The now-defunct energy behemoth, Enron, started the deregulation of energy craze in the United States in the 1990s. Ohio participated in this deregulation craze. Ohio has seen a massive increase in the cost of energy compared to other states that did not deregulate like Oklahoma and Tennessee. Ohio's energy costs have skyrocketed as energy input costs have declined. The combination of unregulated state wholesale electricity markets and federal deregulation of commodity exchanges has removed accountability and transparency from the energy sector, allowing corporations to manipulate price and supply of electricity and natural gas through the exercise of significant market power. Deregulation has allowed intermediaries to distort and bastardize the market and make false claims to unsuspecting consumers.

The result is high energy prices and fewer jobs = a shrinking Ohio population.

Competition was alive and well when Ohio's energy sector was regulated. Legislators made decisions that were in the best interest of Ohioans so that Ohio could compete with other states and other countries. Since deregulation, energy costs have skyrocketed as the focus on competition became internal to Ohio and no focus on the competition external to Ohio. PJM is a multi-state conglomerate that is Ohio's RTO (Regional Transmission Organization). PJM is not an elected body and does not act in Ohio's best interests and does not take into account the metrics within the markets they created needed to provide for a robust and secure grid.

Ohio needs to control its energy markets and distance itself from the unelected officials at PJM.

Re-regulating would allow Ohio to create energy markets that value the metrics that provide a robust supply of energy, that is clean, at a cheap price.

Ohio has lawyers and policy wonks managing its natural resources. Many professionals believe they are doing a spectacularly poor job. Like Texas, Ohio is rich in natural resources - mainly natural gas and coal. In Texas, the Texas Railroad Commission is in charge of managing the state's natural resources and getting the most value of those resources for Texans. Ohio needs a similar commission to regulate the oil and gas industry, gas utilities, pipeline safety, safety in the liquefied petroleum gas industry, rare earth element mining, and surface coal and uranium mining.

We advocate for a three-person commission - statewide popularly elected positions patterned after the Texas Railroad Commission.

Ohio should remove all mandates it has in place for energy companies to purchase wind and solar power. Mandated energy bastardizes the free-market. Ohio's Renewable Portfolio Standard does not help Ohio meet any clean clean energy goal or provide any benefit to the electrical grid. Specifying technologies instead of specifying goals only allows a company and industry to become complacent.

Unpredictable and intermittent energy sources are antithetical to cheap and clean energy as well as to global competition.

Creating a clean energy standard that allows all technologies to compete is much more advantageous to the consumer than to mandate specified technologies.