Ohio government and industry leaders have been asking for years about the size and makeup of the 'green'-energy work force. A state agency two years ago commissioned a report on the subject that sought to be more thorough than any before and was to be available to the public. The report was completed and never released, its existence unknown to all but a few people.

A state agency paid almost $435,000 for a survey to tally clean-energy jobs in Ohio but never released the results.

The Ohio Development Services Agency says the study went unused because it was based on dubious methods and came to flawed conclusions.

Others, including experts in survey methods, disagree with this assessment and are perplexed by the criticism.

The report, not seen by the public until today, sat on a shelf at a time when its subject matter was relevant to a heated legislative debate about whether to change standards for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

�We did not want to put bad data out from our agency,� explained Lyn Tolan, the agency�s chief for policy and communication.

The agency waited for about a year before raising those concerns with the research firm, doing so only after T he Dispatch began asking about the report.

Also, public records show that state staff members were mostly pleased with the study when it was completed last year, and then the topic was dropped abruptly, with no explanation.

This turn of events is in contrast to a few years ago when Ohio officials were nearly obsessed with so-called green jobs, part of a national trend in economic development that saw a potential for growth in wind, solar and other types of renewable energy. Despite this enthusiasm, officials lacked some key information. They had no definition of a green job and no reliable count of how many were in the state.

The Development Services Agency commissioned the study in 2012 to help fill this void. �Accurate job data is critical in the evaluation of current programs and policies and the identification of industry sectors facing retraction and expansion,� said an internal memo from February 2013 about the study�s results.

Since then, the agency employees who worked most closely on the project have moved on to other jobs.

The study, obtained by The Dispatch, was conducted by ICF International of Fairfax, Va., and Wright State University near Dayton.

Among its findings:

� Ohio had 31,322 jobs in the state�s �alternative energy economy� as of 2012, a number that is larger than other commonly cited studies.

� More than one-third of the jobs were for goods and services related to energy efficiency.

� Solar power was tied to more jobs (5,619) than any other renewable-energy source.

Each one of those points could have been relevant in the recent debate over Senate Bill 310, signed by Gov. John Kasich in June. The measure puts a two-year freeze on state standards for renewable energy and energy efficiency, and it makes a variety of other changes that critics say will damage the state�s green economy.

During the debate over the bill, opponents repeatedly said that 25,000 jobs were at stake, a statistic from a 2012 study commissioned by a trade group for green-energy companies. The opponents did not know that the state had paid for a survey that says the industry is 25 percent larger.

The report would have hurt the case of legislative Republicans who wanted to pass the bill, said Dan Sawmiller, a staff member for the Sierra Club�s Beyond Coal Campaign.

�Clearly, this report was buried because it�s damaging to Kasich�s energy agenda,� he said.

The agency dismisses those claims as speculation.

�Nobody here was trying to hide anything,� Tolan said.

She says it is misleading to say the report was not released.

�We provided the document promptly to you and others who requested it. The confusion may be between �release� and �publicize,�??� she said.

The project was initiated in 2012 by the agency�s energy section, which was then led by Chadwick Smith and his deputy, Christina O�Keeffe. Both resigned in 2013 and declined to comment.

The agency selected ICF in a competitive bidding process. ICF is one of the country�s largest research and consulting firms dealing with energy issues and has done much work in Ohio. The company then contracted with Wright State to provide some of the research.

As of February 2013, ICF had completed the report and agency staff expected that it would be released to the public, according to records.

But then email communication about the report stops.

Some of the last messages are about an upcoming meeting with Craig Butler, who was then Kasich�s top policy adviser and is now director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

Asked about the meeting, Butler issued the following statement through a spokesman:

�I was briefed on the findings for the report by (the Development Services Agency) and the contractor in February 2013 and there were no discussions about plans to release the report in that meeting,� he said. �I had no other role moving forward and DSA made all further decisions on the reportafter the final briefing meeting.�

About a week after the meeting with Butler, Smith said in an email to his staff members that they would meet soon to discuss next steps and come up with �talking points about the costs.� If there were any prior concerns about costs, they did not show up in emails or memos.

That was the last message Smith sent about the report before he left the agency a few months later.

The report�s final cost was $434,800, most of which came from a federal grant. It is difficult to say whether this is a large amount because there is no other recent study of similar subject matter and scope.

Smith is now executive director of the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority, a state office that helps businesses finance projects to reduce air pollution. O�Keeffe is director of energy programs for the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.

Only one former agency employee, Mark Wantage, agreed to speak on the record.

�I thought it was a good report,� he said. �I thought it was a good process.�

He was one of the half-dozen or so people who worked most closely on the project. He was fired from the agency in April 2013 because of a dispute unrelated to the report, and he is now suing the state for wrongful termination and alleged violations of family-leave rules.

