Carol Kauffman - Turning Advocacy into Action for Ohio’s Air, Water, and Climate

[00:00:10] Adam: ​Hello and welcome to another episode of Green Champions.

[00:00:13] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:17] Adam: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists, this podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Adam.

[00:00:26] Dominique: And I'm Dominique, and this episode is part of a mini-series in partnership with the Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit which celebrates collaborative climate solutions in the Midwest region of the United States.

[00:00:37] Adam: In this mini-series, you'll join us in virtually attending the annual summit and meeting a few of the hundred great speakers and key storytellers from this year's event.

Today, we're joined by Carol Kauffman, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ohio Environmental Council. She leads one of the Ohio's most impactful environmental organizations, advancing clean air, safe water, vibrant public lands, and climate justice through advocacy, policy and coalition building. Today we're exploring how strategic leadership and public engagement can help shape a healthier, more sustainable Ohio. So thanks so much for joining us today, Carol.

[00:01:08] Carol: I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:10] Adam: Can we start off, can you tell us just a little bit about what the mission of the Ohio Environmental Council is and what are your main priorities?

[00:01:16] Carol: Sure. Be glad to. So, as you said, the OEC or Ohio Environmental Council for those who are new to our organization, is the state's oldest and largest environmental advocacy organization. So we have been around for more than 50 years, and in fact, we're formed by just ordinary Ohioans who were concerned about the state of our air, land, and water, and came together to form the council back in 1969 after the Cuyahoga River caught fire for the ninth and final time.

So our vision then and now, is incredibly relevant and compelling. It's a clean healthy Ohio where our democracy empowers all communities to thrive in harmony with the environment.

[00:01:59] Adam: I love that. 

What inspired you to become part of the OEC and how did you take on that role? 

[00:02:04] Carol: If I may take us back in time about 10 years, I spent the first part of my career actually working in International aid. And I was working in Cambodia, living there in southeast Asia and working in very remote environments on aid and development projects. And I was traveling, one day, I had a very sort of catalytic moment in my career.

I was traveling in northeast Cambodia in an area that for thousands of years has been rainforest and it's a really beautiful, lush, natural environment. But what struck me that day as I was driving to visit a community that was located in the forest was that the forest was gone. It was destroyed. It had been clear cut and burned for charcoal. We were in the midst of a prolonged drought and I just remember that it looked to me like I was on the moon. The soil was dry and powdery, there was nothing to absorb the heat from the sun that was beating down. And I knew at that moment I was seeing probably in a way that I might never see so vividly again, that our environment and the state of our environment and the impacts of climate change are so interwoven with our wellbeing as humans, that they just can't be pulled apart. And I thought this is big and I am gonna dedicate the rest of my professional life to working on this challenge. And that's what I've done.

So back in 2017, I moved back to Ohio, which is my home state, and was looking for somewhere that I could volunteer my time on behalf of the things that I care about and making a difference here in Ohio. And not long after that, I got an opportunity to join the OEC's board, and I did that and have never looked back. It's been incredibly fulfilling. I feel so lucky to be a part of this historic organization.

And a couple of years ago when the opportunity arose to join the staff as the leader. I was happy to do so, and I've been here ever since really just daily feeling so privileged, but also an enormous amount of responsibility in this role.

[00:04:14] Adam: What are some of the initiatives that you've worked on? Can you paint a little picture about the work that you actually do? 

[00:04:19] Carol: One of the things I love about the OEC is that we work at all different levels of the community and of government. So we work at the local level directly with mayors and city councils and local government agencies to make change. For example, a few years ago we were instrumental in launching a new organization called Power a Clean Future Ohio. Some of your listeners might be familiar with that, and it spun off and it's doing fantastically well as an organization dedicated to helping local communities more than 50 at this point around Ohio figure out what are our contributions to climate change? What are our greenhouse gas numbers and how do we get those down? How do we take advantage of clean energy opportunities? 

