Ohio’s transformation into a natural gas state is truly astonishing. The best way to see this is to look at data from the United States Energy Information Administration, a federal agency and part of the Department of Energy charged with collecting, analyzing, and disseminating energy information in the United States.
Looking at energy production in Ohio, we can see that total energy production in the state was steadily declining from the 1970s to the 2000s. Then, something amazing happened in the 2010s: fracking. New ways were found to tap into natural gas in the state, and energy production shot up to a rate twice as high as Ohio has ever experienced before.
The incredible thing is that this happened over less than a decade. Natural gas production went from only 8% of total energy production in the state in 2012 to nearly 80% in 2018.
It may seem here like natural gas is crowding out coal, crude oil, nuclear and renewables, and in one sense, it is. Natural gas production in 2018 accounted for more energy production than most single-year total energy production of all energy sources combined in Ohio. But nuclear and nonrenewable production in Ohio was also at its highest in 2018 compared to any other year, and coal and oil was down to a quarter of its peak in the 1970s.
While these numbers help us understand the energy breakdown of Ohio, it does not tell us much about costs borne to society, which is the relevant statistic for policymakers. Natural gas tends to emit much less carbon than coal and oil, but more than nuclear and renewable energy. However, higher production means more carbon emissions even if cleaner options are being used.
Some analyses tend to say that Ohio has reduced carbon emissions in production, even if it has not on the consumption side, since so much of this energy is exported from the state. Research we conducted this year has suggested that renewable portfolio standards, cap-and-trade, and carbon taxes could all be effective in reducing carbon emissions in the state. Interesting to policymakers, too, should be the impact of local emissions on public health and productivity, a topic we would love to delve into at another time.