The Ohio State University
EN-14: Participation in Public Policy

Ohio State engages in public policy advocacy for sustainability when we determine that something pending is of significant interest or impacts our ability to effectively carry out our academic mission and/or has implications for our operations. The following are three recent examples of Ohio State’s public policy advocacy: (1)When the Ohio General Assembly passed legislation that placed an arbitrary restriction on the siting of wind turbines--without basing this on any scientific rationale-- Ohio State weighed in with both key legislative leaders and the Governor to express our concerns that such language would create an impediment to the construction of more wind farms in Ohio and thus an impediment to Ohio State possibly accessing additional sources of renewable energy in the future. (2) When legislation was introduced in the Ohio General Assembly to create a new state commission with oversight of leasing public lands for oil and gas development, Ohio State argued successful in the Ohio General Assembly to keep its authority over potential drilling on Ohio State property and to ensure that as long as we were using our property open to development for research and teaching proposes, that we would maintain control over revenue generated from hydrocarbon development on Ohio State property. (3) When Senator Rob Portman was working on legislation in Congress focused on energy efficiency, Ohio State provided extensive comments to the Senator’s office on the draft legislation and subsequently our then Vice President for Energy and Environment wrote an op-ed published in the Columbus Dispatch supporting the legislation as introduced.