But then we also do a lot of state house work. We work a lot with executive agencies, we have an affiliated organization, the OEC Action Fund, that also does a lot of work directly in the halls of power to advocate for pro-environment, pro-democracy policies. So, that's a big part of what we do.

[00:05:23] Dominique: we also do federal work. We advocate for increased funding and protection for our great lake. And we also advocate for things, like protecting our wetlands and helping water utilities to remove lead service lines and replace those to improve the health of Ohioans.I wanna unpack the phrase like environmental advocacy a little bit more I love that you mentioned OEC is the oldest and largest environmental advocacy organization in Ohio. What do you bring to the table when you are meeting with city officials or the mayor? what could we not do without you?

[00:05:55] Carol: Well, first of all, with the work that we do, we do with everybody who is in Ohio and has this same passion. It's "Let's do this together."

So, we have civic engagement trainings where we have thousands of people who count themselves as OEC members all across the state. We're pulling them together and saying, "Here's what advocacy on these issues can look like." 

 So we try to make it as practical as possible. And we try to involve all Ohioans who care about these issues to get involved and really raise their voices and tell their leaders and decision makers what's important to them, and what they want them to do on their behalf.

[00:06:31] Dominique: What are some of the biggest challenges facing Ohio's environment right now? 

[00:06:34] Carol: It's a really challenging time to be doing environmental advocacy work because it's really hard to plan and to know what will happen when we're trying to look at the federal picture.

So day by day, sometimes hour by hour, we're trying to interpret executive orders, rule changes at the USCPA, staffing changes, and then understand how does that impact Ohio.

Let's say there's a court ruling around what is considered a protected wetland. So then we have to adjust our strategies to say, "if that's changed, but we still believe these things are worth protecting, what would it look like for at the state or the local level to bring those kinds of protections into place?"

So I think the biggest challenge for me right now is simply trying to understand what will happen and how can we adjust and still stay the course in terms of our vision and our focus areas of water, energy, land protection, and civic space. 

[00:07:35] Dominique: How do you work through that as a team in terms of like what to tackle right now and what to prepare to tackle next?

[00:07:42] Carol: I will tell you that we have gone through in the last couple of years a really extensive strategic planning process. And I am a big believer in having a plan but also recognizing that we're gonna have to be strategic and adaptable as we go.

In many case, the end goal that you're driving toward what you don't know is all of the particular steps that you're going to need to take to get there, because there's always gonna be a challenge that arises that you didn't see coming and there may be an opportunity as well.

For example, we have long had, in Central Ohio a goal of protecting the big and little Darby Creek watershed. 

When we made the strategic plan, we didn't necessarily know that the Darby Accord was gonna be reopened. So that's the agreement that the 10 jurisdictions located along the creek have signed about 20 years ago now to protect it and agree on how they would approach development. So that has been reopened, which is a great opportunity for us to come to the table and say, how do we advance that goal that's already in our strategic plan? We're gonna use some different tactics based on what has happened in the last few months.

 There are times that I can tell you as the senior leader in my organization, I have to make tough calls and I don't like to make them, but I will sometimes have to say, " This opportunity is great. I don't wanna disappoint a partner, but it's not in our plan. And we do not have the bandwidth to take it on." We are not alone in this work. So we can do what we are focused on doing and do better than anybody else. And then we can also allow other organizations and people to step up and fill in those gaps when we can't do it. 

[00:09:19] Adam: Can you share just an example of maybe a recent win that you've had in legislation that you've been working on? 

[00:09:25] Carol: State policy is often slow to come together and it's been almost two decades since we've seen really significant positive developments in energy policy, but we are about to see a huge win at the State House when it comes to energy policy in this state.

