A wind turbine amid the downtown skyline on October 9, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio.
Credit: Joe Robbins/Getty

With no shortage of wide-open land, Ohio is ripe for a transition to renewable energy, but instead the state has become a hotbed for corporate-driven attacks on wind energy. As a result of increasingly restrictive laws on renewables, the state was recently ranked second to last among U.S. states in its renewable energy generation, with only 2.3 percent of its energy generated through renewable sources.

A closer look at the workings of the anti-wind-energy movement in Ohio offers a glimpse of the dynamics that are also at work to suppress wind energy generation elsewhere throughout the country.

One of the most recent attacks on wind energy in Ohio came in July, when the Ohio state legislature passed a bill that essentially neutralized renewable energy standards and bailed out dying coal plants, all under the guise of maintaining a free market and helping ratepayers. The bill, HB 6, was called the “worst energy bill of the 21st century” […]