in Columbus with offices across the United States as well as in India and Costa Rica. The company has a fleet of about 250 vehicles across the Midwest, including electric vehicles. In 2022, it added six Hyundai hydrogen fuel cell cars for use by professionals from its Columbus office.

“The hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have a lot more consistent performance in range and durability,” especially in cold weather, said Ram Rajadhyaksha, DLZ’s executive vice president. The range for the cars is sufficient for round trips the office’s professionals make to site locations around the state, he explained at the Ohio Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Coalition symposium in North Canton last month.

Hydrogen fuel cell cars aren’t sold in Ohio yet, so DLZ had its six Hyundai vehicles shipped from California to Columbus. Except for the fuel cells, dealers in Ohio can provide any necessary service the vehicles may need, Rajakhyasksha said.

The cars also need a regular source of hydrogen, so DLZ added its own. Its station in Columbus can generate about 20 kilograms of hydrogen per day, using electricity from a solar array atop a large building on company property. A net metering agreement lets DLZ sell any excess electricity from the array to the grid. 

Nonetheless, there were hurdles, including permitting, building codes, supply chain issues during the tail end of the pandemic, and even signage codes.

Made in Ohio

While California has been the country’s epicenter for fuel cell vehicles, Honda Motors is now producing the first American-made hybrid hydrogen vehicle at its Marysville plant in Ohio. Its 2025 CR-V e:FCEV model can go roughly 270 miles on a tank of hydrogen. There’s also a small electric battery which provides a driving range of about 30 miles. A 110-volt power outlet on the vehicle can run small home appliances or other equipment.

That range is about the same as Honda’s all-electric Prologue SUV, which also has a comparable list price. But the company believes there is room for both.

“It’s not one or the other,” said Dave Perzynski, assistant manager for hydrogen solutions business development at Honda, who also spoke at the Ohio Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Coalition symposium. “It’s using the right equipment at the right place at the right time.” The CR-V’s electric charging range is about right for his daily round-trip commute, he said, while the fuel cell offers flexibility for longer trips.

Honda’s goal is to achieve 100% decarbonization, Perzynski said. However, limits on local electric grids can make that difficult in some places. “If you can electrify it, if it works, then do that,” he said. “And once that stops working, then thank goodness we’ve been investing in hydrogen for the last 20 years, because there are places and times when you run out of power.”

As a practical matter, the Ohio-made cars’ initial market will be California. For other states, Honda is counting on others to build out the fueling infrastructure. 

“The only way we can do that is through a coalition,” Perzynski said. “We can’t build infrastructure alone.”

Building a network

Millennium Reign Energy in Dayton has a membership model to develop hydrogen infrastructure along with the demand for it. Its Emerald H2 network will help customers buy used fuel cell vehicles, while also providing access to hydrogen fueling stations designed and built by the company.

As the number of customers in an area grows, Millennium Reign Energy would swap out the fueling station for one with larger capacity. The smaller station would then go to another location. Access to the stations would be for members only, although members traveling outside their local area could use stations elsewhere.

“Our mission is to build the first transcontinental hydrogen highway,” said CEO Chris McWhinney as he explained the model at the fuel cell program last month. The company’s fueling stations are already operating at places outside the United States, as well as three private facilities in Ohio. The company plans to add its first Emerald H2 network stations in the Dayton area early next year.

The stations use electricity and water to make hydrogen, so using one with a nearby source of solar, wind, hydropower or geothermal energy can provide green energy, versus just moving emissions from tailpipes up to power plants, McWhinney said. That can also bring the cost for the hydrogen fuel down below that of gasoline, he suggested, as renewable electricity continues to get cheaper.

Hurdles ahead

Whether hydrogen-powered passenger vehicles are the best use for renewable energy remains questionable. A study published in Joule last August found battery-electric vehicles were roughly three times more efficient in using renewable electricity than fuel-cell vehicles.

“The battery-electric case is much more efficient than the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle,” said Greg Keoleian, co-director of the University of Michigan’s MI Hydrogen initiative, and one of the co-authors of the Joule study. Ideally, renewable energy will be used efficiently, given the limited amount on the grid now and the urgent need to decarbonize because of climate change, he said.

Battery electric cars also have a much bigger charging network, with nearly 70,000 stations nationwide, Keoleian noted. Cost is also an issue, he added, noting that hydrogen fuel in California currently costs about five times as much as gasoline would to go the same distance. 

Henning did note that one of Ohio’s public transit systems, SARTA, the Stark Area Regional Transit Authority, has had hydrogen buses as part of its fleet since 2016. Transit fleets also often need a handful of passenger vehicles, which might be able to use tbuses’ hydrogen fueling station while also qualifying for bulk discounts that may start with the acquisition of five or six vehicles, he said.

The Department of Energy’s recent push for hydrogen hubs might also play an indirect role, suggested Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy. None of the hub projects so far focus on light-duty vehicles, but infrastructure developed for other purposes could make it easier to develop fueling stations. In that case, the Ohio companies could be angling for a competitive advantage. 

Yet much remains unknown about whether the incoming Trump administration will continue incentives begun in the Biden administration, Henning said. The law’s tax credit can apply to fuel cell vehicles with final assembly in North America, which might apply to Honda’s hybrid car — if the Inflation Reduction Act continues.

“I do think there is an appetite and there is a customer base for fuel cell electric vehicles, and I can imagine different use cases where that makes more sense” than an all-electric car, said Grant Goodrich, executive director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western Reserve University. Multiple people in Northeast Ohio have expressed reluctance to buy an electric vehicle now, especially given the challenges of harsh winter weather.

Yet the infrastructure for electric vehicles is much farther ahead, and electric vehicle makers continue to work to improve performance. “Will the technology of battery and electric vehicles improve enough to stay ahead of FCEV adoption so that is able to keep that challenge at bay?” Goodrich asked.

Early last month, he would have put money on the EV makers to stay ahead. After hearing the presentations from Honda, Millenium Reign Energy and DLZ, he’s not so sure. 

“It’s not a done deal,” Goodrich said, noting that the hydrogen fueling experience also seems to be a more natural replacement for the habits customers have adopted as drivers of vehicles with internal combustion engines. “If it was to roll out faster, I think you could see some competition there.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify Greg Keoleian’s role.

Why Ohio companies are investing in hydrogen cars despite infrastructure issues is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Community and environmental justice advocates say the Biden administration is failing to deliver promised transparency and public engagement around its $7 billion clean hydrogen hub initiative.

“Engagement isn’t merely leading people into a process that’s going to happen with or without them,” said Tom Torres, hydrogen program director for the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit serving one of the regions where federally funded partnerships are trying to lay the groundwork for new local hydrogen economies. “It means meaningfully involving people in the decisions about the project.”

The U.S. Department of Energy announced funding in October 2023 for seven regional clean hydrogen hubs — clusters of interconnected projects meant to kickstart production of the fuel with little or no greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, the department has held online briefings and virtual listening sessions for each hub, but advocates say they are not getting the kind of information necessary to assess who will be impacted by the projects and how.

Torres and others say they want more than just dots on a map. They want to know how hydrogen will be produced, how it will be used, and how it will get to end users. For projects that depend on carbon capture, they want to know how and where the carbon will be captured, transported and stored. And once the specifics are known, they want a chance to have meaningful input on the final projects.

Spokespeople for the Department of Energy and regional hubs said the answers to those questions are still being worked out and that more engagement is on the horizon.  Advocates are increasingly frustrated and fear that community input will come too late to affect how the hubs are developed.

“It doesn’t make sense … on one hand to say there’s not enough on paper to tell the public about, but on the other hand there is enough to allocate almost $1 billion for these companies,” Torres said.

Are events just ‘checking a box’?

When burned as a fuel source, hydrogen does not emit carbon dioxide, but its production today almost always comes from fossil fuels. Some see a potential for hydrogen to replace natural gas in certain hard-to-electrify sectors such as industry or heavy duty transportation, but the benefits for addressing climate change hinge on whether it can be produced cleanly and at scale.

The Biden administration’s hydrogen hub program, part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, aims to ramp up production of hydrogen made with low-carbon energy, including renewables, nuclear power, and fossil fuels paired with carbon capture. 

“It is literally like building the natural gas infrastructure that we have all over the place again for hydrogen,” said Shawn Bennett, energy and resilience manager for Battelle, the project manager for the Appalachian Regional Hydrogen Hub, ARCH2, which includes projects for Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. A majority of its projects will use steam methane reforming to make hydrogen from natural gas, along with carbon capture and storage. Other projects in the hub plan to make hydrogen from waste gases or from electrolysis, which uses energy to split water molecules. 

In May, dozens of groups urged the Department of Energy to suspend funding discussions for the ARCH2 project until the public receives detailed information beyond general maps and short project descriptions. On July 31 the Department of Energy formally committed the first $30 million of federal funding to ARCH2, with a total of up to $925 million to be spent over the next decade or so.

Last month, the Department of Energy committed up to $1 billion for the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen, MachH2, which spans Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Iowa and plans to produce hydrogen from a mix of nuclear power, wind energy and natural gas. The department will hold a December 9 briefing on MachH2.

In response to the Energy News Network’s questions about community groups’ complaints about a lack of outreach, a Department of Energy spokesperson provided a statement saying it “has been actively engaged with these communities in support of the economic playbook” of the Biden-Harris administration.

The ARCH2 project held a community outreach session in West Virginia in November, and additional meetings will be held in Ohio and Pennsylvania early next year, Bennett said. Some community group members protested outside at the West Virginia session but then came inside for a good discussion, he added.

Torres said there was no general presentation at the West Virginia meeting, and company representatives were present for only a handful of the hub’s projects. Even then, project information was still sparse. 

“It wasn’t an opportunity for people’s voices to be heard,” he said. “What is the value of these events other than checking a box for these companies?”

Advocacy groups focusing on the MachH2 project said months went by without getting updates or details. Then last month, they got less than 24 hours’ notice for a briefing with general descriptions about the MachH2 hub projects.

During that session, representatives for the Department of Energy said a decision on the hub’s funding commitment would come soon, “probably next week sometime,” said Susan Thomas, the legislative and policy director and communications manager for Just Transition Northwest Indiana. Minutes after the November 20 session ended, the Department of Energy announced the MachH2 funding commitment. 

“Our jaws were on the table,” Thomas said.

Details remain to be worked out

Groups have been trying to get answers from the Department of Energy for more than a year, said Chris Chyung, executive director of Indiana Conservation Voters. In his view, the agency’s approach “is just flouting the law.” According to the Department of Energy’s website, engagement with communities and labor is a key principle required in hubs’ community benefits plans, which are part of hubs’ contractual obligations for funding.

Community groups learned in the November 20 briefing that the MachH2 community engagement would not address concerns related to any pipelines associated with the hub. Instead, those would be handled by a separate office within the Department of Energy. 

But a pipeline for northwestern Indiana “is absolutely part and parcel of [a] dirty hydrogen project that is part of MachH2,” and the community should get a say on it, said Lauren Piette, an attorney with Earthjustice, which does not consider hydrogen made with natural gas to be climate-friendly, even with carbon capture.

The Department of Energy spokesperson did not respond to the Energy News Network’s question about how community benefits for hub projects can fully be assessed if they don’t include consideration of issues and input related to necessary pipelines.

Representatives of the MachH2 and ARCH2 hubs who spoke at an Ohio Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Consortium program last month said they couldn’t practically engage in community outreach until funding commitments had been negotiated with the Department of Energy. Until then, it wasn’t certain whether each hub would move forward.

Also, as a practical matter, “there was no budget for these things,” Bennett said. Details for each hub’s projects are still being worked out, and ARCH2 is still trying to add additional project partners.

Even then, details for projects won’t be finalized until review under the National Environmental Policy Act, according to Neil Banwart, who is the chief integration officer for the MachH2 hub and also the managing director for hydrogen at Energy Systems Network. 

“It’s not a certainty that all of the projects will get built in the locations that we shared on a map,” he said.

Chyung said he felt the comments about funding were “a complete dodge on behalf of these extremely wealthy national corporations that have said since 2023 they were eager to get started on community outreach.”

Advocates frustrated by lack of transparency, engagement on regional hydrogen hub projects is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A successful regional collaboration to secure federal Inflation Reduction Act money in northeast Ohio has inspired a new, ongoing effort to help cities, counties, utilities and community groups coordinate on clean energy.

Three Cleveland-area foundations last month announced the launch of Power Up Local, which aims to play both a matchmaker and wedding planner role on large-scale, regional clean energy developments. The initiative plans to help connect potential partners, maximize projects’ community benefits, and facilitate joint funding opportunities such as federal grants, tax incentives, or green bank loans.

“This is really looking for the larger, more ambitious stakeholder projects that have direct stakeholder benefits,” said Daniel Gray, Power Up Local’s executive director. A big emphasis will be on assembling groups who “might not have worked with each other originally or understood where there’s an overlap” between clean energy and other goals.

The initiative could offer a new path for local leaders to advance in a place where state government remains hostile to clean energy. The continued availability of federal funding is in question following former President Donald Trump’s reelection, but Gray and others said they are confident some form of federal support for clean energy will remain during his second term.

The idea for Power Up Local grew out of collaboration among Cuyahoga County, the cities of Cleveland and Painesville, and other organizations on a $129 million grant application under the federal Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program. The application was among those awarded funding in July. It includes money for closing a coal plant and building multiple solar arrays, including on four closed landfills.

