William Spratley: Obviously we haven't been on the map, especially three years ago. It's really exciting that as Cleveland hosts this huge event, this huge national event we now see that Ohio is really poised to move forward with renewable energy.
Poised, but not moving very quickly compared to other states, according to Spratley. He says Ohio's public policy on renewable energy has lagged far behind Pennsylvania, New York and California, to name a few. He and other industry proponents would like to see the Ohio legislature follow those states' lead, and enact what's known as a renewable portfolio standard.
William Spratley: It's the idea that a percentage of the power has to come from renewable energy, starting with a small percentage. That will help to drive the marketplace. That marketplace will help to attract factories into Ohio where it should be, where we're already making a lot of component part and shipping them to another part of the country around the world. I go around the state saying Ohio is a sleeping giant. We need to wake up. Ohio has the skilled work force, it has the need to clean up its electrical supply. Our big utilities are already doing this, First Energy is doing wind and solar over in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, they know how to do it. They just haven't been required to do it here in Ohio.
The conference will include technical presentations, speeches, workshops, policy forums… Spratley sees the event as having real potential as a catalyst for policy changes, especially since democrats, running partly on a renewable energy platform, regained most of the state's top offices. He lists a line-up of speakers representing interests that are enjoying more attention since the election last November.
William Spratley: We have the governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, who will be among the speakers there. We also have what we call the unholy blue-green alliance, the unholy alliance of labor unions and the environmental movement, because of the jobs that we see can be created that frankly are going to other states. We're going to have representatives from Pennsylvania, which has just brought a thousand new jobs to Pennsylvania to put up wind turbines and deploy solar. The message I think from this whole conference will be: how do we put people to work making renewable energy, and getting people involved in energy efficiency. That's where we have a big benefit, and of course the huge benefit will be to our environment, particularly in a big state like Ohio that gets 90 percent of its electrical power from coal.
Granted, Spratley says, Ohio has some catching up to do, and he says his group has already done the groundwork for getting started.
William Spratley: At the very end of the conference, on the last day on July 14th, on Thursday at the closing luncheon we're going to unveil a kind of first-ever study. It will really analyze using rigorous definitions, where we are, what the energy efficiency and renewable energy industry really looks like in Ohio, and America, using Ohio as a case study. Unfortunately until our federal government steps up to this is going to be led state by state. And it's time now for Ohio to step up.
And if or when it does, Spratley says, Cleveland and Northeast Ohio could be poised to lead the way.
William Spratley: We have the skilled work force, we have the people who need jobs, we have the educational institutions. If you look at the grass roots, of the individuals in the business community, in government, the foundations - all of these are stepping up, and I think as the green movement grows Cleveland can be a leading city - it already is, in my opinion - for the whole state of Ohio.
That's William Spratley, Executive Director of Green Energy Ohio, on helping Ohio become a renewable energy leader. GEO is a chief organizer of this year's National Solar Energy Conference, which convenes this weekend in downtown Cleveland.