Please join us for the fifth of our Future Ohio 2076 Public Forums, a webinar series from America 250-Ohio, in partnership with Columbus Futurists. The topic will be “Ohio as an Energy-Rich State,” presented by Stephen M. Millett, Ph.D.
For more than two centuries, Ohio glowed as an energy-rich state that attracted businesses, mills, and factories. The energy forms, however, shifted over the years due to depletion, higher prices, new technologies and environmental concerns. Ohio went from chopping energy (forest wood) to mining it (coal), to piping it up from under the ground (natural gas and oil) to generating it (electricity). Today, Ohio faces a potential shortage of electricity to meet residential, industrial and data center demands. Ohio could regain its energy-rich status by making yet another shift, this time to manufacturing energy as solar panels, electric-generating windmills, advanced batteries, geothermal systems and fuel cells. The shift also involves less reliance on carbon and greater utilization of hydrogen. Such a transition would bring more industry back to Ohio with a renewed growth in the state’s population and economy.
