Dirty, dangerous, and expensive versus clean, safe, and affordable
As Dick Munson of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has blogged, a new report shows how Ohio can "net more than 20,000 jobs and $25 billion in investment...while enhancing productivity and lowering costs."
The report, by Synapse Energy Economics, is entitled Powering Ohio: A Vision for Growth and Innovative Energy Investment, and highlights five areas for growth: (1) Attracting investment from corporate clean energy leaders; (2.) Electrifying transportation, with a focus on electric vehicles; (3.) Building new clean electricity generation, like wind and solar power; (4.) Boosting Ohio's energy productivity through energy efficiency; and (5.) Investing in a 21st century electric grid. (As the photo above from downtown Cleveland shows, Ohio's Lake Erie shore has some of the best wind power potential in North America.)
Such a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy roadmap envisions not just a thriving economy, but energy justice and a healthy environment. As Dr. Arjun Makhijani of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research has shown with the Renewable Maryland Project, what is true in Ohio, is true in other states.
Such visions are an antidote to FirstEnergy's desperate appeal to President Trump and Energy Secretary Perry for $8 billion in public bailouts, per year, to prop up 80 coal and nuclear plants in the PJM grid across 13 states and Washington, D.C., including its own dangerously old Davis-Besse and Perry atomic reactors in Ohio, and Beaver Valley Units 1 and 2 in Pennsylvania.
For more info. on the corruption associated with FirstEnergy's "emergency petition" to the Trump administration, and similar attempted public money grabs in other states, see Beyond Nuclear's Nuclear Costs website section; for the good news about the potential of renewables and efficiency, see our Renewable Energy Renaissance section. (Beyond Nuclear spoke about this new report, and FirstEnergy's corrupt bailout lobbying, on the "Loud & Clear" radio show on May 31st, beginning at the 28 minute 20 second mark.)
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An article by Kathiann Kowalski in Midwest Energy News shows how the transformation from dirty, dangerous, and expensive energy industries like fossil fuels and nuclear, to clean, safe, and affordable renewables and efficiency, is reflected in the history of a single Ohio company, the Rudolph Libbe Group construction firm.