Beyond reducing pollution, the project will help lower electricity costs and generate revenue. Some of that will in turn aid in conservation efforts for the West Creek Conservancy, including lakeside access for residents in Lake County. Gray did some work on the project as director of local strategies for the Citizens Utility Board of Ohio, and local philanthropic support also helped in assembling the grant application.

The Cleveland Foundation, George Gund Foundation and the Fund for Our Economic Future are providing initial funding for Power Up Local. Initially, the program’s three full-time employees are being housed under Fund for Our Economic Future, with a goal of spinning it out as an independent nonprofit by 2027. 

The George Gund Foundation also provides funding to the Energy News Network. Like other donors, it has no oversight or input into the editorial process and may not influence stories.

Gray said Power Up Local will help stakeholders think bigger and more broadly about projects. For example, a project to redevelop a former industrial site may be able to help bring in other properties from a land bank or other group, potentially expanding into an economic redevelopment district that might support a microgrid, he suggested.

“We can add efficiency to projects, both financially and timewise,” Gray said.

Power Up Local will be a resource for organizations that want to add clean energy to a project but may not have the time or bandwidth to figure out how to do it. “They don’t necessarily know how to engage the marketplace,” Gray said.

And when it comes to funding, competitive grants will just be part of the story. A range of other credits or incentives can also help bring more clean energy. That raised a question, said Stephen Love, program director for environmental initiatives at the Cleveland Foundation: “What would it look like at scale beyond just the competitive grants to really unlock the whole scale of federal resources?”

While Power Up Local will work on clean energy projects, those projects must still be “net-neutral or revenue-positive” in order to promote economic development, Gray said. “We’re looking to develop as much community benefit as possible.”

Those benefits can come from lower electricity rates for people with high energy burdens, health benefits from lower pollution, job opportunities, conservation, access to parks, redevelopment of properties to attract businesses, and so on.

“This is about economic development. This is about creating economic opportunity in our communities,” said Love. As he sees it, clean energy can help drive that development.

Uncertainties ahead

No one knows what Trump’s presidential victory will mean for federal clean energy funding, but advocates are confident some funding will still be available.

“There are still grants to go after, and will likely still be grants to go after in the future,” Gray said. A repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law would take time, and much of the grant funding has flowed to districts that supported Trump in 2020.

Even if agencies under Trump stopped carrying out the law, “I don’t think the bulk of the IRA direct credits are going to go away,” Gray said. He noted that Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Bainbridge Township) is among 18 members of Congress who wrote to House Speaker Mike Johnson this summer to support continuation of the energy tax credits.

Atlas Public Policy’s Climate Portal Program estimates those tax credits could exceed a quarter of a trillion dollars, with nearly another $250 billion of potential credits under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Those credits can serve as refunds for nonprofits and local governments, which is how sewage treatment authorities in Columbus and Cincinnati plan to offset big chunks of the costs for biogas plants at two of their wastewater treatment facilities.

Financing opportunities will also be available from green banks, Gray said. Commercial banks also are looking to expand their portfolios for financing clean energy projects as part of corporate sustainability goals, he noted.

Power A Clean Future Ohio has already been working for several years to help its 50 local government members find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, based on their individual interests and priorities. Executive Director Joe Flarida said Power Up Local’s work will be a welcome complement to its ongoing work. 

“It just underscores the huge needs we have in the state of Ohio to invest locally and ensure that our local leaders and local governments have all the resources they need to do this work efficiently,” he said.

In Flarida’s view, an anti-climate approach by the incoming Trump administration “is also an anti-jobs approach.” And even if the federal government no longer treats climate change as a key priority, “that doesn’t change the reality that this is an issue we have to address head on,” he said.

Gray encourages local governments and other organizations with ideas for projects to reach out in the coming weeks and months.

“Now is the time to start thinking about what might be possible,” he said.

Ohio program wants to play matchmaker and wedding planner for clean energy collaborations is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to finalize more than $200 million in grant funding in the coming weeks to accelerate the clean energy transition at three Great Lakes shipping ports.

The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority, and the Illinois International Port District were each selected for grants last month under the Biden administration’s Clean Ports Program.

The U.S. EPA said it intends to finalize grant agreements by December or January. That action will obligate the federal government to pay roughly $3 billion in grants under the program, even if President-elect Donald Trump or the next Congress tries to repeal or block further action under the Inflation Reduction Act.

The $94 million grant announced for the Cleveland port is the largest it has ever received and will help it build on work that’s already underway to electrify and decarbonize its infrastructure. 

“It puts us at the forefront of decarbonization,” said William Friedman, president and chief executive officer of Cleveland’s port authority. “Now we’ll be able to start figuring out what’s the phase-in and then how do we move forward with the next round.”

The Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority will get approximately $25 million for solar panels, charging infrastructure and electric cargo handling equipment, and another $95 million will go to the Illinois EPA for solar, battery storage and hydrogen-related investments at the Illinois International Port District serving greater Chicago.

The largest share of grants will go to ports along the East and West coasts. “But the program is also intended to set the foundation for transitioning the entire port industry to zero emissions,” said Jennifer Macedonia, a deputy assistant administrator for U.S. EPA. “And there are important communities around many of our inland ports as well.”

The shipping industry accounts for roughly 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. While the bulk of that is from ships themselves, port operations typically rely on diesel power for most of their energy. And ships often burn fuel to power equipment even while they’re in port.

The EPA’s review process included ensuring that selected projects can achieve or exceed goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as other pollution that can affect nearby communities, said U.S. EPA Administrator Michael Regan. Those criteria air pollutants are ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

The work is especially important for Ohio, which has lagged other Midwest states and regions in deploying strategies to reduce greenhouse gases, said Valerie Katz, deputy director for Cuyahoga Green Energy. “Our regional decarbonization efforts will reduce environmental exposure to toxic air pollutants for downstream Ohio communities.”

Funding for the Port of Cleveland will encompass work for electric cargo-handling equipment and vessels that serve the port, along with solar generation and battery storage, charging infrastructure and shore power for vessels. Project partners include Logistec USA, the commercial operator for day-to-day operations, as well as the Great Lakes Towing Company, which will build two electric tug boats.

Decarbonization is a “competitive advantage that will attract more shipping volume to our port,” said Baiju Shah, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. “Companies are striving to reduce their environmental footprints through their operations and value chains,” including Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions. “In addition, electrifying the port operations supports our region’s clean air efforts.”

That’s especially important given the port’s location near the downtown lakefront and riverfront areas, Shah said. Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River are the focus for several waterfront development projects aimed at drawing more business and visitors to Cleveland.  

Funding for the Port of Detroit will go toward electric cargo-handling equipment, some vessels and railcar movers, along with charging infrastructure and solar generation. Part of the money also will be used to develop a roadmap for adding EV and hydrogen fueling infrastructure. The Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority is part of the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen, or MachH2, which was selected last year for $1 billion in Department of Energy funding for a hydrogen hub.

Funding for the Illinois International Port District will cover a variety of projects for its three ports, including hydrogen fueling infrastructure, solar energy and battery storage, and hydrogen and electric cargo handling equipment. Hydrogen and electric locomotives also are on EPA’s program selections list. The Illinois EPA is the lead partner for the grant work.

Like its counterpart in Cleveland, the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority had already begun working on plans to move to cleaner energy sources for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. But zero-emissions equipment to move cargo is new in the U.S. shipping industry and is still generally more expensive than fossil-fueled counterparts.

“What’s great about the EPA grant is that it helps these businesses make the decision to choose this cleaner technology,” said Mark Schrupp, executive director for the Detroit port authority. Over time, costs for such equipment should come down, but the grants will help launch market growth.

Various projects among the 55 selected for grants last month have planning components and provisions for community engagement or workforce development. Planning work on emissions inventories can position other ports to move ahead with clean energy in the future, Macedonia said.

The U.S. EPA plans to move ahead swiftly to finalize grant agreements, which will have the effect of protecting the funds from a possible clawback under Trump or the next Congress.

“We will be awarding the grants in December of 2024 and January of 2025… so that money will be obligated on or before the end of this administration,” Regan said. Depending on the projects, implementation will occur over the next three to four years.

In Cleveland, that means a big chunk of work under the new grant will be taking place even as renovation of the Port of Cleveland’s Warehouse A and electrical work take place under its current projects.

“We’ll have to throw a lot here at the engineers and construction project management people to figure this out,” Friedman said. Yet the timing means it will be that much sooner for the port to move to zero emissions for its own operations.

Great Lakes ports will get a share of U.S. EPA funding to move shipping off fossil fuels is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Work headed by an Ohio waste-to-energy company to make plastic from biodigester byproducts is among seven projects recently selected for federal grants to develop new ways to use captured carbon dioxide. 

The grants aim to advance the federal government’s goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in order to address ongoing climate change. 

Quasar Energy Group, headquartered south of Cleveland in Independence, designs and builds anaerobic digesters, in which bacteria break down manure, food waste, or other organic materials. Methane is the systems’ main gas output and can be used to power generators or heat buildings, among other uses. 

But anaerobic digesters also produce carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas which has fewer commercial uses. Customers today include fertilizer manufacturers, oil and gas companies, and food and beverage makers. But those markets are tiny compared to the amount of CO₂ scientists think will need to be removed from industrial emissions, or even pulled from the atmosphere, to deal with climate change. 

There’s a limit to how much carbon dioxide will be able to be stored in the ground, and community opposition to pipelines is another barrier to Midwest carbon capture plans. Using the carbon in products — such as cement or plastics — can be a useful alternative, especially if it displaces other fossil fuel inputs. 

On Oct. 9, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management announced funding for seven projects aimed at commercializing new approaches to incorporating carbon dioxide into products. The selections are aimed at hard-to-decarbonize sectors, said Ian Rowe, division director for carbon dioxide conversion at DOE’s office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. 

“There’s not going to be a non-carbon solution for those needs in the future, but we should make them from more sustainable forms of carbon,” Rowe said. “And carbon dioxide represents a feedstock that you can use.”

How the process works

Ohio is already a leader in plastics production that relies heavily on the fossil fuel industry. Hundreds of companies across the state play a role in manufacturing or the supply chain. And midstream processing provides a ready supply of natural gas feedstocks from the Utica shale play.

Quasar Energy’s team designed its process for making plastic so it will work well with biodigesters. Basically, the project will use lipids from algae as a feedstock for a type of polyurethane. Liquid effluent from the biodigester could help grow the algae and supply nutrients for it, such as nitrogen and phosphorus.

Carbon dioxide from the biogester’s gas would be another ingredient in the process. The project team estimates the process could cut carbon dioxide emissions at least 25%, compared to current technology for making the plastic.

The process already works on a bench-scale level in the lab, said Tao Dong, a chemical engineer with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, who is also working on the project. Other team members named in the group’s grant application to DOE include Caixia “Ellen” Wan at the University of Missouri, Xumeng Ge at Quasar, and Ashton Zeller, director of research at Algix.

Costs are an important factor for the Quasar team’s project or any other products aimed at displacing those made from fossil fuel sources. Those costs include expenses for “cleaning up” the biodigester gas to separate methane from carbon dioxide. But a chunk of that expense also can be allocated to the separated methane, which has its own value for energy, either for on-site use or for sale for use elsewhere. 

In other words, using the gas for making the plastic and for energy helps the economics for both uses, versus just flaring the gas into the atmosphere.

“Our process can be cost-effective,” said Yebo Li, Quasar’s chief innovation and science officer. 

The plastic made from the process also has an advantage from being a non-isocyanate polyurethane, said Mel Kurtz, president of Quasar. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration links isocyanates to various health problems, and some are potential carcinogens. So, a polyurethane plastic that doesn’t have them should reduce risks for workers at factories who would then use the material to manufacture products, such as shoes or other items.

“If [farms] can add another revenue stream, that can improve the economics” for biodigesters on farms, said Andy Olsen, a senior policy advocate for the Environmental Law & Policy Center, whose work focuses on energy issues relating to agriculture and is not part of the project team. 

It’s also important to make sure staff are properly trained to use and maintain the equipment properly, Olsen added, noting potential problems with leaked gases. Others question whether emissions offsets from some biodigesters have been overstated.

Next steps

The Quasar project team still faces hurdles. Work under the grant will focus on identifying and addressing risks so the technology can be scaled up.

One challenge will be maintaining algae ponds over time to provide the lipids for the process. Another will be optimizing the process for making them into small chemical building blocks called monomers and then assembling them into polymers, which are the plastic. Maintaining the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over time also will be important.

Other Midwest grant recipients include LanzaTech, an Illinois sustainable fuels company, and Washington University in St. Louis, which will develop a low-carbon process to convert carbon dioxide to high-quality carbon nanotubes. Those will be tested for use as anodes for lithium-ion batteries.

Whether these and other carbon management projects can scale up quickly enough for the United States to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 is a big question, said Rowe at DOE.

The energy source for the production process will also make a big difference, Rowe said. Algae can make their own food with carbon dioxide and sunlight. But it takes energy to maintain the ponds throughout the year. The equipment to process the algae and then make the lipids and biodigesters’ carbon dioxide into polyurethane also needs energy.

“Carbon management strategies go hand in hand with an increased deployment of cheap clean electricity. So, a lot of these won’t work without the other,” Rowe said. On the flip side, “if that energy does not come from clean sources, you’ve just produced something that is worse for the environment than if you dug it up and just used fossil carbon.” 

