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WASHINGTON, DC — “An energy policy wave swept across the Midwest a decade ago as seven states adopted laws from 2006 to 2009 requiring utilities to add increasing amounts of wind and solar energy.
The aim of the clean energy mandates was clear — to slash greenhouse gases and other power plant emissions and generate new jobs and investment.
A decade later, most utilities in states with renewable portfolio standards are either meeting or on track to meet the targets.
…Even in Ohio, where a legislative compromise has been proposed that would lower the state’s 12.5 percent renewable standard in 2026 to 8.5 percent by 2022, some renewable energy developers are more focused on undoing wind turbine siting restrictions put in place in 2014.
In some ways, Ohio has been the poster child for the debate over RPS policies, with some Republican legislators continuing a yearslong push to either roll back or freeze the state’s 2008 renewable standard — an effort that triggered a veto from Republican Gov. John Kasich in 2016.
Trish Demeter of the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund said earlier this month before a hearing on the proposed bill that the ideological arguments around the RPS law obscure the reality of what’s happening in the market.”
— Jeffrey Tomich, E&E News