Kim Smith

Opinion contributor

I know a company considering investing hundreds of millions of dollars into rural Ohio, getting concrete trucks rolling, while providing money to Ohio landowners that gives them the financial security to keep their property as farmland, instead of selling it to someone who’d carve it into subdivisions or turn it into a massive warehouse of storage lockers. It’s my company, and if it happens, I’ll get my first project in my home state.

If the Ohio Senate passes House Bill 6, I likely won’t be coming home for work any time soon.

I build renewable energy projects. By the end of this year, my teams will have added over a gigawatt of truly clean energy across the United States and Canada. When I visit my sites after they have been completed, here’s what I see: corn, soybean, wheat, sorghum, cotton, cattle, dairy cows. I see landowners who’ve made property improvements with their lease payments, and I talk with school administrators who use the added tax revenue from the projects to advance local education at rural schools.

In Lena, Illinois, for example, local taxes generated by our wind farm have helped support a field trip program for the local elementary school. Additionally, my company has awarded $80,000 in college scholarships to students from Lena area high schools since 2011. Nationwide, we have awarded more than $250,000 in scholarships to students from rural school districts in Illinois, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas. But to date, I haven’t had the chance to build in Ohio.

The benefits of local renewable energy projects are catching on. Across the United States, states are opening their doors to renewable energy. It’s happening in Democratic States like Illinois, Minnesota and New Mexico. It’s happening in Republican states like Texas and South Carolina. It’s happening in purple states like Colorado and Nevada. But while all those states are moving towards the future, Ohio, is considering turning its back on renewable energy to instead prop-up old, inefficient power plants, by asking consumers to once again pay for power plants that have already been paid off.

If Ohio closes the door on renewable energy, renewable energy companies will pivot to projects in other states. And that will mean billions in lost investment for rural Ohio communities.

As the Ohio Senate considers this energy policy proposal, my hope is that they’ll to listen to local county officials who are hoping for the added revenue that utility scale renewable energy projects can deliver, and that they hear the landowners who have already reached agreements with developers to bring projects to their land.

Renewable energy can help keep farmland as farmland. I grew up outside of Cincinnati in a construction family. I’m proud of everything I build. As a Buckeye to my core, it would be special to get to build in Ohio and preserve a piece of what makes us who we are.

I hope the Ohio Senate keeps the door open for renewable energy and rejects House Bill 6. I want a chance to show Ohioans what a wind project done well can mean to a whole community.

Kim Smith, a Milford native, is the vice president of Engineering & Construction at ACCIONA. She has more than 30 years of experience in the energy industry.