Where will captured carbon go? Ohio company among those seeking to embed it in new products is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Project 2025, a policy blueprint created by allies of former President Donald Trump, would increase Ohio households’ annual energy spending and cost the state tens of thousands of jobs by 2030 compared to a continuation of current federal law and policies, a new analysis finds.

Ending federal spending on climate mitigation, as Trump has pledged to do, would cost jobs along with savings from energy efficiency and reduced dependence on fossil fuels, explained Robbie Orvis, senior director for modeling and analysis at Energy Innovation, which released the analysis last week. 

And those losses would not be offset by expanded development of oil and natural gas, the report finds. 

Analyses for Ohio and 47 other states follow up on a nationwide forecast Energy Innovation prepared this summer, which projected a loss of 1.7 million jobs and billions in added energy spending for U.S. households under Project 2025 compared to current law and policies. Early deaths and greenhouse gas emissions that drive human-caused climate change would also increase, Energy Innovation reported.

Project 2025 bills itself as a “playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new Administration.” Although Trump’s campaign has tried to distance itself from the work by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups, many of the authors played a role in his administration. The plan is also promoted by prominent backers of his campaign.

Among other things, Project 2025 refers to climate change as merely a “perceived threat.” The playbook calls for increased oil and gas drilling, repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, reduced regulatory oversight on environmental matters, an end to various equity programs and more. 

Approximately $10.5 billion in new investments and nearly 13,900 jobs have been announced for Ohio under the Inflation Reduction Act through the end of July, according to a Climate Power report released this summer, placing Ohio among the top 10 states for job gains.

“We think it’s important to be able to bring some numbers to this conversation,” Orvis said.

Projected impacts

Energy Innovation’s forecast for Ohio projects that by 2030, Project 2025 would add $150 per year to households’ spending for energy, including electricity, heating and transportation. By 2035, that number would climb to more than $260 per year. 

Among other things, slashing energy efficiency programs for buildings and other sources of greenhouse gases would result in higher energy usage — and bills. Gutting programs to incentivize electric vehicles and relaxing fuel efficiency requirements would also result in more fossil fuel use than would otherwise be the case, Orvis explained. Extra expenses from increased energy usage would “more than offset” lower prices per unit for fuel that might result from expanded oil and gas development, the analysis said.

Ohio would also have roughly 21,200 fewer jobs by 2030 and that figure could double by 2035 if Project 2025 goes ahead, Energy Innovation calculated. That includes offsets from sectors that might grow under the conservative blueprint, including the oil and gas industry, Orvis said. 

Those offsetting job gains wouldn’t necessarily be filled by local workers. A large share of the direct jobs in oil and gas development for Ohio’s top-producing counties for natural gas have been held by crews that came in from elsewhere and left afterward. The Ohio River Valley Institute noted that and other factors in its work showing that Appalachian petroleum-producing counties have lagged economically.

In contrast, 70% of a solar project’s workforce must be Ohio residents if a developer and communities want to use a property-tax alternative that can give companies a break in a project’s early years but provide more revenue for counties on a steady basis over the life of a project. Local skilled workers also especially benefit from energy efficiency work.

With roughly $4.9 billion less in clean energy investments, Ohio’s greenhouse gas emissions would climb, the Energy Innovations analysis found. Sources in the state would emit roughly 9 million more metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2030, compared to what they would under current federal policies. That figure would exceed 32 million metric tons in 2035. That’s comparable to the 2023 emissions from Ohio’s four largest coal plants, according to EPA data. 

Ohio is actually in the lower half of states for projected job losses and increased energy costs under the Project 2025 scenario, although it is among the top half for increased greenhouse gas emissions, Orvis said. What stood out most for him was the uniformity among all of the lower 48 states for which his team ran the numbers on Project 2025.

“Every state we looked at — every single one — there are net job losses and net GDP losses,” Orvis said.

Picking ‘winners and losers’

“It didn’t surprise me that you’re going to see costs increase” under Project 2025, along with job losses and impacts on gross domestic product, said Neil Waggoner, Midwest manager for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “The IRA and the infrastructure bill were not just to deal with climate and this immense crisis we all face, but also to do it in a way that supports American innovation, growth and the economy.”

In contrast, Project 2025 would “push forward an agenda that chooses winners and losers,” Waggoner said. “That’s fundamentally against innovation and growth and capitalism.” He also criticized Project 2025’s failure to consider the nuances of energy policy and forecast its impacts into the future.

“The end result is we’re going to pay more, and it’s going to have really bad impacts on the economy,” Waggoner said.

Uncertainty about federal rules on cross-state pollution made it difficult to calculate state-specific health impacts of Project 2025, Orvis said. The nationwide analysis projected we would see nearly 6,000 early deaths per year through 2030, compared to current policies. By 2050, that difference would be about 25,000 more early deaths each year under Project 2025 policies.

The work also didn’t drill down into which groups would be most affected by job losses, higher energy costs and so forth. But health impacts from pollution, higher energy burdens and higher poverty rates are already disproportionately high for historically underinvested communities.

“The impacts won’t be felt evenly across the board” if Project 2025 goes into effect, said Bishop Marcia Dinkins, founder of the Black Appalachian Coalition. “The tradeoff is always at the expense of marginalized people and people who are on fixed incomes.”

For people who are already struggling with high energy burdens and other issues, Project 2025 would be “a double economic blow,” Dinkins said. Prospects for health and the environment would also suffer, particularly given Ohio’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels and petrochemicals, she added.

“Without solutions around clean energy, it’s just going to make matters worse,” Dinkins said.

Project 2025 will raise Ohioans’ energy costs and cost the state jobs, report says is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This fall’s election for three seats on the Supreme Court of Ohio is expected to play a pivotal role in deciding the state’s direction on renewable energy, utility accountability and other energy issues.

In addition to deciding appeals from lower courts dealing with energy and other topics, the seven-member Supreme Court of Ohio hears all challenges to cases from the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and Ohio Power Siting Board. The commission broadly decides what utilities can do and how much they can charge ratepayers, while the siting board approves where energy generation and other infrastructure get built.

Judicial candidates do not campaign on issues, so voters won’t have a full picture of how they are likely to rule on energy-related cases. However, endorsements, campaign contributions, and a handful of decisions by incumbents offer some clues. 

The Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund has endorsed all three Democratic candidates — Michael Donnelly, Melody Stewart, and Lisa Forbes. Donnelly and Stewart are incumbents seeking another six-year term. Forbes is an appellate judge in Cuyahoga County, which includes much of greater Cleveland.

Meanwhile, the Ohio Oil and Gas Association and NiSource have given money to the campaigns of all three Republicans —Joseph Deters, Dan Hawkins, and Megan Shanahan. American Electric Power also gave money for Shanahan’s and Deters’ campaigns, data compiled by Open Secrets show. 

Deters was appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine last year to fill a partial term and is challenging Stewart for a full term. Hawkins and Shanahan are trial court judges in Franklin and Hamilton Counties, respectively. 

Ideally, party jurisdiction should not matter when candidates run for judicial office, said Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, a law professor at Cleveland State University. And some past energy rulings have been unanimous, including a 2021 ruling reversing a PUCO decision favoring a FirstEnergy affiliate while Sam Randazzo was chair. 

Starting in 2022, however, a new state law added party affiliations on fall election ballots for appellate court judges. Republicans hold a 4-3 majority on the Ohio Supreme Court, but that balance could flip depending on the outcome of this election.

These are some of the energy issues the new court is likely to take up in the coming years:

Who gets the biggest say in where solar farms are built?

The Ohio Supreme Court still has to hear oral arguments and then decide solar farm siting cases for the Kingwood Solar and Birch Solar projects. Supporters of the projects argue the Ohio Power Siting Board acted unlawfully by treating the volume of local opposition as a deciding factor, rather than considering whether the substance of the objections outweighed other factors supporting the projects.

“How the judges approach those questions is going to have a big impact on how renewable energy projects move forward in this state into the future,” said Chris Tavenor, an attorney speaking on behalf of the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund.

If the court sides with the siting board, it could give local opposition groups more sway in project siting than a 2021 law already grants to county governments. The result could further empower groups with links to fossil fuel interests, which sometimes stoke fears about renewable power to build opposition.

The Kingwood case docket includes a friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of the Ohio Senate’s Republican majority, which was written as if it came from the whole Ohio Senate. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost then moved to strike a separate brief filed on behalf of the seven Democrats in support of the project. An August 7 ruling denied Yost’s motion, but Deters dissented and would have denied the Democratic Caucus a say in the case.

How long can regulators make developers wait for decisions?

Another case, Moraine, presents ongoing questions about the timing of Supreme Court appeals. In Moraine, the court let an energy consulting company appeal several PUCO decisions about out-of-state renewable energy credits, in essence taking the commission to task for delays in deciding the company’s request for it to reconsider the rulings. 

The court’s August 27 procedural ruling said the PUCO can’t avoid its legal duty to rule on rehearing requests within 30 days by giving itself more time. Donnelly agreed with the ruling, Stewart dissented, and Deters didn’t take part.

On one hand, the ruling should speed up renewable energy cases and maybe let developers get projects built more quickly. The ruling should also shorten how long consumers may have to pay contested charges that may ultimately be ruled unlawful.

On the other hand, the ruling on timing represents a shift in the law. The Ohio Power Siting Board’s arguments in an earlier Kingwood Solar appeal were very similar to those the PUCO made in the Moraine case. Yet in September 2023, six judges, including Donnelly, Stewart and Deters, agreed to dismiss the earlier Kingwood Solar case.

On September 4, the PUCO held the new Moraine ruling means rehearing requests in other cases were denied by law and suggested the time for any appeal has passed. An October 2 ruling repeated that position. 

“Instead of embracing the court’s pro-consumer ruling, the PUCO is undermining it,” said Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis.

Will utility customers ever get refunds for unlawful riders?

An AES Ohio case aims to block more than $150 million in refunds for allegedly unlawful “stability charges” that the PUCO said would be refundable “to the extent permitted by law.” The utility had gone back to the old subsidy rider after a later one was ruled unlawful. 

AES is also trying to use the August 27 Moraine ruling to say the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel missed its opportunity to appeal in any event. 

“AES’s latest move to avoid giving refunds to its 500,000 consumers should meet with sound defeat,” Willis said. “To protect consumers, the court should proceed to oral argument and allow justice to run its course.”

The case will test the limits of language about refunds in a 2019 case, which held FirstEnergy’s so-called distribution modernization rider was unlawful. Donnelly’s opinion there said no refund was available for the money already paid, because the PUCO hadn’t made the rider refundable. Stewart was among the judges who agreed.

What penalties will FirstEnergy face for its role in Ohio’s HB 6 scandal?

A review of those rider charges is now among four FirstEnergy cases before the PUCO relating to the ongoing House Bill 6 corruption scandal. An evidentiary hearing on another of the cases dealing with corporate separation is set to start this month. The rider review and the other three cases will likely have hearings next year.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. Charges in at least one case may be refundable through future bill adjustments. And even if consumers don’t get refunds in the other cases, FirstEnergy could be liable for penalties. So, some or all of the cases will likely end up at the Ohio Supreme Court.

Deters recused himself from a case last year in which the court let the Ohio Attorney General’s office seize assets of former PUCO chair Sam Randazzo. Although the notice didn’t say why, Deters previously worked with lobbyist Matt Borges, who was convicted last year on federal criminal charges related to HB 6. Deters also has sat out several appeals from the PUCO, where his brother is a commissioner. 

Will drilling continue to be allowed under state parks and wildlife areas?

Natural gas cases could also end up at the Ohio Supreme Court. One case challenges the constitutionality of a 2023 law that labeled natural gas “green energy” and jump started regulatory action to allow drilling and fracking under state parks and wildlife areas. Briefing ended last year. The trial court has not yet made its decision.

Another case seeks to challenge instances in which the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission decided to solicit bids to lease areas under specific state parks and wildlife areas for drilling and fracking. The trial court dismissed the appeals in February. The case is currently on appeal.

Whether either case goes to the Ohio Supreme Court isn’t a foregone conclusion. Much will depend on how the courts rule, said Megan Hunter, an attorney with Earthjustice who represents several environmental groups in the cases.

Judging the judges

Common Cause encourages voters to Judge the Ads for court candidates with a skeptical eye. Watch for emotional framing. And question claims that may be inaccurate or taken out of context. Also note which groups pay for those ads, Common Cause advises: Question who is behind those groups and what they may stand to gain.

Just as importantly, listen carefully to the candidates. “Focus on judges who are talking about principles of fairness and upholding our democracy as an important aspect of how our state works,” Tavenor said.

“And really just pay attention to whether or not the judges are talking in partisan language versus nonpartisan language,” he added. “Our judges really shouldn’t be focused on the goals of political parties.”

Ohio high court races will decide future of state’s energy transition and utility fairness is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The driest summer in more than a decade prompted an Ohio watershed district this summer to take the unprecedented step of limiting the use of water for oil and gas fracking.

The restrictions applied only to Atwood Lake, a popular boating and fishing spot southeast of Canton that has experienced a foot and a half drop in water levels over the past few months of drought.

It’s a scenario some environmentalists anticipated years ago, saying that climate change will require state and local officials to more carefully regulate the use of water for oil and gas extraction.