There really has been a growing sense across all kinds of groups, that something needs to change. We've seen that there's a real breakdown in terms of approving new projects to get installed and in the ground and providing power for Ohioans and for new economic development commitments that the state has been making. We've been seeing legacy riders that we're all paying for in our bills to bail out filling coal and nuclear plants. I'm really, really excited that we're expecting to see a number of these things addressed in legislation by the legislature So we are definitely celebrating a big win right now on energy.

[00:10:23] Adam: Very cool. Can you dive in a little bit to what sort of things they're talking about in that legislation?

[00:10:26] Carol: There's been a backlog of projects at the Power Siting Board. 

And so there are people in this deregulated marketplace that we have that wanna get in and provide power, and there's a whole line of people waiting to buy that power, but they haven't been able to get the projects through the queue.

So one thing that this legislation will do is create what you might call a shot clock, to say once the project has been submitted, the board has a limited amount of time in which it has to review, consider, and make a decision. And so that way we're not seeing projects endlessly backlogged in some cases years at a time without decision making moving forward.There's also a provision in this legislation that would require utilities when they're submitting transmission plans. There's transmission wires, which are those giant wires that bring power from far away into the state and into your region of the state. Those transmission wires, many of them have been in place for decades. A lot of them need upgrading and if a utility is not incentivized properly, let's say a line breaks, they might replace it with an old type of material that doesn't have the same capacity to carry and insulate as modern technology has.

So they're changing how the incentive structure works to require utilities to study something called Advanced Transmission Technology, or Grid Enhancing Technology when they're putting these plans together and then they can be incentivized to do those grid upgrades and also just get more wires into the right places around the state. 

[00:11:57] Dominique: How long has that policy piece been in development and when do you think that people could expect to feel the effects of it? 

[00:12:04] Carol: We have been working on this fix for six years at the OEC. And then we started kind of an offshoot. The Ohio Business Energy Partnership, that has been in the making for a couple of years now and many other organizations have been working on reforming energy policy in this state for years and years at a time. 

So I think in some cases it will take time. It's hard for an individual to say, "Wow, they've got a shot clock at the Ohio Power Siting Board now. That's so exciting." It still might take a few years, right? And our work's not done, but there should be at least the mental relief of knowing that the process is going to move and that we will start to see more opportunities for projects to go forward. So, we will continue to monitor that. In terms of relief on our bills, we should see those riders drop off of bills that were still in place. So, back in 2019 is when these bailouts got placed on people's bills and at the time was for some nuclear and coal plants. The nuclear riders have already gone away. The coal plant riders remain as of the time of recording but those would also go away so people would see that bill relief pretty quickly.

[00:13:17] Dominique: Congratulations on, six years of work to bring about a policy change I think is really in line with the fact that like a lot of sustainability work is very thankless and the most impactful stuff is never seen. And so six years of hard work for a big policy shift speaks a lot to what you were saying at the very beginning of this, really important on the ground's advocacy work that you're doing.

And so just thank you for all that you do and for being a big part of that because we wouldn't have great things to celebrate without people who really worked tirelessly on issues to move it along 'cause I'm sure there's been many moments along that journey of like, why are we still doing this? Are we making an impact? Is anyone listening? 

But you did share about the Ohio Business Energy Partnership. Can you share more about what that is and how important that is with the work that you're doing recently?

[00:14:00] Carol: I can definitely do that, but you prompted me, I need to name some names here and say thank you and give credit where credit is First of all, so many people have worked on energy policy in this state, but on the OEC team, Nolan Rutschilling, our managing director for energy policy and Karin Nordstrom, who's our clean energy attorney, had been putting in the work.

They are so well respected across the environmental community and within the energy space in this state. I am so grateful to have them on our team and they've taught me everything I know. Yeah. You ask about Ohio Business Energy Partnership. A couple of years ago when I was coming into my role kind of understanding this environment, I had been working in corporate sustainability spaces prior to that for a couple of large Ohio manufacturing businesses. So I said " I wonder why we're not doing more together with the business community here in Ohio. Because we may not agree on everything but I actually think a lot of the things that the environmental groups, including the OEC wanna see happen are not so different from what businesses are wanting to see happen as well."

