The OEC believes that utilities should be held accountable for the outages— and that starts with AEP Ohio’s intentional outages hurting communities across Central Ohio in mid-June. Delayed upgrades to critical infrastructure left hundreds of thousands of Ohioans without air conditioning or fans during a record-breaking heatwave. The elderly, the disabled, poor communities, and communities-of-color were hit particularly hard. Unfortunately, decades of outright denial of climate science from policymakers and profiteers means we have a lot of work to do—and bad policies to undo—to keep Ohioans safe. Right now, the time is ripe to demand action.