“They’re not being proactive enough,” said Leatra Harper, director of the FreshWater Accountability Project, stressing that the lakes are public resources. “The obvious issue is there aren’t adequate protections.”

Hydraulic fracturing, as it’s more formally known, pumps millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals down into oil and gas wells. The process causes cracks in petroleum-bearing rock, and sand in the fluid props the cracks open. Oil and gas flows from the fractures into the well and up to the surface.

The process uses millions of gallons of water for each horizontally drilled well, and well pads built within the last 12 years often have six wells. The water can be recovered and recycled to some extent. Eventually, though, the water must be disposed of in underground injection wells. That step permanently removes it from the water cycle.

The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District manages ten lakes and four dry dams in southeastern Ohio for purposes of flood control, recreation and conservation. One of its biggest customers for water sales is the oil and gas industry.

“We’re not in a crisis situation by any stretch of the imagination, but this was just our balancing act to make sure we protect, as much as we can, all of our missions,” said Craig Butler, chief executive of the district. He estimated less than one inch of Atwood Lake’s decline can be attributed to oil- and gas-related withdrawals.

On August 28, the district curtailed water withdrawals by 75% from Atwood Lake. The following week, it curtailed withdrawals from the lake completely.

Lots of water

Under Ohio law, oil and gas drilling operations are generally allowed to withdraw from state waters an average of up to 2 million gallons per day in any 30-day period. Sixty million gallons would fill nearly 91 Olympic-sized swimming pools. 

While the total number of gallons sold is huge, it’s relatively small compared to the billions of gallons in the district’s lakes. Butler compared it to two or three sheets in a notebook.

“We’re really comfortable when we say it’s a negligible impact based on the size of our reservoirs,” Butler said.

Oil and gas companies pay a price for the water — around $3 per 1,000 gallons, according to Ted Auch, Midwest program director for FracTracker. He and other critics think the price should be higher.

“We charge as much as we can,” Butler answered, but if the district’s price gets too high, oil and gas companies can “stick their straw in” elsewhere, such as where a stream crosses private property. Then they may be able to suck out even more without a formal agreement with the watershed organization.

And because some of those sources flow into the district’s lakes, the effect on the district’s water resources would be largely the same, without the district getting revenue from the sales. Some of the funds from the oil and gas industry have paid for efforts to improve water quality and minimize flooding to improve the area’s resilience to climate change, Butler added.

The situation reflects a shortcoming in state law, said Melinda Zemper, a spokesperson for Save Ohio Parks.

“It is clear our state legislators ignore the depletion and contamination of our precious fresh drinking water used in the fracking process,” she said. “And there will always be another landowner who wants oil and gas revenue from leasing mineral rights or selling water flowing through his or her property.”

Operators recycle a lot of the water that’s withdrawn, and the fracking process has gotten more efficient over the years, said Mike Chadsey, a spokesperson for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.

Getting hard data on recycling is difficult, however. FracFocus, a data clearinghouse, has some data on the composition of fracking fluids, but reporting is voluntary.

According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, oil and gas ranks seventh out of its eight registered water use categories. The agency’s 2022 water withdrawals map shows those other categories include public water supplies, agriculture, utilities and other classifications.

Total water withdrawals for the oil and gas industry that year were about 5.17 billion gallons, according to data provided by Karina Cheung, an ODNR spokesperson. A 2024 U.S. Geological Survey report said peak withdrawals reached approximately 5.75 billion gallons in 2017.  

Looking ahead

Questions about future water use for fracking will remain after the current drought ends — possibly soon from the remnants of Hurricane Helene. 

The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District does a careful review of any company’s request for water withdrawals before a contract is signed, Butler said. Contracts also say water withdrawals can be curtailed if the district deems it necessary, as it did at Atwood Lake, he added.

Critics like Auch contend various data gaps should be filled to ensure more complete reporting. They also want any pre-withdrawal reviews to be more conservative and forward-looking.

Consideration of potential impacts should focus more on possible water-deficit years like this one, Auch said. Otherwise, “you are rapidly altering the savings bank of your watershed by depleting the resource that it has to carry over from year to year.”

Planning also should cover a longer time horizon, said Julie Weatherington-Rice, a hydrogeologist with Bennett and Williams Environmental Consultants in Columbus. Ohio might generally expect warmer, wetter and wilder weather as climate change continues.

Among other things, Ohio is seeing some intense storms, as well as periods of heavy rainfall. Those heavy rains might bump up the total yearly precipitation, but they don’t soak into the ground the way milder, more sustained rains do, Weatherington-Rice said. That could affect groundwater supplies for local areas, causing them to look for backup supplies, she said. And droughts can still occur, as this year shows.  

Water planning also should account for likely migration into Ohio as climate change has more severe impacts elsewhere, Auch said. “We need to start looking at water resources out 10, 15, 30 years.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the amount gas companies pay for water. It is around $3 per 1,000 gallons of water, not $3 per gallon.

Ohio drought renews worries about massive use of water for fracking is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A federal grant will help four of Ohio’s largest cities collaborate on new voluntary building performance standards and a resource hub to help commercial building owners save energy and cut emissions.

Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Dayton will use $10 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding to establish the Ohio High Performance Building Hub, which will connect building owners with technical guidance, financing solutions, incentives, training, and other support.

Clean energy advocates and city sustainability leaders hope the program will offer a new path forward in a state where buildings account for about one-fourth of greenhouse gas emissions but state lawmakers have gutted mandatory energy efficiency measures. The state ranked 44th in a recent state energy efficiency policy report card.

“All four of those cities have ambitious climate goals, and addressing existing buildings is a crucial part of that,” said Nat Ziegler, a program manager with Power a Clean Future Ohio, which is a partner on the grant. They expect lessons learned from the work and the hub can eventually help other cities and towns in Ohio and across the Midwest.

Buildings account for a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions in the four cities participating in the grant: greater than 60% for Cincinnati and from 50% to 55% for Cleveland, Columbus and Dayton. The new program will specifically target emissions from more than 421 million square feet of commercial building space among the four cities.

“This is a great way to really jump-start a lot of that work,” said Erin Beck, assistant director for Sustainable Columbus.

The hub could help building owners navigate funding under the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as through bonds issued by the Ohio Air Quality Development Agency or local port authorities or lending from green banks or more traditional financial institutions.  

Standards vs. codes

Existing building energy codes “apply primarily to new construction and major renovations, which is great. But most buildings already exist, right?” said Amanda Webb, an assistant professor of architectural engineering at the University of Cincinnati, which was the lead recipient of an earlier $2.9 million grant focused on developing technical guidance for the voluntary standards.

Work under both Department of Energy grants focuses on “coming up with a way to help really deliver the benefits of energy efficiency to existing buildings at scale,” Webb said.

The standards will differ from more general guidelines such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program, which largely emphasize new construction and a broader range of sustainability measures than energy use and emissions. 

Cities will use the technical guidance from the work by Webb’s group and results from outreach to develop standards, rather than codes. The difference is codes are mandatory, with penalties for violations, whereas standards are not.

“The approach that we’re taking with this is definitely much more of a carrot approach” than a stick, said Robert McCracken, who heads up energy management for the Office of Environment & Sustainability in Cincinnati, which is the lead partner on the project.

The reasons are largely legal, as well as political. Over the past decade, leadership in the Ohio General Assembly has generally opposed imposing requirements to cut pollution, and a bill for utilities to provide voluntary energy efficiency programs still has not passed.

As a legal matter, cities generally can’t adopt building codes stricter than those established by the Ohio Board of Building Standards. However, the board doesn’t have authority to set requirements for benchmarking emissions or performance standards for existing buildings. The cities’ grant application said the board confirmed that a delegation of authority won’t be needed, as long as they don’t adopt new construction codes.

Energy efficiency provides its own incentives for building owners, because “it saves money,” said Oliver Kroner, who heads up Cincinnati’s Office of Environment & Sustainability. “People are generally aligned with the [city’s] climate commitments. But there’s sometimes the gap with what you want to do and how to get there.”

Lower costs for building owners can also let them charge lower rents, which can attract tenants. “We frequently receive inquiries from companies who are considering relocating, and they’re interested in the climate effort here,” Kroner said.

Ziegler said many of their organization’s 50 local government members also have shown interest in getting help for cutting building emissions. The independent hub to be set up under the new grant will really help building owners with the “nuts and bolts” for meeting their city’s building performance standards, they said.

Columbus is the only one of the four cities with a benchmarking policy right now, and the plan calls for the others to adopt their own versions as well. Benchmarking will be key for letting the cities track progress in reducing energy use. Based on existing commercial building stock in each city, the team members estimate cutting energy use 45% by 2050, the grant application materials said.

Beck said the Columbus benchmarking program has “been very successful,” noting the city has worked with building owners to help them comply. Audits done as part of the process have also identified “low hanging fruit” for adding energy efficiency through LED lighting, thermostat adjustments and so on, she noted.

Equity issues

Equity concerns also factor into the choice of standards versus codes. Businesses in historically disinvested communities already face a variety of financial and other challenges. 

“We want this to be a benefit rather than yet another burden that’s imposed on them,” Ziegler said.

Webb’s team is also exploring how building performance standards could be tailored up front to address concerns about affordability. Possibilities could include a metric to reflect greater equity needs or measures to ensure tenants as well as owners benefit from savings.

“We have other grants that are focused on workforce development,” Kroner said, adding his hope that many people from underserved communities will be able to work in jobs to help buildings meet building performance standards once they’re adopted.

As work by Webb’s group continues, the four cities and others will gear up for outreach efforts and other work so they’re ready to adopt standards. “There’s going to be a lot of education and outreach in the beginning,” McCracken said.

Ohio cities to collaborate on voluntary program to help commercial buildings cut emissions is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The leader of a local anti-solar energy group admitted to Ohio regulators last week that a well-connected natural gas executive is among the group’s largest donors.

The testimony by Jared Yost, founder of Knox Smart Development, offered the fullest view yet of the group’s ties to fossil fuel interests, undercutting its claims to be a “grassroots” advocate for local farmers and other residents.

“It changes the story quite a bit,” said David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group that recently published a report on the fossil fuel industry’s long history of using money and misinformation to stoke local opposition to renewable energy projects.

Knox Smart Development emerged late last year as a high-profile local opponent of the proposed 120 megawatt Frasier Solar project, located near Mount Vernon, Ohio. Questions emerged about its funding source after it hosted a town hall meeting at a local theater with complimentary food and drinks for approximately 500 attendees.

Yost disclosed during an Ohio Power Siting Board hearing last week that one of its largest donors is Tom Rastin, the former vice president of Ariel Corporation, which makes compressors for the oil and gas industry. The Washington Post reported last year that Rastin is also a leader of The Empowerment Alliance, a dark money nonprofit that advocates for the natural gas industry.

Yost said he did not have knowledge about Rastin’s work with The Empowerment Alliance, but said the fossil fuel group provided “non-financial” resources to Knox Smart Development to help oppose the Frasier Solar project.

Yost denied being swayed by corporate interests and said his group has not received corporate funding. “The Empowerment Alliance has nothing to do with me or [Knox Smart Development],” he told the Energy News Network via email. “I have reached out to them and asked questions on a couple of occasions, as can anyone, and as I have done of others.”

Multiple links

When asked in his hearing testimony if Knox Smart Development was “funded by any individuals or entities having any interest or providing any goods or services to the fossil fuel industry,” Yost answered, “No, not directly to the best of my knowledge.”

On cross-examination, however, Yost admitted Rastin was one of the group’s largest funders. Yost is a former IT specialist at Ariel Corporation, and his work supported Rastin’s department. Rastin’s wife, Karen Buchwald Wright, is a former president and CEO of Ariel and continues as board chair. Her son Alex Wright succeeded her in 2021 as CEO.

A July 2024 report from the Energy and Policy Institute includes links to recently produced public records. A September 2023 email shows Rastin was slated to speak to the Ohio General Assembly’s Business First caucus in October. The email attached a copy of Rastin’s biography with The Empowerment Alliance logo on top.

Mitch Given, who was identified in a meeting with Ohio lawmakers last year as The Empowerment Alliance’s Ohio director, spoke at a Knox Smart Development town hall meeting last November. There he was introduced as someone who travels across the state to help farmers and others “find their voice” and push back against solar projects.

The emcee for that town hall event, Tom Whatman, is a chief strategist for Majority Strategies. The Empowerment Alliance’s Form 990 filing for 2023 shows it paid the political consulting firm more than $620,000 that year, making it the group’s highest paid contractor for five years in a row.

Yost last week also discussed a dinner meeting last summer about the Frasier Solar project where the attendees included Rastin, Given, Whatman, Ariel employee Trina Trainor, and Lanny Spaulding. Spaulding is listed as a contact person for The Empowerment Alliance on an Ohio lobbyist registration form. Yost’s dad and others also attended. Yost had earlier said he did not organize the meeting.

Yost denied being influenced by The Empowerment Alliance or other corporate interests.

“No one has ever tried to direct me in any way with my opposition to this project. I am nobody’s ‘puppet’,” Yost told the Energy News Network. “I am doing this for me, my family, my township, and my neighbors.” He also said it was “insulting that people try to question my intentions, integrity, and intelligence. Frankly, it hurts.”

Misinformation at work

Nolan Rutschilling, managing director of energy policy for the Ohio Environmental Council, said arguments presented by behind-the-scenes special interests can be more believable if they seem to come from a grassroots effort. 

