Mark Bank

Cleveland State University College of Law

Mark Bank is a software engineer with six years' experience developing big-data pipelines for healthcare analytics and the software lead of Brugmansia Ministries, a non-profit fostering community resilience initiatives. As a 2L at Cleveland State University, he is studying energy law and electric grid governance to decarbonize Ohio's energy portfolio. He is President of the Environmental Law Society, an associate of the Cleveland State Law Review, and research assistant to Dr. Heidi Gorovitz Robertson. For the latter half of 2024, he served as a legal intern for the Ohio Environmental Council, Ohio's foremost advocacy organization for healthful environmental policy.

Research Title: Municipal Microgrids: Long-Term Investments in Communal Resilience
Abstract: Microgrids have become key to climate change adaptation and mitigation. As dedicated clusters of electricity resources, they provide customers with vital electric power during outages, which occur more frequently as aged infrastructure faces more extreme weather. Battery technology advancements have enabled microgrids to foster clean energy development while providing climate-resilient electricity. Established in 2021, Cuyahoga Green Energy (CGE) is the first county-owned microgrid utility. CGE demonstrates how sustained and coordinated local efforts realize the benefits of microgrids.