Ohio’s alternative energy push (in the form of H.B. 357, partial summary):

Advanced energy

• Requires the Director of Development to establish the Ohio Advanced Energy Manufacturing Center to assist with the design of, development of, and investment in advanced energy projects, training programs, and manufacturing technologies and creates the Ohio Advanced Energy Manufacturing Center Board to direct the Center’s activities and to assist in developing advanced energy projects in the state.

Wind energy development

• Requires the Director of Natural Resources to make available for leasing the bed of Lake Erie for the purpose of wind energy development.

Oil and gas development

• Repeals all existing authority for state agencies to enter into oil and natural gas leases, and creates the Oil and Gas Leasing Board, and declares that the Board has exclusive authority to lease any portion of developed land for the purpose of the exploration for, development of, and production of oil or natural gas.

Motor vehicle registration tax increase

• Increases the motor vehicle registration tax by $5, and requires the increase to be used by municipal corporations, counties, and townships to improve and maintain traffic control signals at intersections, and the equipment that controls them in order to improve traffic flow to minimize wasting fuel by motor vehicles at those inter-sections.

Energy efficiency standards

• Requires electric distribution utilities and the Director of Development to implement annual energy-efficiency measures that achieve specified annual electricity savings.
  
  
• Requires electric distribution utilities to implement cost-effective measures to annually decrease peak electricity demand or shift demand to off-peak periods.
  
  
• Requires each electric distribution utility to implement approximately 75 percent of energy-efficiency measures under an energy-efficiency and peak-demand reduction plan, and requires the Director to implement the rest.

Renewable energy requirements

• Requires a generation supplier that supplies electric generation service in the state to derive a specified percentage of its total retail electric sales from specified renewable energy sources.
  
  
• Establishes a calendar year schedule listing the minimum percentage of a generation supplier’s total retail electric sales that must come from specified renewable energy sources, increasing by 2 percent each year from 2 percent in 2010 to 22 percent in 2020 and in each subsequent year.
  
  
• Requires the PUCO to establish a system of renewable energy credits to be awarded to generation suppliers that exceed the minimum requirement for total retail electric sales from renewable energy, and requires the PUCO to develop a renewable energy credit registry that generally tracks the price and status of renew-able energy credits.
  
• Permits the PUCO, for the purpose of paying facility design and construction costs of a fuel cell facility, to authorize the collection of a surcharge on the retail electric rates of customers receiving electricity from a generation supplier that constructs a fuel cell facility with a generating capacity of 30 kilowatts or less of electricity or that purchases electricity from an entity that constructs such a facility.

Miscellaneous provisions

• Ensures that the use of clotheslines for drying clothes is an option that is available to persons in this state.
  
  
• Transfers control and management of 30,000 acres of right-of-way located along state and interstate freeways from the Department of Transportation to the Department of Natural Resources, and requires the latter Department to plant on those acres vegetation that contributes to the beautification of the freeways and vegetation that, when harvested, can be processed into the fuel cellulosic ethanol.

Thanks to Rep. Lorraine Fende for the foregoing

The Fund for our Economic Future sees opportunity for the region in three key areas:

1. Partner with local business leaders, public officials, work force intermediaries, higher education leaders, and the state to restructure our region’s workforce development system so it better meets the needs of our growing employers.
   
   
2. Enhance our region’s public university assets to improve our ability to compete for world-class talent and expand our research and commercialization capacity.
   
   
3. Develop revenue sharing and land-use practices that enable all of our region’s communities to share in and benefit from Northeast Ohio’s economic growth.

To accelerate and enhance the effectiveness of Advance Northeast Ohio the Fund has hired Laura Steinbrink at Director of Regional Partnerships. She will be working closely with our partners in Advance Northeast Ohio to develop and implement the initiatives of the plan.

Feel free to contact her at any time at lsteinbrink@futurefundneo.org or at 216-615-7583.

Fund for Our Economic Future,
Bradley W. Whitehead, President

Bwhitehehead@futurefundneo.org

11/28/07

Note: Our region’s bioscience companies have attracted more than $210 million in investment capital this year - making Northeast Ohio one of the nation’s top places for emerging health care companies.