“People trust their neighbors because they are often believed to not have any outside agenda other than the best interest of their community,” Rutschilling said. “Unfortunately, this allows misinformation to spread quickly, and communities have stopped renewable energy projects from moving forward.”

The stakes are significant, he said, because local public sentiment is among the factors the Ohio Power Siting Board considers in judging whether a project is in the public interest, along with statewide interests.

“If the fossil fuel industry wants to oppose solar projects, they should intervene in the open — not by amplifying misinformation in communities,” Rutschilling said.

“The Empowerment Alliance prefers to stoke fear in hopes of snuffing out perceived competition from clean, cheap, local renewable energy,” said Craig Adair, a vice president for Frasier Solar’s developer, Open Road Renewables. “As always, Frasier Solar stands ready and willing to address local residents’ legitimate concerns about potential impacts of solar development.”  

Statements at Knox Smart Development meetings and in ads have included multiple examples of misinformation. For example, Yost admitted during cross-examination he was unaware that a photo showing damaged solar panels was taken in St. Croix after a strong hurricane — a highly unlikely event in central Ohio. 

“This was intended to show what I believe could happen,” Yost said. 

Other examples include unsupported claims about solar panels and other components releasing toxic chemicals. Steve Goreham, a speaker at the group’s November 2023 town hall, made unsupported claims about climate change. Goreham also drew spurious correlations between electricity price rises and high levels of renewable energy in California and Texas. In fact, wildfires, extreme heat and transmission upgrades were the driving factors.

Misinformation was rife in opposition testimony people gave at three local public hearings held by the Ohio Power Siting Board in Knox County.

Half of more than 100 unique arguments made by project opponents at those hearings were not supported by the facts, said Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, a professor at Cleveland State University College of Law, in her August 22 expert testimony for the Ohio Environmental Council.

“In the aggregate, the arguments do not present credible or compelling opposition to the proposed project,” Robertson said.

Connections confirmed between ‘grassroots’ Ohio solar opposition and dark-money natural gas group is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The pair of 1950s-era coal plants bailed out under Ohio’s House Bill 6 law are likely to remain unprofitable even after a surge in grid operator payments to generators, experts say. 

The PJM Interconnection grid market makes capacity payments to line up power to meet expected demand in the years ahead. Aging, uneconomical coal plants are being retired at a time when data centers and manufacturers are starting to use more electricity, causing future power generation prices to rise.

But even record-high prices in PJM Interconnection’s recent capacity auction won’t cover the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies paid by ratepayers to cover Ohio utilities’ costs for the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation’s Kyger Creek and Clifty Creek power plants.

“Even with a super high price, OVEC is still going to be in the red,” said Neil Waggoner, Midwest manager for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

The ratepayer subsidies are a result of HB 6, the 2019 state law at the heart of the largest corruption scheme in Ohio’s history. Republican legislative leaders have blocked all efforts to repeal the coal subsidies from coming to a floor vote.

This year alone, ratepayers are on track to pay nearly $200 million to prop up the two plants, one of which is in Indiana. By 2030, total ratepayer costs from the bailout could exceed $1 billion, according to RunnerStone, a consultant for the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association.

Starting next summer, the payments for generators to be ready to supply electricity when PJM Interconnection needs it will jump to about nine times the current rate for most of the grid operator’s service region. 

“Put simply, the market pays participants for the promise to produce electricity when called upon by PJM,” said Daniel Lockwood, a spokesperson for the regional grid operator. An auction sets the levels for each year’s capacity payments, and the payments go to generators that bid the clearing price or less.

A spokesperson for the power plants did not directly answer the Energy News Network’s question about whether both cleared the latest PJM auction, although he described the auction results as “positive.”

“The auction results were a positive development for the OVEC plants and are more broadly a signal to the market that additional generation resources are needed in the PJM region,” said Scott Blake, a spokesperson for American Electric Power and Ohio Valley Electric Corp. While the HB 6 rider charges depend on multiple factors, the impact of the 2025/2026 capacity pricing “is expected to be positive for customers,” he said.

AEP is OVEC’s largest shareholder, along with other utility companies in Ohio and other states.

HB 6’s OVEC subsidies currently require Ohio’s residential utility customers to pay between $1.30 and $1.50 per month, depending on whether their utility is owned by AEP, AES Ohio, Duke Energy or FirstEnergy, according to PUCO data from spokesperson Brittany Waugaman. Businesses pay for the rider, too. The HB 6 rider’s net total costs last year were more than $148 million.

Doing the math

While capacity payments will reduce the OVEC plants’ total costs to Ohio ratepayers, the revenue won’t, in itself, make the plants profitable.

Expert testimony from a Michigan case last year found the OVEC plants would need capacity payments averaging about $418/MW-day for several years to become economical. Last month’s record-high price that will take effect next summer was about $270/MW-day.

Economic analyst Devi Glick of Synapse Energy Economics testified in the case on behalf of the Sierra Club.

“To massively oversimplify the economics of the OVEC plants, there are two categories of costs and two categories of revenues,” Glick told Energy News Network. “Costs are on one side of the equation and revenues on the other.”

Based on then-current projections for costs and energy market revenue, Glick calculated what the plants’ capacity revenues would have to be for the equation to balance out.

Several caveats would apply, Waggoner acknowledged, including any differences from last year to this year that could affect projected energy revenues. Nonetheless, he noted, a significant gap would remain.

Glick’s estimate of about $418 as a break-even capacity price for the OVEC plants is realistic and may even be conservative now, said John Seryak, managing partner for RunnerStone.

“PJM is no longer paying for a coal plant’s full power capacity anymore under new rules it created just prior to this capacity auction,” Seryak explained. “That could mean that OVEC needs even higher-priced capacity and energy to be profitable.”

“Future energy market prices, OVEC’s future coal costs, and OVEC’s environmental compliance costs will also be important factors determining the extent of its losses or profitability,” Seryak continued. “All that said, we do not anticipate OVEC operating at a profit without further price increases.”

Meeting energy demand

Blake emphasized the OVEC plants’ role as a “reliable generation resource for our customers and for our region,” adding that the HB 6 rider “ensures that customers in Ohio receive electricity from OVEC for what it costs to produce it and the funds are used to pay down debt with no proceeds going to shareholders.”

That’s not exactly correct, said attorney Kimberly Bojko at Carpenter Lipps, who represents the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association in cases at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. “Customers pay the cost to operate and run OVEC and the power produced from OVEC is then sold into the wholesale electric market,” she said. Any revenue offsets the costs of HB 6’s coal subsidy.

The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association also has disputed the use of the HB 6 rider to pay down the OVEC plants’ debt in cases before the PUCO.

“By using ratepayer funds to pay down its debt, AEP Ohio is essentially shifting its bad debt to the Ohio ratepayers,” Seryak said. “It’s akin to if a person forced their neighbor to pay for their mortgage payment.”

“Customers pay for more than just OVEC’s debt, though,” Seryak added. “Customers also pay for losses in the energy market OVEC incurs. When this occurs, it means the electric grid does not need OVEC for reliability. Instead, OVEC is burning coal pointlessly at a loss and charging it to Ohio’s ratepayers.”

Ohio coal plant subsidies still a bad deal for ratepayers despite growing generation demand, experts say is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Ohio clean energy projects under an Inflation Reduction Act grant announced last month show how solar sited on closed landfills can reduce greenhouse gases, improve resilience and provide funding for other environmental goals.

Part of the $129.4 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will add 28 megawatts of solar generation to a county central services facility and four former landfill sites in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. A bigger chunk of the funding will bring 35 MW of solar and 10 MW of battery storage to a brownfield site in Painesville in Lake County, which will let the city close a coal-fired peaker plant that dates back to 1908.

Representatives of the Cleveland, Painesville and Cuyahoga County governments, along with the EPA and others, met July 26 at Cuyahoga County’s 4 MW solar array in Brooklyn, Ohio, to discuss the grant and the work. Funding from the EPA grant will more than double the generation capacity of that landfill solar site, which has been in operation since 2018.

“In Northeast Ohio we’re going to see warmer, wetter, wilder weather in this region. And we have to do our part to address climate change,” said Mike Foley, director of sustainability for Cuyahoga County.

Funded projects under the grant are expected to eliminate the equivalent of 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over a 25-year period, with the largest cuts coming from deploying the solar projects in Cuyahoga County, Cleveland and Painesville, according to Valerie Katz, deputy director of sustainability for Cuyahoga County. 

The biggest chunk of grant money will go to Painesville, which is in Lake County east of Cleveland. But the 28 MW of solar generation to be built in Cuyahoga County will have a big impact.

“This will triple our solar capacity in Cuyahoga County in the next five years,” Katz said.

The landfill and brownfield projects funded by the grant will do more than produce electricity. By avoiding pollution from fossil fuels, they’ll provide health and environmental benefits. They’ll also produce revenue.

Some of the revenue from the brownfield solar site in Painesville will fund natural habitat for pollinators, birds and other wildlife elsewhere on that site. The city plans to work with the West Creek Conservancy for that and other projects, including building public trails and creating access for fishing.

Cuyahoga County also plans to use revenue from its sites to deploy more solar, Katz said. The added solar, in turn, can help develop microgrids to boost resiliency.

Making landfill solar work

While closed landfills provide plenty of open space, they also are often capped by membranes made from clay or other materials that cannot be damaged without risking environmental harm.

Solar arrays at these sites are feasible thanks to ballast systems, which have been fairly common for such uses for more than a decade. Huge concrete blocks anchor the solar array’s racks and panels. The blocks, or ballasts, support the array and protect it from wind. 

“They’re not going through the cap, which works out great for us,” said Jarnal Singh, an environmental supervisor with Ohio EPA’s Twinsburg office in its division of materials and waste management.

Without holes in the cap, the solar array doesn’t provide a pathway for methane or other gases to escape from the landfill. Leaving the cap intact also avoids creating a pathway for water to get in and percolate through the waste. That liquid, called leachate, could pollute groundwater if it’s not collected and treated properly.

Ohio has 141 landfill sites that have been subject to the state’s post-closure care requirements, according to Anthony Chenault, the Ohio EPA’s media coordinator for its Central, Northeast and Southeast districts. The agency has approved four landfills for solar development so far and has had informal discussions about several more sites.

But other practical considerations and site-specific features control whether any particular landfill is suitable for solar development.

“Some factors that could determine viability of a solar installation include proximity to existing power lines, size of the landfill, condition of the landfill cover, ownership (public vs private), and accessibility for equipment and maintenance,” Chenault said via email.

A few years should have passed since a landfill was closed and capped, so some settlement and off-gassing has already taken place, said Scott Ameduri, president of Enerlogics Networks, which was the primary developer for the Cuyahoga County solar site. There also must be a financially sound owner willing to accept responsibility for the waste at the site, he said.

Just as importantly, the electricity will need somewhere to go and a way to get there.

“In Brooklyn, for example, we were fortunate that Cleveland Public Power is a municipal utility,” Ameduri said. Municipal utilities are generally more flexible about making arrangements to take and distribute power than investor-owned utilities, he noted. Community solar legislation, such as House Bill 197, could help change things on that front, he added.

Another option is to have a large off-taker for the electricity adjacent to or near the landfill. The 7 MW of new grant-funded solar power to be built on a landfill south of the IX Center in Cuyahoga County can go to the expo center or the nearby Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, Ameduri said. The general area is also under consideration for one of the Cuyahoga County utility’s microgrids.

Otherwise, a landfill solar project putting electricity onto the grid may require a go-ahead from the regional grid operator, which is PJM for Ohio. The process takes roughly three to five years and adds extra costs. “I’d rather spread that over a 100-MW project than I would for a smaller brownfield site,” Ameduri said.

For now, Cleveland, Painesville and Cuyahoga County are celebrating the EPA grant award.

“This investment will allow us right here in Cleveland to turn brownfields into bright fields,” said Mayor Justin Bibb.

Inflation Reduction Act grant gives landfill solar a boost in Ohio is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Research underway at a Madison County solar farm promises to shed light on how well multi-use farming can work at a large scale. The answers will help shape best practices for future projects, while addressing some concerns raised in ongoing debates over siting large solar projects in rural farm areas.

Spread across more than 1,900 acres, the 180 MW Madison Fields project will be one of North America’s largest test grounds for research into agrivoltaics — essentially farming between the rows on photovoltaic solar projects.

As farmers seek to lease land for solar arrays to diversify their incomes, the practice could help them maximize their income and fend off opposition from critics concerned that solar development will take prime farmland out of production.

Some farmers have also said the revenue from clean energy can help keep their farms operating amid pressure from housing developers. A recent report from the American Farmland Trust says Ohio could lose more than 518,000 acres of farmland to urban sprawl by 2040.

That number dwarfs the roughly 95,000 acres for certified and other projects noted on the Ohio Power Siting Board’s most recent solar case status map. 

Yet solar projects generally deal with big chunks of land at once, while urban sprawl happens bit by bit over time, said Dale Arnold, director of energy policy for the Ohio Farm Bureau. Helping people understand and appreciate that is “absolutely huge,” he said.

Savion, a Shell subsidiary, developed the Madison County project, and it began commercial operation on July 11 with Amazon as the long-term buyer for its energy. Yet work began much earlier this year to set up the site for research by Ohio State University scientists, Savion’s Between the Rows subsidiary, and others.

