IMPACTS OF THE REIMAGINE APPALACHIA & CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION PROGRAMS FOR OHIO Job Creation, Economic Recovery, and Long-Term Sustainability By Robert Pollin, Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Shouvik Chakraborty, and Gregor Semieniuk Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) University of Massachusetts-Amherst OCTOBER 2020 Acknowledgments This project was commissioned by The Heinz Endowments, the Community Foundation of the Alleghenies, Policy Matters Ohio, the Keystone Research Center and the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. We greatly appreciate their financial support as well as the fact that they respected our terms of engagement. Those terms included full autonomy in draft- ing the study and reaching the conclusions presented here. The study benefitted substantially from discussions with Ted Boettner of the Ohio River Valley Institute and formerly of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, Stephen Herzenberg of the Keystone Research Center and Amanda Woodrum of Policy Matters Ohio. We also benefitted from the outstanding research assistance from Ray Caraher, Emily Diaz-Loar, Caitlin Kline, Chirag Lala, and Anamika Sen. Kim Weinstein produced this wonderfully readable document out of our multiple cyber- piles of text and tables. PERI’s Administrative Director Nicole Dunham provides a bedrock of support for all of our research work. PERI: IMPACTS OF THE REIMAGINE APPALACHIA & CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION PROGRAMS FOR OHIO / 2020 II Table of Contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................................................................................................II Summary of Study .................................................................................................................................................................................................1 PART 1: PANDEMIC, ECONOMIC COLLAPSE, AND CONDITIONS FOR REOPENING OHIO ..................................................7 The Pandemic in Ohio ................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Ohio’s Economic Collapse ...........................................................................................................................................................10 Conditions for Reopening Ohio’s Economy ............................................................................................................................14 PART 2: CLEAN ENERGY INVESTMENTS, JOB CREATION, AND JUST TRANSITION .........................................................17 Ohio’s Existing Clean Energy Policies .....................................................................................................................................18 Energy Sources and CO₂ Emissions for Ohio ..........................................................................................................................20 What Is Clean Energy? .................................................................................................................................................................24 Prospects for Energy Efficiency .................................................................................................................................................28 Prospects for Clean Renewable Energy ..................................................................................................................................30 Determinants of Ohio’s CO₂ Emission Levels ..........................................................................................................................33 Achieving a 50 Percent Emissions Reduction by 2030.......................................................................................................37 Clean Energy Investments and Job Creation .........................................................................................................................43 Just Transition for Fossil Fuel-Based Industry Workers ......................................................................................................58 Transition Programs for Fossil Fuel Industry Dependent Communities ........................................................................70 Achieving a Zero Emissions Economy by 2050 ......................................................................................................................76 PART 3: INVESTMENT PROGRAMS FOR MANUFACTURING, INFRASTRUCTURE, LAND RESTORATION, AND AGRICULTURE .............................................................................................................................82 PART 4: TOTAL JOB CREATION IN OHIO THROUGH COMBINED INVESTMENTS ...............................................................94 PART 5: FINANCING A FAIR AND SUSTAINABLE RECOVERY ...............................................................................................97 Appendix 1: Employment Estimating Methodology .................................................................................................................................105 Appendix 2: Estimating Job Characteristics for Clean Energy and Fossil Fuel Industry Jobs ..............................................................108 Endnotes ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................110 References ........................................................................................................................................................................................................116 About the Authors..........................................................................................................................................................................123 PERI: IMPACTS OF THE REIMAGINE APPALACHIA & CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION PROGRAMS FOR OHIO / 2020 III SUMMARY OF STUDY The COVID-19 pandemic has generated severe public health and economic impacts in Ohio, as with most everywhere else in the United States. This study proposes a recovery program for Ohio that is capable of exerting an effective counterforce against the state’s economic collapse in the short run while also building a durable foundation for an economi- cally viable and ecologically sustainable longer-term recovery. Even under current pandemic conditions, we cannot forget that we have truly limited time to take decisive action around climate change. As we show, a robust climate stabilization project for Ohio will also serve as a major engine of economic recovery and expanding opportunities throughout the state. The study is divided into five parts: 1. Pandemic, Economic Collapse, and Conditions for Reopening Ohio 2. Clean Energy Investments, Job Creation and Just Transition 3. Investment Programs for Manufacturing, Infrastructure, Land Restoration and Agriculture 4. Total Job Creation in Ohio through Combined Investments 5. Financing a Fair and Sustainable Recovery Program The most detailed discussions are in Part 2. We develop here a clean energy investment project through which Ohio can achieve climate stabilization goals which are in alignment with those set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018—that is, to reduce CO2 emissions by 45 percent as of 2030 and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. We show how these two goals can be accomplished in Ohio through large-scale in- vestments to dramatically raise energy efficiency standards in the state and to equally dramat- ically expand the supply of clean renewable energy supplies, primarily including solar, wind, low-emissions bioenergy, geothermal and small-scale hydro power. We also show how this climate stabilization program for Ohio can serve as a major new engine of job creation and economic well-being throughout the state, both in the short- and longer run. We estimate that, as an average over 2021 – 2030, a clean energy investment program scaled at about $21 billion year will generate roughly 165,000 per year in Ohio. In Part 3, we present investment programs for Ohio in the areas of public infrastructure, manufacturing, land restoration and agriculture. Specific investment areas include manufac- turing R&D, broadband development, regenerative agriculture, and plugging orphaned oil and gas wells. We have scaled this overall set of investments at $7 billion per year over 2021 – 2030, equal to about 1 percent of Ohio’s 2019 GDP. We estimate that the full program would generate about 70,000 jobs per year in the state. Overall, as we highlight in the brief Part 4, the combination of investments in clean energy, manufacturing/infrastructure, and land restoration/agriculture will therefore cre- ate about 235,000 jobs in Ohio, while providing the foundation for a long-term sustainable growth path for the state. This program builds from the Re-Imagine Appalachia Blueprint developed and endorsed by a wide range of organizations in the region.1 PERI: IMPACTS OF THE REIMAGINE APPALACHIA & CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION PROGRAMS FOR OHIO / 2020 1 This summary first provides a brief overview of the entire study. It then presents a more detailed set of highlights of the main findings of Part 2. Establishing effective public health interventions. This will generate hundreds of thousands of jobs through allowing the state to recover safely. The state’s