State must protect reliable energy
From consumers paying low prices at gas pumps to increased economic growth and job creation, our country’s energy revolution continues to have a positive domino effect across the map.
Ohio has entered a manufacturing revitalization. Our factories lead the nation in the production of plastics and rubber, fabricated metals, electrical equipment and appliances. In our region, we have seen tremendous growth since the end of the Great Recession. Ohio is now home to more than 1,800 manufacturers, employing 80,000 people. This growth has been partly attributed to affordable, reliable natural gas that is so prevalent here — the same natural gas we use to heat our homes throughout winter. It is also the same natural gas that we are all leaning on more heavily to power our lives at home and at work with electricity.
Manufacturers across our state are all too familiar with how energy impacts their opportunity to remain competitive and pay family-supporting wages and their employees know how energy impacts their family’s finances, especially as we prepare for the winter months. With Ohio’s long, cold winters, home heating is not something that Ohioans can simply choose to cut back on, even if money is tight.
Despite the progress we’re making here in Ohio, anti-development activists want to stop production and transmission of energy in Ohio. Something that would cause an abrupt end to the manufacturing revitalization that is just getting started. It would also further disadvantage the most vulnerable of Ohioans — individuals and families living in poverty, who spend a disproportionate amount of their income on energy. We cannot forget this group and our elected leaders in Ohio and around the country have an obligation to reject these anti-development efforts to help those at risk.
Although these antidevelopment groups want you to believe that it’s the environment or nothing, fortunately we don’t have to choose. Through stringent environmental regulations and innovation — especially here in Ohio — we can have a clean environment and responsible energy production. Companies have created new technologies that have advanced the energy industry, and helped improve energy efficiency, while integrating more renewable energy resources onto our grid.
In the spirit of finding solutions that meet our goals for both affordable energy and the environment, Consumer Energy Alliance launched Campaign for America’s Energy, an initiative that fosters public discussion around the consequences that bad energy policies have on families and businesses across our state. We look forward to working with the alliance to help educate the public about how Ohio’s manufacturers are taking advantage of the affordable, reliable energy being produced here to employ more Ohioans who build products that families across our state and the nation need.
Let’s band together and secure our future by getting the facts out about Ohio’s energy, the consequences for our families and businesses if we abandon it, and the need for policymakers to make decisions on energy that protect Ohio’s jobs, economy and communities. The time to act is now. Executive director Ohio Cast Metals Association Columbus Amanda