“People have a lot of questions with regard to energy development going forward in this state,” particularly when it comes to taking land out of use for agricultural production, Arnold said.

Yet today’s industry continues to shift away from coal to a diversified portfolio of natural gas, nuclear, hydropower, wind energy, solar energy and other types of generation. Forecasts also show there will be growing demand for electricity by mid-century, he said.

“Finding a balance where you can do a number of things on the same ground — in this case energy production as well as agricultural production — is obviously huge,” Arnold said. If agrivoltaics is to become more than a buzzword, though, both farmers and solar project developers need to work out best practices.

One big issue is what crops can work well for large-scale utility projects. Compared to most solar farms projects in Eastern and Piedmont states, utility-scale solar projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states can spread across 1,000 acres or more, Arnold said.

“You hear a lot about produce and specialty crops,” for example, said Sarah Moser, Savion’s director of farm operations and agrivoltaics. But raising them is “hard to do on 1,000 acres.”

Hay, you!

Moser and Ohio State University researchers think forage crops like alfalfa and hay hold promise. Operations can be scaled up for large areas, said Eric Romich, an Ohio State University Extension field specialist for energy development. And the crops wouldn’t grow too tall amid the panels.

“We also wanted something that we felt had the potential to be economical,” Romich said.

Two 2023 reports by Ohio State University Extension researchers found raising hay and alfalfa between rows of solar panels was feasible and that the harvest’s nutritive value was good. But that small-scale work at the Pigtail Farms site in Van Wert County used data from only a few test plots and controls, which is an important limitation, Romich said.

Work at Madison Fields will now test whether similar results can be achieved at large scale. Part of a $1.6 million grant from the Department of Energy will help pay for that work over the course of four years.

Other research will test how well plants do in sun versus shade, Romich said. That matters because some portion of the land among solar panels will always be shaded.

Researchers planted the crops on test fields and control areas this spring, with an eye toward starting to collect data next year. “Forages are quite temperamental in terms of trying to get them established,” said Braden Campbell, an animal scientist at Ohio State University who is also working on the project. The team has found compacted soil around the solar panels, “but we are relieved to see that the seeds that we put into the ground are growing,” he said.

Moser plans to work with other crops, too. Soybeans are one example. They were already used as a cover crop before alfalfa and hay were planted. Soybeans can also work into a crop rotation when forage crops need to be replanted every few years.

“The market is there for it, and it does well” as a hardy crop which can also loosen soil and restore nutrients to it, Moser said, adding that local communities have expressed interest in the crop as well.

Send in the sheep

Other work at Madison Fields will explore complementary grazing. The goal is to harvest the forage crops as efficiently as possible. But there will still be a need for vegetation control under and around panels and other infrastructure, said Campbell. So, after harvesting, sheep will go to work.

“To me, that’s three commodities that we can get off one unit of land,” Campbell said: Solar panels will produce electricity. Hay and alfalfa growing will provide a crop. And the land will help support sheep, which in turn can produce meat, milk and fiber.

Other solar farms already use or plan to use sheep for vegetation control. But “there is a big difference” between using sheep to keep plants under control and relying on that for their nutrition, Campbell said.

Studies will need to test the health of sheep that do complementary grazing, compared to other sheep. Other questions include finding optimal grazing rates of sheep per acre, as well as other logistics. But first, the forage needs to establish good roots so it can withstand the pressure of grazing.

Tractors and more

A third bucket of research questions under the Department of Energy grant will focus on farm equipment. Tractors and other farm vehicles need to fit between the rows with their attachments. There’s been a trend in the agricultural sector toward wider equipment, which can cover more ground quickly but may not fit between rows of solar panels, Moser said.

“But a lot of farmers still have smaller equipment,” Moser continued, because some parcels aren’t appropriate for wider machinery. Maneuvering 15-foot-wide equipment works fairly well, and 17-foot and even 20-foot widths can still work. 

“I could get my 20-foot drill in there,” Moser said. “I just have to be careful.”

Arnold speculated that some companies may develop special equipment whose attachments can fit under solar panel rows more easily. Other possibilities could include raising panels or even feathering them when agricultural equipment is in use, he suggested.

Farm equipment doesn’t just need to go down an alley between two rows of solar panels. It will also have to turn around at the end to go down another one, Arnold said. So, there needs to be an adequate turning radius, without cables blocking farm vehicles’ paths. Poles, stands, and other equipment also can’t block the path of the farm equipment, he said.

The research can help guide the design of future solar projects to be “hay-ready” sites, Romich suggested. At the same time, agricultural operations shouldn’t jeopardize the safe and efficient operation of a solar facility. “It’s an operating power plant,” Romich said.

Arnold has additional questions about infrastructure needs: What facilities will be necessary to dry, bale and store forage? What facilities will other crops need? And how will they be trucked out to markets?

Likewise, what equipment and facilities will be needed for any sheep kept on site?  That includes paddock fencing, water, and so forth. And where will their caretaker live? 

“You’re going to have to have people there full-time,” Arnold said.

Precision agriculture

The Ohio State researchers, Moser, and others also wonder how well precision agriculture can work with solar farms. The term refers to methods that rely on technology and data to guide farmers’ work. The range of technologies includes remote sensing of field conditions with drones, in-ground sensors, automated weeders and more.

The big question is which precision agriculture technologies can work well for crops planted between rows of solar panels as they generate electricity.

It’s unclear what any of the studies will show until data has been collected and analyzed, Romich said. By the end, he feels the work will provide a better understanding of what will or won’t work.

Economics questions about business models, contractual arrangements and more also must eventually be worked out, Arnold said. At the end of the day, farmers will need to make a profit if agriculture is to successfully blend with solar projects.

“The possibilities are limitless, really,” when it comes to business arrangements, Moser said. “My motto is always, ‘farmers figure it out.’ And if we work with them, we’ll figure…out how to do this with best practices.”

Large-scale Ohio research project to explore how solar and farming can co-exist is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Advocates in Ohio are stepping up their clean energy efforts in response to the Republican party platform and Project 2025, which detail how a second Trump administration would promote fossil fuels while cutting back federal programs for addressing climate change, environmental justice and equity.

Over the past year, Ohio-based governments and groups have won awards for hundreds of millions of dollars under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

Federal policy takes on added significance in a state like Ohio, where lawmakers have already placed extra hurdles in the way of clean energy development. That has left it up to local governments and private organizations to take the lead in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Some of that work did move ahead during the former Trump administration, said Mike Foley, director of sustainability for Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland. But, “we had to scramble and struggle to get projects done.”

“Having resources from the federal government makes things so much easier,” Foley said.

Just this week, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a grant of roughly $129 million to a partnership among Cuyahoga County and the cities of Cleveland and Painesville to build a 35 megawatt solar power facility and 10 megawatts of battery storage, and to shut down a coal-fired power plant.

Earlier in July, the Federal Transit Authority awarded a $10.6 million grant under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority for ten electric buses and chargers for low-income, high-ridership areas. More than $40 million will go to other projects in Ohio. 

“These dollars are changing communities for the better,” said Chris Tavenor, general counsel for the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund.

Project 2025 — a policy blueprint for a possible Trump presidency produced by the Heritage Foundation — calls for repealing the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, threatening funding for additional work in Ohio and elsewhere, as well as weakening environmental protections and programs to promote equity. While former President Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, he has multiple links to authors and editors of the roughly 900-page report, and has repeatedly pledged to end Biden energy policies he has dubbed the “green new scam.”

“This is getting rid of everything that’s moved the needle forward on climate and energy,” said Neil Waggoner, the Midwest manager for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal program. 

While it’s unclear whether who will win in November, advocates are nonetheless preparing for a potential Trump presidency now.

Maximizing gains

The GOP platform and Project 2025 make clear what types of energy policies to expect if there’s a change in administration, said Melinda Pierce, legislative director for the Sierra Club.

“It’s in black and white,” Pierce said. So now, the Sierra Club is focusing on how to “Trump-proof the gains we have made.”

One push is to help local officials identify and apply for funding opportunities that are available now. “We don’t want to leave that money on the table,” Pierce said, adding that once money is in hand it “buys a lot of goodwill and inertia.”

That goodwill might limit the extent to which federal lawmakers would scale back programs bringing money to their states, according to conservative clean energy advocates who met at the Republican National Convention last week. Others are also collaborating with partners to get money for projects in hand as soon as possible.

“We are taking a proactive approach to reach out to funders to secure funding to continue the work and advocacy for energy, climate and environmental justice,” said SeMia Bray, co-leader for Black Environmental Leaders, which collaborates with regional partners to provide resources and support for environmental and economic justice initiatives.

Jonathan Welle, executive director for Cleveland Owns, said his organization plans to apply this summer for a “substantial federal grant that would put money in the hands of longtime northeast Ohio communities, specifically Black and Brown communities, so they can chart their own energy future.” 

Welle said he’s not at liberty to discuss the proposed project’s details, but did say the group expects it would hear about grant awards late this year or in early 2025. 

“But the timing for that and the follow through from the federal government…is highly dependent on the next few political moves, including November’s election,” he added.

Work to secure federal funding didn’t just spring up overnight, though. The Reimagine Appalachia coalition has been working for several years with stakeholders in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania to build capacity to absorb and direct that funding. Periodic information sessions spotlight funding opportunities and promote networking for local governments or others to develop ideas for projects. There’s even a forthcoming “grant of the month club” event.

“It’s really important to be doing this work and making sure that this current opportunity is taken advantage of,” said Amanda Woodrum, one of Reimagine Appalachia’s co-directors.

At the same time, she warned against speeding up the process too quickly.

“It takes time to put the infrastructure in place to actually direct it and make sure [funding] doesn’t go to the same old political channels,” Woodrum explained.

Going too quickly also increases the risk of backlash if projects aren’t well thought out, don’t provide what people in communities want, or otherwise fail.

“You don’t want it to go sideways,” Woodrum said. “You want to make sure you do it right.”

Getting the word out

Messaging is another top priority for advocates as the fall election draws near.  

“We are continuing our efforts of voter education, making sure the communities we love and support have updated registration and understand the importance of this election, and all elections on the local level,” Bray said.

Volunteers for Save Ohio Parks have been trying to limit drilling and fracking under state-owned parks and wildlife areas since early 2023, and now face the possibility of more drilling and fossil fuel development under a possible Republican administration.

“Yet Save Ohio Parks is determined to stay positive and keep our eyes on the prize,” said Melinda Zemper, a member of the group’s steering committee. The group is expanding its volunteer base and building additional coalitions with other environmental groups in Ohio.

Advocates also want to get out the word about benefits from current federal programs so voters are aware of what’s at stake.

“The Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund will continue its work to emphasize how the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and other important federal programs benefit Ohio communities and help combat the causes of climate change,” Tavenor said. Without continued progress, climate change costs for Ohioans will get worse, he noted.

Messaging by the Sierra Club, Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund and other advocates also highlights the implications of Project 2025 for equity and democracy.

“Project 2025’s extreme proposals are specifically structured to benefit polluting industries at the expense of the health and environment of our communities,” Tavenor said. “Simply put, Project 2025 is a government takeover that threatens our democracy, designed by wealthy billionaires to benefit themselves and their power-hungry allies.”

Ohio advocates seek to ‘Trump-proof’ recent gains made on clean energy and climate is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Five years after Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill 6 into law, Ohio citizens and ratepayers are still paying the price. 

Ohio lawmakers still haven’t taken steps to repeal the rest of the nuclear and coal bailout bill, which is the focus of what prosecutors say was a roughly $60 million bribery scheme by utility FirstEnergy and its affiliates. Cases continue to wind through the courts, and two men implicated in the scandal have apparently taken their own lives. 

“It’s been really painful, and we’re still living with the consequences of House Bill 6,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio.

Shepherded by former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, the bill swept through the legislature in 2019, passing just 3 and a half months after its first introduction and despite massive opposition from consumer advocates, environmental groups, renewable energy interests and others.

The law called for more than $1 billion in subsidies for two nuclear plants for which FirstEnergy had been seeking bailouts since 2014. Additional provisions included subsidies for two 1950s-era coal plants known as the OVEC plants, along with gutting of the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. A referendum effort that would have let voters reject the law under Ohio’s constitution was ultimately thwarted amid claims of misleading ads, harassment of signature collectors and other problems.

One year after the bill passed, federal agents arrested Householder and others on charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO. The complaint outlined a $60 million criminal enterprise scheme funded by dark money, most of which came from FirstEnergy or its affiliates — roughly four times as much as the Energy News Network and Eye on Ohio had been able to track before the arrests.

Sam Randazzo resigned his position as chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio months later, following an FBI raid on his home in November 2020. In July 2021, FirstEnergy entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice, admitting it had bribed Householder and Randazzo.

Neil Clark, a lobbyist indicted in the scandal, apparently committed suicide in Florida in March 2021. Randazzo did the same in a Columbus warehouse he owned in April of this year, as he faced indictments on both federal and state criminal charges, along with loss of his license to practice law.

Calls for a full repeal of HB 6 came immediately after the 2020 arrests, but languished for months. Months after the next election, lawmakers finally repealed the law’s nuclear subsidies and a provision for guaranteed utility revenue, but left the rest of the law intact.

Bills to repeal the coal plant subsidies still have not gotten a full vote, and the state’s clean energy standards remain gutted. And full information about the corruption scandal has yet to come out, including answers to questions about Gov. Mike DeWine’s and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted’s involvement.

