Ohio has strong opportunities to develop wind, biomass and solar power, which provide environmental benefits, improved reliability, and economic development in the growing renewable energy business sector. Furthermore, Ohio can develop new efficient natural gas generation, such as CHP. Together, the opportunities shown in Figure 3 could supply 11 percent of Ohio's generation capacity by 2010, and 24 percent by 2020.

The Clean Energy Development Plan can be realized at a modest cost, as energy efficiency savings offset the cost of new generation. In Ohio, it would increase overall electricity costs by about 1.5 percent in 2010, and 3.4 percent in 2020.

Smart policies can overcome the many market and regulatory barriers that energy efficiency and renewable resources face. Ohio has already adopted some important policies to promote clean power options, but more must be done to succeed. The key policy actions to achieve the Clean Energy Development Plan in are to:

1. Increase Ohio's Energy Efficiency Investment Fund to 0.3¢/kWh.
2. Manage the Energy Efficiency Investment Fund by an independent third-party administrator overseen by an independent board composed of regulators, state energy offices, and consumer, efficiency and environmental advocates.
3. Evaluate and update Ohio's efficiency standards and building codes. Establish or reinforce monitoring and enforcement practices.
4. Establish an Ohio Renewables Portfolio Standard that requires all retail electricity sellers to provide eight percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2010, and 20 percent by 2020.
5. Ensure that transmission pricing policies and power pooling practices treat renewable resources fairly and account for their intermittent nature, remote locations, or smaller scale.
6. Remove barriers to clean distributed generation by: (1) establishing standard business and interconnection terms; (2) establishing uniform safety and power quality standards to facilitate safe and economic interconnection to the electricity system; and (3) applying clean air standards to small distributed generation sources, thereby promoting clean power technologies, and discouraging highly polluting diesel generators.