So I started asking around, is anybody working with businesses specifically, not the solar developers. I think they're pretty well organized and not the utilities, they've got their thing, but the business power customers. And what I learned is I think people were saying, I think you've got a good idea. We should get together. We should talk about this. So I reached out to a person named Terrence O'Donnell. He's one of the most respected energy experts in the whole state. He is also someone who has deep ties to many businesses around the state. So I said, "Hey, Terrence, I have an idea. My idea is the green groups and the business community need to come together, and talk about clean energy." And he goes, "I'm with you. I'm willing to go on this ride with you."

And so he started making phone calls and we eventually, last June got like 15, 20 people in a conference room at Dickinson Wright where he works. And we just said, "What are your pain points? What are your priorities when we're talking about energy?" I was amazed there was just all of this pent up energy and frustration.

They were talking about, " Why can't we purchase clean energy locally? Why can't we invest in these clean, modern technologies? We're concerned about power costs. We're concerned about projects not being able to predict, how can we sign on to buy power from a project if we don't even know if and when it will happen?"

 So I came out of that meeting really feeling like they blew my hair back.

[00:16:36] Dominique: Damn, good idea.

[00:16:37] Carol: I think I had a good idea here. But I also knew it's really important that we have our red lines, like we know what this group is about and what it isn't about because it needs to be driven by the businesses, yes. But they also need to feel like this is credible. This is real. And so what we agreed on is we will focus on carbon free energy sources only. We're not gonna be pulling in natural gas or coal or other kinds of energy into this conversation. There are other venues for that. And we're gonna form a technical advisory committee.

So I reached out to some colleagues from other organizations that work in this space, The Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy, series, Pew Charitable Trusts And they said yes. And so then together we worked to create this policy priority document that all the business members signed off on. we invited all the legislators and we had a holiday party. It was so much fun because I rarely get to be in rooms where you've got republican legislators, democratic legislators, business leaders, and then tree huggers. And we're all mingling, drinking, eating bites of food and talking about energy in Ohio.

 We all knew that something needed to happen on energy policy. People were afraid that we are not gonna have enough power to keep adding more economic development projects in the state. So that really set us up nicely then when the New General Assembly convened in 2025, they were ready to take up energy policy and we were ready to present a united front from our engaged businesses and say, " This is what needs to be in there for businesses to feel good about energy policy in Ohio."

[00:18:19] Dominique: Can you share like maybe one or two just like key things that stand out to you from stories like that where you have had success navigating tough or big conversations with leaders from all those kinds of walks of life?

[00:18:32] Carol: So the messenger is really important, and when we have that holiday party and then we wrapped on our glasses and called everyone to attention and wanted to share this is the Ohio Business Energy Partnership and this is our policy priority list. I didn't grab the mic, even though I was like, "This is my baby." I said, "Terrence, you grab the mic because these people know you and they trust you. And I think that your voice is the right voice at this moment." And so I always feel like you know something is a success when it was your idea and someone tells you about it as if it's their idea. 

[00:19:06] Dominique: I love that. I love that so much.

[00:19:08] Carol: not getting too picky about who takes the credit is one lesson that I've learned. I think there's really no shortcut around building authentic relationships. So if someone feels like they can't trust me or I don't like them, we're not gonna make any headway. I really try to find a point of connection that's genuine with every person I meet with. And I'm willing to try to get into their world as best I can. So in the same way, if I'm meeting with a business leader and they wanna talk about things from an ROI or Return On Investment or help me make the business case perspective, I will help you do that. I'm not gonna force you to talk about things in exactly the same way that I talk about them from my point of view. Those are a couple of things I think that really were impactful.

[00:19:54] Adam: Some of these issues are really big and take a long time. How do you keep people motivated and engaged over kind of a longer picture?

