The Pace Energy and Climate Center (Center) is pleased to announce that on Wednesday, March 19, 2025, Janine Migden-Ostrander, one of the Center’s Institute for Energy Democracy Fellows, will join other energy experts in a roundtable to discuss how state power generation can keep pace with the trend toward increased electricity demand. The roundtable will focus on Central Ohio which is in a period of growth and has become a hub for data centers, like Intel, which use large quantities of electricity.
Energy forecasters are scrambling to ensure that there are adequate supplies of electricity. State officials and utilities in Ohio have been focusing on meeting the increased demand by adding more natural gas plants and encouraging fracking. They have also proposed legislation to expedite power plant siting review. In the roundtable discussion available virtually, and in-person at the Columbus Metropolitan Club, Janine Migden-Ostrander will offer an alternative view that promotes least cost options such as wind and solar, battery storage, and energy efficiency and demand response. She will argue that while Ohio has had smart meters throughout a large percentage of the state, utilities and regulators have not tapped into the benefits of using them to manage load and avoid high peak costs and forced blackouts. She will also argue that total reliance on natural gas plants will not benefit Ohio in the long run due to environmental impacts and costs and that the portfolio needs to be diversified to include legitimate clean energy sources.
For more details and to register: https://columbusmetroclub.org/event/all-amped-up-can-ohio-meet-its-future-energy-needs/
Janine Migden-Ostrander’s bio can be found at: https://energy.pace.edu/experts/
The Pace Energy and Climate Center is happy to announce that four Elisabeth Haub School of Law student interns have joined the Center for the Spring 2025 semester. The interns, Opeyemi Naimot Dawodu, Tamika Thomas, Elizabeth Wescoe, and Brooke Wood, will be working on a broad set of issues including district geothermal codes and associated municipal permitting, thermal energy networks, expanded use of geothermal by municipalities, and related training to be offered by the Center. They will also be researching legal approaches to improving indoor air quality in underserved communities, opportunities under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other international agreements to advance conflict resolution and collaboration on the climate crisis, and strategies to mediate domestic multi-stakeholder conflicts on renewable energy.
The interns will conduct research and writing, attend meetings, and assist with the ongoing work of the Center. The interns bring to the Center a range of experience and backgrounds, and we are very grateful that they have joined us. Their bios can be found here.
I’m honored to have joined the Pace Energy and Climate Center in January as its Interim Executive Director as we transition to the next permanent Executive Director. For four decades, under the leadership, vision, and wisdom of founder Dean Emeritus Richard Ottinger and successive Executive Directors, the Center has been a powerful voice on decarbonizing the energy sector, utility rate regulation to advance renewable energy and energy efficiency, solar markets, distributed energy resources, microgrids, energy justice, international energy policy, and other strategies to address climate change.
The Center has made advances in these areas by establishing and leading coalitions of organizations that share a common regulatory and policy agenda, participating in utility rate cases, issuing cutting-edge reports, partnering with government agencies and non-profits, and advising renewable energy companies and municipalities. Perhaps most importantly, through the Center’s innovative work, it has trained generations of law students who are now leaders in the field, as they transform the energy sector and tackle the climate crisis.
In the last several years, and continuing into 2025, the Center has maintained its leadership role through its innovative work on geothermal energy. The Center has been working with government partners to engage communities on district geothermal (also known as thermal energy networks), and is developing curriculum with its non-profit partners to train communities on regulatory options for geothermal energy development. The Center has also advised district-scale thermal energy developers and municipalities on regulatory requirements for geothermal energy.
In addition, the Center continues its long tradition of serving as a convenor in the field of renewable energy and energy efficiency, for example, by co-convening a coalition of clean energy organizations, and leading a network of clean energy and utility rate design experts. The Center also continues its work on community-scale solar, community choice aggregation and community distributed generation, with a particular focus on underserved communities.
Consistent with its long history of publishing groundbreaking reports in the clean energy field, the Center is poised to issue several reports on geothermal energy in the coming weeks and months. With the help of the Center’s Haub School of Law interns, we will profile some of these reports on this blog in the near future.
