Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Ohio energy summit and energy policy both need a wide reach 
September  21, 2011 

It’s certainly laudable that Gov. John Kasich is assembling some of the nation’s top energy experts for his energy summit starting Wednesday in Columbus. 

It’s an important moment that could set the priorities for state energy policy for years. 

That’s why Kasich and his team need to be as comprehensive as possible in their approach to energy planning -- building on existing solar innovations and wind opportunities in Northern Ohio, while responsibly setting the stage for the coming shale oil and gas bonanza and preserving options for nuclear and clean coal. 

No surprise, the two-day summit has been a magnet for participants and sponsors from the gas and oil industries, major utilities and big energy companies. 

Ohio is on the cusp of a drilling boom in the deep Utica shale that underlies much of eastern Ohio and Lake Erie as well as parts of seven other states and the Canadian province of Ontario. Jobs could flow to where the Utica and Marcellus shales give up their gas and oil products most expeditiously. Ohio needs to prepare now by studying the environmental and regulatory implications. 

Yet at the same time, the state can’t afford to lose its sizable edge in alternative energy. 

Thanks in part to Third Frontier investments and the smart retooling of its industrial legacy, this state ranks fifth nationally in jobs in clean energy, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts, and second only to Oregon in the manufacture of solar panels, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. 

To their credit, summit organizers from the Battelle Memorial Institute have worked hard to include alternative voices in the energy meeting. The Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading advocacy group for noncarbon solutions and efficiency innovations, is one of the summit’s sponsors. 

But that needs to be coupled with stronger advocacy from Kasich’s office. 

In Cleveland, where an unprecedented public-private partnership hopes to build the country’s first freshwater wind farm offshore in Lake Erie, the Kasich administration should provide a boost, not a cold shoulder, to a project at a critical juncture in trying to attract the last piece of financing for the first five experimental turbines. 

Ohio also needs to preserve the national advantage in next-generation energy investments that comes from having one of the nation’s most comprehensive renewable portfolio standards, adopted in 2008. 

State Sen. Kris Jordan, a Republican from north central Ohio, proposes throwing away this bipartisan measure. Kasich must rein in those in his party who can’t see beyond shale to job-creating energy endeavors that could have even longer-lasting benefits for Ohio. 

Read it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer