The Energy Debacle in Ohio
The Libertarian Party stands for free markets. Free markets require fair competition. When we have free markets we get innovation. Innovation solves new problems. Climate change is one of these problems that will require innovation to solve.
In the state of Ohio, we have what can only be described as the opposite of a free market in energy, stunting the innovation in green technologies that a free market would make possible.
JD Vance is Vice President now, which means he is no longer serving as a Senator from Ohio. Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine appointed a new Republican Senator, former Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted, to represent them.
“[Ohio Governor Mike] DeWine selected Husted to replace Vance on Friday, January 24, after weeks of deliberating that involved multiple visits to Trump’s home in Florida,” according to MSN. After his swearing-in ceremony, “Husted declined to speak to the media.”
Husted had his fingerprints all over a piece of 2019 legislation that had subsidized coal power plants, sending money from the state government directly to produce coal power. At the same time, Ohio reduced subsidies for renewable energy. Once again, the state is choosing winners and losers, and Husted is all for it.
The biggest political scandal in Ohio history involved a nuclear energy bailout passed in the same piece of legislation. The fallout ended in the suicide of the Chair of Ohio’s Public Utilities Commission and 20-year prison sentence for the former Speaker of the State House.
According to Cleveland Scene, “Former House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges [were] on trial for alleged racketeering in a scheme where FirstEnergy paid $61 million in exchange for a $1.3 billion bailout of its failing nuclear and coal plants. But the surreptitious recordings and other testimony showed that the rot spread far more widely.”
We haven’t heard of any such shady dealings regarding the coal bailout portion of that legislation, but environmentalist groups are asking for audits of the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies it has directed to coal plants, with payments expected to reach $850 million by 2030. Either way, the coal plants remain unprofitable.
More recently, the state government has passed legislation allowing counties to place absolute bans on commercial wind and solar projects. This is obviously a move by the Ohio government to promote one form of energy over others, despite what consumers may want. At present, the state is spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on unprofitable coal plants while allowing total bans on wind and solar projects.
“At least 10 Ohio counties have passed resolutions blocking the development of new utility scale wind and solar projects within all or part of their jurisdictions in the last year.” reports the Ohio Capital Journal.
As a party, Libertarians have always been decisively against bailouts. And to make matters worse, in Ohio’s case, we are witnessing not only a bailout, but flat-out bans on more sustainable energy competitors.
Like I said, the Libertarian Party is all about free markets. First, bailouts—in which the government directly funds a failing business, such as an unprofitable coal plant—are definitively anti-free market. Second, a free market exists when all parties play by the same rules. It’s easy to see that in Ohio’s case, Husted has endorsed different rules for different forms of energy, favoring one form over the other. I mean, they subsidize fossil fuels and ban renewables.
Ohio needs a free market for energy solutions—no more state-sponsored fossil fuels. Not only do we believe in free markets on principle, we also know that only a free market can provide affordable, efficient, diverse solutions for climate change. That’s why it’s so crucial—and why Husted’s moves are so wrong-headed.
The GOP are not friends of liberty. They are just as much in favor of big government as the Democrats, only now in favor of conservative interests. Even conservative interest groups lobby for big business handouts.
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