He doesn�t know why the report was not released. �It pretty much died on the vine,� he said.

Tolan, the agency spokeswoman, said the main flaw with the report is that its authors surveyed all businesses to identify the roughly 15 percent that had clean-energy jobs. This meant there was a �lack of a relevant sample,� she said.

She also pointed to several emails as evidence that state staff members had problems with the way ICF was conducting the work.

For example, one staff member said in a Feb. 1, 2013, email that he had �concerns over the objectivity of the analysis.� In response to those concerns, ICF made changes to the report before its completion.

Tolan�s comments about sampling methods are puzzling to several outside experts who say researchers need to survey an entire population to determine the size of a subset of the group.

�That objection makes absolutely no sense,� said Bill Lafayette, owner of economic consulting firm Regionomics in Columbus, who regularly reviews surveys of this type.

Mark Partridge, an Ohio State University economist, said he is skeptical of studies that attempt to estimate the size of �an ill-defined sector� such as the green economy. As such studies go, however, he thinks this one was competently done. �I think this study is better than average and it is apparent that they didn�t waste money,� he said.

Jane Dockery, the project leader at Wright State, was unaware of the agency�s concerns until she was told by a reporter. She is associate director of the school�s Center for Urban and Public Affairs.

�I just thought everything was fine,� she said, adding that ICF is �the gold standard� for this type of analysis.

The report was completed in February 2013 and the state paid the contractor and indicated the project had been completed successfully.

The state waited for more than a year, until March 2014, before it sent ICF a letter raising concerns and requesting a refund. That was shortly after The Dispatch received a tip about the report and requested a copy of any document covering this subject matter and any related correspondence.

The agency soon provided the report, but took another few months to fulfill the rest of the records request. The final release was on the afternoon of Friday, June 13, the day Kasich signed S.B. 310, which freezes green-energy standards. Tolan says this timing was coincidental.

The agency has asked for a partial refund from ICF and hopes to resolve the situation without going to court, Tolan said.

An ICF spokesman issued a brief statement, saying the company stands by its work and continues to try to understand the state�s concerns.

ICF and the state have now traded a series of letters, the most recent of which was sent last week by ICF.

�It remains unclear to us why, more than a year after the project was completed and accepted, questions about our performance have arisen,� said the letter, signed by Dennis McGrath, ICF�s director of contracts.

�Since the program personnel with whom we worked are no longer with the agency, it would appear those questions are coming from individuals who had no involvement in the program, its delivery or its acceptance.�

The timeline

Important dates related to the release of the state�s �green�- jobs report:

� Early 2012: The Department of Development identifies a need to get more information about employment in renewable energy and energy efficiency. The agency decides to do this by conducting a survey with the intention of releasing it to the public.

� March 16, 2012: The agency drafts a request for outside contractors to bid to do the survey.

� July 24, 2012: The agency notifies ICF International of Fairfax, Va., that it has been selected to do the study. ICF then hires Wright State University as a subcontractor.

� Oct. 22, 2012: ICF and Wright State send out a survey to Ohio companies asking them to tally green jobs and other information.

� Nov. 2012: The Ohio General Assembly begins looking at revising or even canceling state standards for renewable energy and energy efficiency. This was the beginning of 19 months of sometimes acrimonious debate that pitted majority Republicans against green-energy advocates.

� Jan. 31, 2013: ICF delivers a draft report and the agency suggests revisions. ICF makes the revisions and submits a final draft in mid-February.

� Feb. 21, 2013: Chadwick Smith, director of the energy section at Development Services, holds a meeting with Craig Butler, the top policy adviser to Gov. John Kasich, to discuss results of the jobs study.

� March 1, 2013: Smith sends a message to the project team saying it will schedule a meeting to brainstorm �talking points about the costs� of the study. This is the last message he sent about the project before leaving the agency a few months later.

� Feb. 20, 2014: The Dispatch asks the agency for any report and related correspondence about the economic implications of Senate Bill 221, a 2008 law that deals with the clean-energy economy. The request was based on a tip about what turned out to be the ICF report.

� March 12, 2014: The agency sends a letter to ICF saying the company�s work was inadequate and requests a refund.

� March 31, 2014: The agency provides the ICF report to The Dispatch and says it is still working on providing other documents related to the report.

� April 3, 2014: ICF replies in a letter, saying the agency�s claims appear to be baseless.

� June 13, 2014: Kasich signs Senate Bill 310, which places a two-year freeze on state standards for renewable energy and energy efficiency. That same afternoon, Development Services releases several thousand pages of documents related to the ICF report, fulfilling the request made in February.

Source: Dispatch research

dgearino@dispatch.com

@DanGearino