This Tuesday, January 27, the Ohio Senate Energy Committee will hear testimony on Senate Bill 294.

Tell your Ohio Senators: Vote NO on Senate Bill 294

This bill would declare the state’s energy siting policy to be that fracked gas and nuclear are “clean energy,” while casting solar and wind as unreliable and dependent on foreign adversary nations.

None of that is true – but if passed, SB 294 would make it even harder for solar and wind projects to be approved in Ohio, and even easier for oil, gas, and nuclear.

SB 294 is yet another effort by gas and nuclear to get Ohio legislators to boost their polluting industries while squashing competition from clean renewable energy.

• Ohio has the most draconian wind turbine setback law in the nation, hobbling the wind industry.

• A 2021 law has allowed 37 Ohio counties to ban solar and wind. Even where renewable energy is not banned, the Ohio Power Siting Board has squashed over 2000 MW of solar – enough to power Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati combined.

• Meanwhile, oil and gas are sited only on the state level, often through a fast-track process with little to no notification of local communities and no ability for local officials to say no.

SB 294 would make this lack of parity in Ohio’s energy policy even worse – at a time when state officials claim we need more energy generation.

Ohio is mired in decades of waste from the coal, oil, gas, and nuclear industries. We need clean and renewable energy from solar and wind – and we could profit from it, if this legislature would stop squashing it.

Consider:

• Fracked methane gas is 80% more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It comes from the highly polluting process of fracking – including of our state parks and public lands – which converts billions of gallons of our fresh water to toxic radioactive waste each year.

• Nuclear energy relies on constant mining and enrichment of uranium, and highly radioactive nuclear waste must be stored for eons.

• Solar and wind are the cheapest and most deployable forms of energy on any scale - cheaper and faster than gas, way cheaper and faster than nuclear – and much cleaner than both.

• Ohio is home to several major solar panel manufacturers, such as First Solar in Perrysburg and Illuminate USA in Pataskala – no foreign adversary nations required.

• When paired with battery storage, solar and wind can provide reliable, dispatchable 24/7 power. Demand for gas in California has dropped 40% in the past two years because people are drawing from battery storage at night.