Today, June 13, the House Alternative Energy Committee will hear educational testimony from the following Case Western Reserve University Professors: Iwan Alexander, Director of National Center for Space Exploration and Research; Dr. George Harker, Assistant Vice-President for Tech Transfer and of the Wright Fuel Cell Center; and from Martin Kushler, Director of the Utilities Program for the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. It should be compelling testimony—I look forward to summarizing their presentations for you.

Last week, the committee heard testimony from John Hollback, Manager of Governmental and Environmental Affairs for AEP Ohio. Additionally, the committee heard educational testimony from the Mike Long, Executive Director of the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio.

Mr. Hollback led off the day by providing the committee an overview AEP’s customer base and delivery capacity. According to Hollback, AEP delivers electricity to more than 5 million customers (in 11 states). AEP Ohio provides electricity to nearly 1.5 million customers.

Hollback skillfully asserted AEP’s views on alternative energy. His testimony made clear that AEP Ohio supports a diverse, clean energy portfolio and policies that provide domestic energy independence, and affordable reliable electricity for its customers; reliable electric supply at reasonable prices is critical to develop and deploy a full suite of supply side and demand side management, renewable energy sources, expanded nuclear capacity, advanced coal generating technologies and carbon capture and storage; policies to accelerate deployment of renewables as long as it has assurances that it can fully and contemporaneously recover its investment in generation, long term power purchases, and transmission that is needed to move power to its customers (AEP opposes mandatory technologies with arbitrary schedules—as they are not conducive to natural market developments and reasonable pricing); investment recovery is paramount, as are economic incentives that reduce deployment costs of renewables; AEP Ohio considers demand side management and energy efficiency programs to be alternative energy sources that justify recovery of investment; policies should recognize that all technologies might be able to provide power to Ohio consumers, and it may be more economic to import renewable power from outside the state (an idea not fully appreciated and shared by Chairman McGregor and other members of the committee).

The second and final presentation of the day was the Green Jobs Agenda presented by Mike Long, Executive Director of the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO). SWACO is one of Ohio’s 52 public solid waste districts. The General Assembly created these districts in 1989 to help reduce our reliance on landfills. Go here to review Cuyahoga county and the other solid waste districts around the state. According to Mr. Long, SWACO’s mission is to reduce reliance on landfills by providing services and facilities such as transfer stations, drop off recycling services, household hazardous waste and composing facilities. In order to reduce landfill dependence, Franklin County currently sees a 27% recycling rate—their goal is an astonishing 90%!!

In addition to giving the environment a helping hand by reducing reliance on landfills, Mr. Long discussed the other two “E’s” in the SWACO model: Energy, in the form of waste as fuel and Economic Development evidenced and practiced by the SWACO Green Energy Center, Tech Columbus/ESP and the Resource Transformation Center.

Mr. Long concluded his remarks by providing an overview of what he called Ohio’s Biomass Agenda. In his remarks, Mr. Long referenced a recent report by Ohio’s Department of Development that, among other things, reported that Ohioans are concerned about depletion of fossil fuels and global warming. The report also asserts that more than half of Ohioans disagree that nothing much can be done about environmental problems. A surprising finding by the report was that Ohioans express a willingness to pay extra for renewable sources of energy.

Mr. Long made various recommendations to the committee for moving forward the biomass agenda in Ohio. Long suggested the implementation of a “green jobs tax credit” that would attract existing biomass companies, growing start-up biomass companies with energy innovation grants and a waste to fuel pilot project, and the creating demand for recycled products with a renewable energy standard, a 50% mandated recycling goal (within 5 years), a sales tax exemption for use of recycled commercial goods and equipment, and a mandate for state government to use recycled products. Lastly, Long asserted that regulatory reform was needed in the form of streamlining siting requirements for biomass projects, clarifying that all biomass used for energy is “recycled material”, and reformation of interconnection standards to promote production and use of renewable energy.

I look forward to report what the intellectual heavyweights from Case have to say at tomorrow’s Alternative Energy hearing. As is always the case, the hearing will be held at the Statehouse in Room 122 at 11:00 a.m. Until then . . .

Gary Smith
Director, Government Affairs
Greater Cleveland Partnership