During last year's State of the State address, Gov. Jennifer Granholm informed Michigan's utility industry that business as usual was ending. With states like Pennsylvania, Texas, Iowa and California surging in renewable energy; with China and Europe tops in solar and wind power, and with Michigan lawmakers on both sides of aisle dawdling, she sounded a wake-up call.
Pointing to high energy costs, and Michigan's need for permanent jobs, the governor announced a remarkably comprehensive administrative effort to make Michigan a manufacturing leader in what the world needs now - wind, solar and battery technology and equipment.
She told utilities: Before building expensive, polluting new coal plants that tie up billions in capital, spike electric bills, and export more cash to coal country, just prove you need the blasted things.
She promised to further cut our falling demand for power - and save us money - by investing in weatherization training and installation programs and a "Michigan SAVES" program that painlessly finances home and business energy efficiency upgrades. She promised better "net metering" rules to make homegrown clean energy attractive, and "decoupling" utility profits from gross sales to make energy efficiency a profitable venture.
We're eager to hear the governor report Wednesday on the progress of her initiatives. They're things she can do without our state Legislature - which is dysfunctional on energy because it is so deep in utilities' and unions' pockets on the issue.
While other states aggressively mandated renewable energy and energy efficiency to move beyond coal power, our political representatives attacked Granholm's administrative authority on the coal plant "needs" requirement. They wrote bullying letters about it and rallied for $3-billion coal plants that regulators found we don't need.
Our representatives hyped the few thousand temporary construction jobs and few hundred permanent plant jobs new coal would bring, and pooh-poohed the many more thousands of permanent construction, manufacturing and installation jobs clean energy offers. They accused Granholm of ignoring Michigan workers even as her administration's clean energy efforts easily outstripped coal fans' most optimistic job projections.
2010 is Granholm's final chance to revive our state's factories and better employ our people with high paying, permanent clean-energy jobs. She must tell legislators that they either play ball now on clean energy - or sit on the sidelines of the global contest over who leads the most important new industry since … auto-making.
Lawmakers must enact long-stalled legislation that sets carefully constructed electricity rates - feed-in tariffs, which, as in other locales, have kick-started homegrown solar and wind power manufacturing and installation while protecting ratepayers. They should enact ReEnergize Michigan's other priorities, too: higher energy efficiency and clean-energy-production mandates.
Last October, according to the Energy Information Agency, renewables generated more American energy than nukes. Last year, while Lansing dawdled, Americans put almost 10,000 MW of new wind power online - 17 times the output of the proposed Rogers City coal plant.
Our Rust Belt competitors added between 54 MW (Wisconsin) and 905 MW (Indiana) of wind power. Michigan added a whopping 14.
A new study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory finds that the country could make 20% to 30% of its power from wind by 2024 - power that's cheaper than new coal. And a University of Michigan study says jobs in wind, hybrids, and batteries could employ more than 100,000 in the Midwest in just five years - with the right policies.
Granholm can act on another time sensitive issue this year by ordering the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment to wait for new federal regulations on coal combustion waste that are just around the corner. Why allow coal mongers to beat the deadline with their pending landfill permits just to be able to pad their profits and at the expense of the world class environment that we ask the world to come and vacation in?
We need elected leaders to look at the economic and scientific facts, and move forward for the common good. If the governor can get our lawmakers to look forward, her legacy for Michigan's future may well be secure, and will grow as time goes on.
Tom Karas leads the Michigan Energy Alternatives Project and founded Co-opConversations.org. Reach him at logman39@hotmail.com. Jim Dulzo is the managing editor of the Michigan Land Use Institute. Reach him at jimdulzo@mlui.org. Both are based in Traverse City.
BY TOM KARAS AND JIM DULZO
Detroit Free Press
February 2, 2010
http://www.freep.com/article/201002021654/OPINION05/100202059
