The pattern has become unmistakable. While Ohio urgently needs new energy sources, Republican lawmakers continue systematically blocking solar projects across the state – and the Today in Ohio podcast says its because lawmakers are owned by the oil and gas industry.

In their latest episode, the podcast hosts dissected how the Ohio Power Siting Board rejected the Stark Solar project, a 150-megawatt solar farm backed by Samsung that would have generated $57 million in tax revenue over 40 years and powered tens of thousands of homes.

“This is part of a pretty clear pattern now,” said Leila Atassi on the podcast. “In the past few years, Ohio’s power siting board has either rejected or helped drive away enough solar energy to power our three biggest cities. Meanwhile, natural gas companies are being handed the right to drill under our state parks even when the public overwhelmingly says no to that. And this is all about protecting the fossil fuel industry.”

What’s telling is that state regulators found no technical issues, environmental problems, or drainage concerns with the Stark Solar project. The rejection came solely because Republican township trustees and county commissioners opposed it based on vague concerns about “the view” and hypothetical impacts on property values.

Chris Quinn didn’t hold back in his assessment of an anti-green energy decision process created by the Ohio Legislature: “I guess the solar industry just doesn’t pay them off like everybody else does.”

The podcast hosts expressed surprise that solar companies haven’t challenged these rejections more aggressively through legal channels, with Quinn suggesting this could be considered “an unconstitutional taking of land.” He noted that the denials are clearly unreasonable – solar farms represent “as benign a development as you can get on a piece of land. Far more benign than fracking.”

The hypocrisy on display is staggering, according to Atassi: “The same politicians who are constantly screaming about energy independence and free markets are the ones rigging the system to kill competition and prop up fossil fuels. This is nuts.”

Quinn delivered perhaps the most scathing condemnation of the situation in the discussion: “What Ohio is doing is sinister, ugly, bad for the environment, bad for the planet. And it’s all because they’re selfish and they want the cash.”

This systematic rejection of clean energy comes at a particularly problematic time, as the podcast noted that energy demand is exploding in Ohio, partly due to the AI data center boom. By driving away renewable energy investment while simultaneously fast-tracking fossil fuel projects, Republican lawmakers are forcing Ohio into a position that’s both economically and environmentally unsustainable.

The Today in Ohio conversation raises crucial questions about who truly benefits from these decisions and whether Ohioans will ever demand enough accountability from their elected officials to change this destructive pattern.

Note: Artificial intelligence was used to help generate this story from Today in Ohio, a news podcast discussion by cleveland.com editors. Visitors to cleveland.com have asked for more text stories based on website podcast discussions.