“The legislature hasn’t done anything to create greater transparency, to address dark money, to ensure we aren’t ripped off,” Turcer said.

“There’s this interesting intersection of dark money and gerrymandering and general decision-making and accountability at the statehouse,” Turcer continued.

Dark money refers to political spending that can’t be readily traced, and gerrymandering is the drawing of voting districts to advantage one political party over another. Together, both can undermine democracy and have delayed progress on climate change.

Still subsidizing coal

“The fact that we’re still bailing out the coal plants is just insane to me,” said Neil Waggoner, Midwest campaign manager for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal program. The Kyger Creek plant is in Cheshire, Ohio, and the Clifty Creek plant is in Madison, Indiana. Both plants consistently lose money.

“Those coal subsidies are costing consumers $500,000 per day,” said Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis. Her office estimates Ohioans have paid more than $330 million since January 2020. RunnerStone, a consultant for the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association Energy Group, projects the HB 6 coal subsidies could reach $1 billion by 2030.

The utilities that own the plants defend their continued operation.

“Customers in Ohio receive electricity from OVEC for what it costs to produce it and the funds are used to pay down debt with no proceeds going to shareholders,” said Scott Blake, a spokesperson for American Electric Power, which owns the largest share of OVEC, with other utilities inside and outside ofn Ohio owning shares. More than 500 employees work to make sure the plants operate as efficiently as possible, he added.

Since 1999, however, Ohio law has generally let consumers choose their electricity supplier. “And recent testimony by Duke executive [Amy] Spiller confirms the coal plants will continue to operate even if the subsidy ends,” Willis said.

The question comes down to whether the companies that made bad business decisions to keep noncompetitive plants running should pay their expenses, “as opposed to the public eating the cost,” Waggoner said.

Higher bills

HB 6 not only added subsidies to consumers’ electric bills. It also axed clean energy standards whose net savings for Ohioans had been about $9 per month.

“The elimination of the energy efficiency programs never made sense because they helped customers reduce their electricity usage,” said Rob Kelter, an attorney with the Environmental Law & Policy Center. “They lowered their bills. And they reduced pollution.”

Yet a legislative analysis claimed cutting those programs to pass HB 6 could save Ohioans’ money, a position that was further buttressed by testimony from then-PUCO chair Randazzo. Those arguments left out customers’ savings from avoiding wasted energy and lower overall capacity costs, Kelter said.

A bill to allow some permissive energy efficiency programs finally passed in the Ohio House last month, but passage in the state Senate isn’t guaranteed.

Regulatory scrutiny

Randazzo not only played a key role in shaping HB 6 and getting it passed. He also shaped the PUCO’s piecemeal response after Householder and others were arrested. That approach has continued, even after criminal charges were brought against Randazzo in federal and state court.

“Even after the revelations of what former PUCO Chair Sam Randazzo did for FirstEnergy in the halls of the PUCO, the agency itself has not had to answer to the public,” Willis said. “Case decisions issued while the former Chair led the agency have not been examined.”

“Why has there not been a management audit at the commission?” asked Ashley Brown, a former PUCO commissioner who subsequently headed the Harvard Electricity Policy Group. “Something clearly went wrong. We know that the chairman was bribed. We know that the other people went along.”

Agency spokesperson Brittany Waugaman noted the PUCO has four ongoing investigations in cases relating to FirstEnergy, but did not respond to questions about whether regulators plan to conduct an internal review of its own operations or otherwise review decisions in which Randazzo had participated.

Moreover, “the PUCO too often has made it difficult to get to answers for consumers,” Willis said. “Adverse discovery rulings, unrealistic case schedules, and limited audits, are a few of the problems for consumers.”

Who else?

The federal Department of Justice asked for three delays in discovery for the state regulatory cases, but after the initial 2020 arrests Randazzo was the only additional individual to face federal criminal charges, and he is now deceased. Meanwhile, Ohioans remained on the hook for charges. So in Brown’s view, the delays made sure consumers continued to be victimized by the crime.

The state did file criminal charges earlier this year against former FirstEnergy executives Chuck Jones and Mike Dowling, along with Randazzo and companies he controlled, as well as Householder. Company lawyers previously identified Jones and Dowling as having paid the bribes behind HB 6. But it remains unclear whether they or others will ever face federal criminal charges, said Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute.

Anderson and others also have questions about the involvement of American Electric Power, which paid $900,000 to dark money groups that supported HB 6.

Blake, the AEP spokesperson, said “management does not believe that AEP was involved in any wrongful conduct in connection with the passage of HB 6.” 

Anderson rejects that notion.

“While AEP has not been charged with any crime in connection with HB 6, disturbing new details about the financial relationship between Householder and the utility emerged during the convicted former Ohio House Speaker’s trial last year,” Anderson responded. And the company also has acknowledged it may face civil penalties from a SEC investigation, he added.

“I don’t how AEP defines wrongdoing, but common sense should tell AEP’s customers and regulators that something stinks here,” Anderson said. “AEP owes ratepayers answers, and unfortunately the PUCO has completely failed to investigate AEP’s role in the HB 6 scandal.”

Some bright spots

As consumers continue to face consequences from HB 6, so do Householder and lobbyist Matt Borges, Turcer said. Both are in federal prison while they appeal their criminal convictions in federal court from last year.

FirstEnergy might have to allow some credits or pay penalties as a result of the four pending PUCO cases, Anderson noted. That would be in addition to a $230 million penalty paid to the federal government and class action settlements in a few court cases.

Quarterly reporting requirements under the deferred prosecution agreement of donations to nonprofit groups also may have reined in some of FirstEnergy’s political influence in Ohio, Anderson said. FirstEnergy spokesperson Jennifer Young said the company plans to continue reporting donations, even after the deferred prosecution agreement’s term ends.

Young also highlighted other company reforms including enhanced controls, separation of functions for its top ethics and legal officers and better transparency to stakeholders.

“Today, FirstEnergy is a different, stronger company with a sound strategy, a highly effective compliance program and a companywide culture of ethics, integrity and accountability,” Young said.

Yet the company’s claims about transparency have fallen short, Willis said. “Lawyered-up FirstEnergy… continues to block efforts to publicly disclose their internal investigation reports produced in the wake of the HB 6 scandal.”

Energy policy

Ohio’s energy policy continues to feel impacts from HB 6 as well.

“It does make me wonder where we would be with renewable energy if HB 6 had been completely repealed, or if there hadn’t been this orchestrated campaign, not just to bail out nuclear plants or subsidize coal plants, but also to diminish our commitment to renewable energy and our funding for renewable energy,” Turcer said. Yet now, “the air we breathe is actually dirtier.”

HB 6 “cast such a long shadow over energy policy in Ohio,” said Tom Bullock, executive director for the Citizens Utility Board of Ohio. The energy industry is going through the greatest change in a century, with technological innovations in how energy is produced and stored, as well as new business models, he noted.

“We need to be thoughtful, so that we can grow industry and keep prices affordable and convert to clean and smart and distributed energy,” Bullock said. Otherwise, “We’ll be the last in the Midwest to get there if the way we make energy policy decisions is based on the wish list from traditional energy interests.”

Consequences continue as bill at center of Ohio utility corruption scandal marks fifth anniversary is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A pair of upcoming decisions by Ohio’s top court could further empower local opponents to block clean energy in what is already one of the hardest states to site new renewable projects. 

Two cases before the Ohio Supreme Court ask whether local opposition is enough for the Ohio Power Siting Board to conclude a project is not in the public interest when it otherwise meets all statutory criteria. 

The decisions are expected to guide future regulatory rulings, and clean energy industry and environmental advocates have voiced concerns about the potential impact on energy development.

Most power plants, solar farms and wind farms in Ohio need approval from the Ohio Power Siting Board before they can be built and operated. 

What the law says

State law provides eight criteria for approving new electric generation. They include its impacts on the environment, water conservation, and agricultural land, as well as whether a facility “will serve the interests of electric system economy and reliability” and “the public interest, convenience, and necessity.” 

Solar developers are appealing two recent siting board decisions in which they say regulators took a narrower view of “public interest” than they and courts previously did, effectively changing the legal standard and giving outsized weight to local opposition instead of considering the question with a state-level perspective, they say.

One case deals with the Ohio Power Siting Board’s denial of a permit to construct and operate Lightsource bp’s Birch Solar project roughly 10 miles southwest of Lima. In the other case, the board denied a permit for Vesper Energy to build and operate the Kingwood Solar project in Greene County. 

The developers in both cases made changes to address specific concerns raised by siting board staff or other parties to the cases. In both cases, the board basically ruled that the projects satisfied all criteria except the public interest standard. 

Lawyers for the Ohio Power Siting Board argued its rulings are entitled to a presumption of correctness on review. The board also claimed it used a “broad lens” to weigh the pros and cons of each project and make its factual findings. 

Several local government groups and a local opponents’ group raised similar arguments in support of upholding the siting board decisions. 

“The court should decline Kingwood’s invitation to wade into its own weighing of the evidence in this complex fact-intensive decision,” said one such brief, filed in the Kingwood Solar case by lawyers for the trustees of Miami, Cedarville and Xenia townships along with Jack Van Kley, a lawyer who represented an opponents’ group. Considering local opposition is also properly part of balancing multiple factors to determine the public interest, they wrote.

‘Public opinion is not public interest’

Developers for each project maintained the power siting board erred as a matter of law when it let local opposition override other factors in its determination of the public interest.

In Birch Solar, the board concluded there was “universal opposition from local governments and residents,” and it then held that opposition by local government bodies was “a determining component” of whether the project met the public interest criterion, the developer’s reply brief noted. That approach also violated Ohio’s statutory law and constitution by improperly delegating the board’s legal authority to local governments, the company argued. 

The board also erred by focusing only on the amount of opposition. Rather, the board should have looked at evidence relating to opponents’ objections and considered how permit conditions could address them, the company’s lawyers wrote.

“[T]he Board never even assessed whether there would be any potential negative impacts to the public before deciding that the Project was not in the ‘public interest,’” said a separate brief by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. What matters is the evidence of a project’s impacts, not the quantity of opinions, their brief said.

In a similar vein, the power siting board unlawfully found the opposition of three adjoining townships was “controlling” in the Kingwood Solar case, the developer’s brief said. In other words, the board treated the opposition as determinative of the outcome.

“Public opinion is not public interest,” said Lindsey Workman, community affairs manager for Vesper Energy, the developer for Kingwood Solar. Ohio’s statute does not say local opposition trumps all other interests, such as economic benefits or enhanced reliability for Ohio’s energy infrastructure, she said. “That’s not how the law is written, and that’s not how the law should go.”

A 2021 law known as Senate Bill 52 did give counties the power to ban most new solar and wind projects from various areas. Among other things, the law also gives counties a chance to review new solar and wind projects that aren’t otherwise banned before they get to the power siting board. Both solar projects in the current Supreme Court cases are exempt from those parts of the law, however.

While SB 52 gave local governments “a chance to participate” in the power siting board process, the legal criteria for approval stayed the same, said Chris Tavenor, an attorney for the Ohio Environmental Council, which filed a brief in the Birch Solar case. Yet by treating local opposition as determinative, the board was “creating essentially a political process for those projects to be approved or denied, as opposed to a legal analysis,” he said.

Other briefs in the Birch Solar case underscored that opposition wasn’t universal. One brief came from a group of local solar supporters. Another explained that leaders for Auglaize County and Logan Township took no position on the project after they reached agreement with the developer on some issues.

Other potential impacts

In addition to the possibility that Vesper and Lightsource bp’s projects will be canceled, advocates are worried about the impact on future cases.

The Natural Resources Defense Counsel wrote in its brief that “allowing the Board’s unprecedented and unreasonable decision on Birch Solar to stand will prevent the development of other well-planned renewable energy projects in Ohio.” That would reinforce continued use of fossil fuel generation, which releases greenhouse gases that drive human-caused climate change, as well as other pollution.

The natural gas industry also has a stake in the outcome, because the cases could open the door for local opposition to block power plants, pipelines and other infrastructure. 

The Ohio Independent Power Producers’ brief in each case said the power siting board’s ruling “erodes a fair and predictable permitting process upon which new investment in power generating facilities in Ohio relies.” The Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s briefs also voiced a fear that the boards’ rulings inject “undue uncertainty into Ohio’s historically stable and predictable regulatory framework for building in-state power generation.”

The Ohio Supreme Court has yet to schedule oral argument in each case. It would likely take several months after that for that court to issue its decisions.

Upcoming Ohio Supreme Court decisions could make it even harder to develop solar power in the state  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Solar developers are hoping that listening to local communities in Ohio early in the design stage will boost their chances for success before state regulators.

“We are really invested in and committed to being good neighbors,” said Lindsey Workman, community affairs manager for Vesper Energy. The company held three meet-and-greet sessions in Greene County this spring for its proposed Aviation Energy Center project, in addition to earlier meetings with trustees for several townships.

Another developer, Open Road Renewables, also hosted listening tour sessions this spring to learn about community issues and residents’ concerns related to its proposed Grange Solar project in Logan County. The meetings began at the end of April and ran through June. 

The companies’ proactive community engagement approach comes as some Ohio solar projects have faced significant local opposition, often stoked by fossil fuel interests. State policy under a 2021 law known as Senate Bill 52 also has empowered anti-solar groups to ban many renewable energy projects or pressure local elected officials to oppose them. 