[00:20:00] Carol: I spend a lot of time trying to make sure that I'm taking care of our staff. I tell them over and over that I want them to think of this work as a marathon and not a sprint. And so if they need to step back and go to a school function with their kid, they should do that without feeling a shred of guilt or worry. because as you said, Adam, it's a long-term fight and it's never over, and so we've gotta pace ourselves.

And we talk about it daily at times, especially with my leadership team, how do we pace ourselves? And then we have to win the wins. Meaning when we get a win, like on energy policy or something like that, we're gonna pause and We're gonna really celebrate it. We're gonna share credit. 

I think maintaining people's sense of morale and making sure everybody feels appreciated for their contributions is a big focus of mine.

[00:20:52] Dominique: It sounds like you view a lot of like the human side of your team, and making sure that you're meeting their needs and supporting them how they need to. And I think that is so important because in a lot of these sustainability roles, like the target just keeps moving, which is great. Hopefully it is because it means you got the previous one.

But it definitely could be really exhausting and so I appreciate hearing you do that. I appreciate our listeners getting to hear you share that if they also lead organizations and have folks they are taking care of as well. Pivoting a little bit to the Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit, can you share a little bit about what your session is about?

[00:21:25] Carol: we're gonna tell the story of the Ohio Business Energy Partnership. And I really wanted to bring together a group of people just like where I painted the picture for you in that holiday party in that room. I wanted to kind of pull a representative sampling for this panel. So we're going to have a member of series, I believe it's gonna be Christian Koch, or his colleague Mel Mack. And I need to double check that who is available representing the technical advisory committee. I'm gonna be moderating. We're gonna have Tony Long from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. And we're gonna have Pete or Nolan from my team as those deep experts from the OEC. And we're all gonna be together on this panel talking about the fact that while we might not have a lot of other things in common, we found common ground and we're pretty excited about what we could accomplish together.

[00:22:13] Adam: My hope is that people who attend that session realize just because it hasn't been done a lot doesn't mean it can't be done. I hope that they get inspired. I hope they get practical ideas of how they could replicate this kind of an unlikely alliance in their area of work. I'm really excited for the panel. 

[00:22:33] Dominique: I'm curious from your standpoint, like what gives you hope for the Ohio's future and what do you love most about the work that you do? 

[00:22:38] Carol: Well, I think what I love the most is the incredible people I get to work with and partner with, like genuinely some of the best people I've ever met who are just so dedicated. They come from all walks of life, all corners of the state. And being in the work with these folks is so meaningful to me. I actually find a lot of hope in things like we've been talking about for Ohio. We need one another. I really strongly believe you don't make long lasting progress with only a portion of your people. So like all Ohioans really care. We do really, care. 

[00:23:17] Dominique: And so I think the more we can help people harness that and set aside any kind of idea that it's only for one group, it's only for liberal people or it's only for people who vote a certain way and really say, "What do we all care about and how can we work together?," That's the future. And I do think it's achievable. Thank you so much for bringing a positive story, for having some hope about our future and for educating us a little bit about some upcoming policy. So I really appreciate all that you do and for giving us a chance to share it on the podcast.

[00:23:49] Carol: This was really fun.

[00:23:50] Dominique: Thank you, Carol. How can our listeners connect with you or support the work that you do at OEC?

[00:23:55] Carol: Well, the fastest way is just to go to our website and get familiar with all the resources on there. It's www.theoec.org, and we have all kinds of educational information on there, including writeups of recent legislation and what it means. And there's also an option to sign up to receive our newsletters, attend upcoming events. 

[00:24:21] Adam: Well, thanks again for joining us. As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We're here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career, or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate 

[00:24:33] Dominique: You can find our episodes and reach us at thegreenchampions.com. If you wanna stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us in your favorite podcast platform.

[00:24:40] Adam: Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Special thanks to Green Umbrella, hosts of the annual Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit. And thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll dig into another sustainability success story in our next episode. 

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