Jim Crawford: A look at energy

Did you know that nationally and here in Ohio, there is an energy management revolution underway, one that will, with innovation, both expand capacity to meet anticipated higher demand and hold real potential to reduce actual energy costs for everyone? 

While fossil fuels may currently be popular with this president and Republicans in Washington, solar, battery, and wind energy are at the core of the immediate future and are attracting funding at an incredible level (an estimated $100 B by 2030). 

Considering only 2025-2026 accomplishments and activity, all energy capacity growth in the U.S. (in Gigawatt Hours (GW) is coming from these sources: 

Solar: 50 percent new GW increase in power delivered. 

Battery: 28 percent new GW 

Wind: 13 percent new GW 

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Natural Gas: 7 percent new GW 

Multiple factors are driving this revolution, but none more than recent innovations in battery technology. Until 2020, the limitations of solar power were about storage. Solar generates energy in the daytime, but electrical demand happens between 4 and 8 p.m. daily, resulting in a loss of energy collected. 

But battery storage, about three hours in 2020, is averaging about four hours in 2025-26, and is expected to rise to eight hours by 2030. This allows a fundamental change in power management. Today, with older technologies, including coal and gas, energy on demand rises, and supply builds to meet peak demands. With battery storage, the power grid will be able to provide an almost immediate power response, increasing efficiency, reducing energy waste, speeding up delivery, and doing so at a lower cost per unit. 

In short, energy shortage is the fastest and least expensive way to increase capacity quickly, and batteries are at the forefront of this innovation. 

There are challenges to the newest battery technologies, both in terms of materials needed and political realities. 

The materials needed include cobalt and lithium, most importantly. Cobalt is supplied largely, about 75 percent, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and that is an unreliable source currently. Further, China is the predominant refiner of raw cobalt for industrial use, connecting the resource to international politics. Lithium has been found and mined in China, Chile and Australia, but new raw lithium sources have been found in California, Oregon, and Appalachia, the first eastern U.S. discovery. 

Politically, perhaps the biggest challenge facing this seismic energy revolution is Washington politics, where Republicans seem locked into fossil fuels, the most expensive, environmentally dangerous, and inefficient energy resources, while actively resisting the inevitable shift to the newer, better technologies, such as wind, solar, and battery technology. This backward policy is making the U.S. fall behind other nations in power generation, and the significant increase in connection and demand required to support both AI needs and consumer cost reductions. China, comparatively, is well ahead of the U.S. in all of these newer, more efficient technologies. This is a race we cannot afford to lose. 

Here, in Ohio, we face another serious challenge: the public resistance to solar panel farms, combined with the 2021 passage of Republican SN-52, which restricts the growth of solar “farms” significantly. As a result, only 2 percent of Ohio’s power generation is produced by solar energy, making Ohio a “slow growth” state for power innovation. This posture hurts job growth increases tax revenues, energy costs, and energy independence. Ohio imports about 25 percent of its energy today, placing the state at the mercy of pricing by out-of-state producers. 

In fairness, voters are concerned about reducing farmland for solar farms and about the impact of solar farms on property values. But there is also a political element here, one of Republican politics, where renewable energy is seen as unacceptable to MAGA core voters. 

It is time for innovation, better, cleaner energy at lower costs and savings for all Ohioans. 

— Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.