“I think it will be a trend,” to seek community input early on, especially if it helps lessen local opposition, said Jane Harf, executive director for Green Energy Ohio, which counts multiple solar developers among its members. At the same time, “it’s really hard to quantify opposition,” Harf added. A minority of opponents can be much more vocal and apply more pressure to local officials than a majority of people who are supporters or just neutral.

“And [there] is a lot of organized opposition,” Harf said. “This isn’t just grassroots. This is being fed by national organizations.”

Open Road Renewables currently faces challenges from two opposition groups relating to its proposed Frasier Solar Project in Knox County. The Energy News Network has reported on links between speakers for one of the groups and pro-fossil fuel interests.

Vesper Energy faced opposition for its proposed Kingwood Solar project in Greene County, which led the the Ohio Power Siting Board to reject the company’s application based on substantial local opposition. The case is before the Ohio Supreme Court on appeal. The company argues, in essence, that the board’s legal responsibility to determine the public interest extends beyond assessing how popular a project appears to be locally based on the numbers of comments for and against it.

These companies hope that early, proactive outreach to the community can help smooth the paths for their latest projects before they begin the formal power siting board process. 

“We’ve been putting a very heavy emphasis on public engagement and, more importantly, listening to concerns from as many stakeholders as we can in the community,” said Doug Herling, a vice president for Open Road Renewables. 

Patricia Hicks heads Outcomes Management Group, a Columbus-based consulting firm, which helped run the listening sessions for Open Road Renewables. The team aimed to invite people representing a broad spectrum within the county.

“You want to make sure that you don’t just get one group of people providing information,” she said. “You don’t want to have a biased listening group.”

During the sessions, small groups were also asked both closed- and open-ended questions. Hicks’ firm is working now to finalize a report on the feedback, both positive and negative.

Using what’s learned

While companies say footprints for the Aviation Energy Center and Grange Solar projects have not yet been finalized, they say insights from the community input will help guide how those boundaries are determined.

Open Road Renewables plans to use the report from Hicks’ firm to develop a set of commitments to the community. Getting feedback earlier in the process can help the company tailor the project to deal with specific concerns, versus waiting to negotiate more permit conditions later, Herling said.

The final report from Outcomes Management Group will also help the company make the community concerns section of the project’s power siting board application more robust, Herling said. Hicks expects the work also will help the company in future communication efforts relating to the project.

Vesper Energy has already committed that the Aviation Energy Center project won’t border nonparticipating landowners’ properties on more than one side, Workman said. Setbacks from residential property lines, state parks and other public lands also will range from 300 to 500 feet, which is more than Ohio Power Siting Board rules require.

“We care about the feedback, and that’s what we heard,” Workman said.

Workman said Vesper Energy is willing to make similar commitments if it wins the Kingwood Solar case on appeal. She noted the company also has donated nearly $40,000 in the past year to support work in Greene County by various nonprofit groups, including the Ohio State Parks Foundation, Camp Clifton 4-H Camp, Yellow Springs Community Foundation, Family Promise of Greene County, and Greene County FISH Pantry.

“There’s no strings,” Workman said. “We’re trying to make sure that we become good neighbors.” 

Such strategies are also bets that listening now can save headaches later.

‘Covering their bases’

Attendees and others have praised the companies’ approach, but it’s too soon to say how successful it will be.

Logan County Administrator David Henry didn’t attend the Grange Solar sessions in person and said he isn’t in a position to speak for or against the project. He added that new, non-grandfathered projects are banned for unincorporated areas of most of the county’s townships under SB 52. Nonetheless, Henry commended Open Road Renewables for holding the sessions about the proposed project.

“I will say that I’m glad that Open Road Renewables is allowing the public to have their input on it both positively and negatively — they’ve had plenty of both,” Henry said. “I think that’s a good idea on their part to let people have their voice heard.”

Members of the Greene County Board of Commissioners would not comment for this story due to ongoing litigation, said Ashley Schommer at the Greene County offices. The county is one of the intervenors against the Kingwood Solar project in Vesper Energy’s appeal.

“Vesper seems interested in listening to community feedback and seeing what it can do to be a cooperative business entity,” said Kate LeVesconte, a local resident who is part of a local pro-solar group. “I think that is a really good idea when it is interacting with legitimate concerns and not disinformation-driven fear.”

Unfortunately, LeVesconte added, she hears a lot of false information, such as claims about contamination, arguments about whether farmland can eventually be restored and more.

“We’re still facing an uphill battle regarding this relatively conservative area feeling that solar farms are probably not good for prime agricultural land,” she said.

Real estate agent Chris Blosser, who attended one of the four listening sessions Open Road Renewables hosted in Logan County, said the company “is doing everything right, and they’re covering all their bases. They’re doing things to address people’s concerns.” 

She gave the example of the company committing to provide an upfront bond to restore the property at the end of the project’s lifespan.

“Unfortunately, there’s quite an organized effort to fight this installation,” Blosser said. Others at the listening session she attended had already gone to some anti-solar meetings. “And they had information that had been spoon-fed to them.”

A large percentage of people who attended the Open Road Renewables sessions or answered its online survey said they got their news from social media, Hicks said. As a result, many were relying on information that hadn’t been verified.

At the same time, many people at the meetings did want to ask questions, she noted. And if people were able to remain open-minded, they could see potential benefits from the project, Hicks said. Beyond asking about concerns, attendees were asked how they would want to see company payments used in the community. The responses included new insights for the company to consider. 

“Listening brings all kinds of interesting discoveries,” Hicks said.

Hurdles remain

Meanwhile, opponents of utility-scale solar projects have been hosting their own meetings to stir up discontent.

For example, Citizens for Greene Acres is an opponent of Vesper Energy in the Kingwood Solar case, and most of its activities so far have focused on that project. 

And in Logan County, a group called Indian Lake Against Industrial Solar has mobilized to oppose Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar project. The county has already had experience with two other anti-solar groups opposing the proposed Fountain Point solar farm: No Solar in Logan County and Citizens against Fountain Point. 

“Developers in the solar industry earn trust in communities by communicating proactively with interested parties and addressing questions posed by community members,” said Will Hinman, executive director for the Utility Scale Solar Energy Coalition of Ohio. Conversations start before applications are filed and continue throughout projects’ siting, construction and operational phases. 

For now, Vesper Energy and Open Road Renewables hope their efforts and planned follow-up will lay the groundwork for that trust.

Grange Solar and the Aviation Energy Center are both in the early stages. Both developers’ efforts come before two public information meetings they will need to hold before filing formal applications for the projects. The updated Ohio Power Siting Board rule took effect on May 30. 

Open Road Renewables plans to submit its application sometime in September, Herling said. The company expects it might then get a decision from the Ohio Power Siting Board by the end of next year. 

Vesper Energy doesn’t have a definitive timeline yet for the Aviation Energy Center or the Kingwood Solar project. “This commitment to community collaboration is our guiding principle,” Workman said. “Our goal is to get it right, however long that takes.”

Ohio solar project listening sessions seek to boost projects’ chances for success is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Biogas projects at wastewater plants serving Columbus and Cincinnati will offset roughly 50,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas annually, according to city officials.

The Columbus Department of Public Utilities estimates biogas cogeneration projects for its Southerly and Jackson Pike plants will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 34,000 and 13,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, respectively. That’s the equivalent of taking 10,100 passenger vehicles off the road, said Robert Priestas, administrator for the department’s division of sewers and drains.

The utilities also can get back millions under the Inflation Reduction Act if they meet conditions by the end of this year.

“Climate change is upon us, right? And so we have an opportunity to actually make a difference,” said Stacia Eckenwiler, who serves as assistant administrator for the division. She spoke at the Ohio State Bar Association’s Environmental Law Institute in April.

Columbus’s wastewater utility accounts for a significant chunk of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, she noted. A 2019 inventory report shows water and wastewater accounted for about 9% of nearly 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents from community-wide emissions that year.

The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati is also planning to use biogas to make electricity and provide heating for its Little Miami Wastewater Treatment Plant. The facility still needs to add equipment to generate and capture the biogas to shift some greenhouse gas emissions away from where wastes are now landfilled, and offset some fossil fuel emissions from energy otherwise used at the plant.

Sewage treatment plants remove solids and harmful pollutants from wastewater. Most often, the cleaned-up water goes into a river, lake or other water body near the treatment plant, generally pursuant to permits issued under the Clean Water Act. Leftover sludge containing biosolids has generally ended up in incinerators or at landfills.

Burning of biosolids releases carbon dioxide to the air, and landfilling biosolids likewise releases greenhouse gas emissions. Both options cost sewer plants money to dispose of the wastes.

Anaerobic digestion is another option. Basically, it composts the biosolids to speed up their chemical breakdown. Solids left at the end can generally be added to soil or used in other ways. The process also produces biogas, which is primarily a mix of flammable methane and carbon dioxide. Burning the methane can power an electric generator and also provide heat energy.

In contrast to methane from natural gas, which is a fossil fuel that contributes to human-caused climate change, the methane from wastewater sludge is generally considered clean energy when it’s used for electricity and heating.

The gas is generated anyway, explained Karine Rougé, CEO of Veolia North America’s Municipal Water services. So, using it works as “a perfect substitute” for fossil fuels, she said. Veolia is not involved in the Cincinnati or Columbus projects.

Beyond that offset, “the methane in natural gas is extracted from subsurface rock formations from a depleting source that cannot be replenished,” said Diana Christy, the director of the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati. In contrast, biogas is renewable, “in the sense that humans always will produce waste.”

Putting waste to work

Columbus already has a composting program, which began several years ago after stricter regulations meant it could no longer use old incinerators. Now, “all of the biosolids that are produced by our facilities go back to the earth and get used again,” Eckenwiler said. Uses include compost and fertilizer for tree farms.

So far, however, the city has just burned the biogas with a flare. “It’s a wasted resource overall,” she says. That’s set to change. 

Biogas projects at the Southerly and Jackson Pike wastewater treatment plants will provide “about half the energy that is necessary at each of our facilities, so it’s a pretty significant amount,” Eckenwiler said. “And that will take that reliance off the grid,” which can help at times of peak demand.

Besides advancing sustainability and the cities’ decarbonization goals, sewer utilities for Columbus and Cincinnati see the projects as a way to reduce costs and respond to shifts in regulatory requirements.

The technology for anaerobic digestion has been around for years, but it has improved recently, Christy said. “Most simply for us, the ‘why now’ is it was an economic decision and the changes in requirements for incineration that we were facing previously.”

Eckenwiler estimated Columbus’s biogas projects will save the city roughly $1 million for the two plants’ energy costs — about half of what they currently spend while biogas is otherwise vented to the air.

She also noted the federal government’s efforts to reduce emissions from the oil and gas industry. “It’s only a matter of time before wastewater utilities are going to be part of that as well,” she said.

Added incentive

The Inflation Reduction Act provides an added economic incentive through its changes to the federal Investment Tax Credit. Previously the credit benefited only people and organizations that paid taxes. The changes now let government units and nonprofits get money back as a reimbursement when projects are finished. 

The 2022 law also expanded the Investment Tax Credit to more types of energy projects, including biogas. To qualify, biogas projects must begin construction by the end of this year. The law also provides a “safe harbor” if there’s a commitment to buy at least 5% of the necessary equipment and it is in significant fabrication by or before December 31, Eckenwiler said.

The Jackson Pike project is already under construction and should finish up by sometime next year, Eckenwiler said. The Southerly project is on track to start construction this year and should be complete by 2028.

Cincinnati plans to start construction at the Little Miami plant this year under a design-build contract that lets construction begin while various details are finalized, Christy said. The district is also evaluating the safe harbor provision and considering a purchase of equipment for $11 million before the end of this year, with expected delivery before April of 2024.

The Jackson Pike project for Columbus is estimated to cost about $30 million, Eckenwiler said. “The project at Southerly is part of a much larger project, but the cogeneration portion is about $79 million.” The Investment Tax Credit could provide rebates up to 50%. That includes bonuses for paying prevailing wages and using domestic content, as well as a bonus for projects in or next to an “energy community.”

Parts of Cincinnati’s project that qualify for the Investment Tax Credit could provide up to $50 million in reimbursements, Christy said. Whatever the amount is, “the impact of a direct cash payment from the federal government will serve to reduce the cost burden on local ratepayers as the sewer district reinvests in infrastructure to maintain levels of service and to improve the sewer system in order to better serve the community and to comply with the Clean Water Act.”

Rougé sees a broader trend towards wastewater plants using biogas for energy. In Europe, a prolonged drought and the war in Ukraine have ramped up interest in local energy production, she said. And energy costs have been a major driver in the United States, she said. A desire to boost resilience also weighs in favor of adding biogas or other onsite generation, particularly in states where grid issues already present problems, she added.

Onsite biogas projects may not be cost-effective for some smaller sewer utilities. Yet the Inflation Reduction Act’s deadline is sparking lots of conversations with Veolia’s clients, Rougé said. And even if a wastewater authority doesn’t begin a project yet, other funding support could be available, such as state revolving funds under the Clean Water Act, she said.

Wastewater treatment plants are “complex and technical places,” Eckenwiler said. “They’re also very, very cool resource recovery facilities.”

Federal climate funds to help Ohio cities slash emissions from wastewater operations is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.