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Posts from the ‘clean energy’ Category

Feb 14

Governor’s energy hearings start on Valentine’s Day, end on Earth Day! Be heard!

Since we love energy efficiency and clean renewable power here at MEC, it is quite appropriate that today – Valentine’s Day – is the first of seven public forums on Michigan’s energy policy called for by Governor Rick Snyder.

The findings will be assembled and delivered to policy makers by the end of this year as the basis for legislative action in 2014.

The last forum – in Traverse City – convenes, fittingly, on April 22. That’s Earth Day, the day we celebrate the planet and recommit ourselves to protecting it. What better symbolism?

A little background.

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Oct 18

DTE Energy subsidiaries own more than 8,000 coal-moving rail cars

A darn good reason for Michigan’s utilities to oppose Proposal 3′s 25×2025 clean energy standard (as long as you’re not a ratepayer)

Our state’s big utilities, Consumers Energy and DTE Energy, are spending millions to defeat Proposal 3’s 25×25 renewable energy standard even though they acknowledge renewables are creating jobs and providing homes and businesses with electricity at costs far cheaper than anticipated.

Why?

For DTE Energy – which still uses out-of-state coal to provide 70 percent of its electricity generation – a story in Detroit’s Metro Times reports a pretty darn good reason for the company to be threatened by cheaper, cleaner renewable power.

DTE is heavily invested in the coal business – shipping it, storing it, processing it and moving it across the nation.

Reports the Metro Times:

“…one of its many subsidiaries, DTE Coal Services, “is one of the largest marketers and transporters of coal to third-party customers in North America. They provide a broad range of coal sourcing, marketing, risk management, transportation, rail management and trading services nationally to coal producers, electric utilities, steel companies and other industries. DTE Coal Services is also active in trading coal, emissions and carbon in the financial and physical markets.”

And then there’s Midwest Energy Resources Co., which operates an “innovative rail-vessel trans-shipment system that handles much of the Great Lakes market for low-sulfur western coal.”

Also under the DTE umbrella is what’s known as a “reduced emission fuels” operation that treats coal so that it produces less pollution when burned. According to the company’s own estimates, that operation will generate $30 million in earnings this year and about $50 million a year beginning in 2013.”

So, what’s good for DTE’s profits and shareholders is a raw deal for lowly ratepayers.

In any other business we’d call that a conflict of interest.

In DTE’s world, it’s business as usual.

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Oct 16

Sky falling cropped
1 Comment

Prop 3′s ‘sky is falling’ report’s assumptions: Garbage in, garbage out

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy issued another doomsday report recently, claiming that achieving Proposal 3’s 25% renewable electricity goal by 2025 would unleash economic Armageddon on our fair state, increasing bills hundreds of dollars annually.

The report follows a real analysis conducted by experts in energy and utility regulation that we released two weeks ago. That study says that moving to 25% clean energy would cost the average residential ratepayer 50 cents a month at the outset, and save them money in later years.

Those are two very different conclusions.

For guidance, you might read a third, independent report – the Michigan Public Service Commission’s most recent analysis. It found the cost of renewable electricity coming online in Michigan right now is far below comparable costs for more dirty, unsustainable coal power.

Additionally, it found that wind energy costs were dropping steadily, while the cost of coal delivered to Michigan jumped 71 percent in just the last four years.

So it seems like simple math would suggest that buying the cheaper power (wind energy) would cost you less than buying the expensive power from coal.

An examination of the Mackinac Center’s report explains the discrepancy.

A key assumption in the Mackinac Center report is the cost of wind energy. Wind energy will supply the lion’s share of the additional renewable energy we would need between 2015 and 2025 to reach the goals established in Proposal 3.

The Mackinac Center report is grounded in the wild and baseless contention that wind energy costs will somehow skyrocket to up to 4.5 times higher than the current signed wind contracts in Michigan.

As the Union of Concerned Scientists put it in its analysis of the Mackinac Center study:

The Mackinac Center analysis “… assumes levelized energy costs for wind that range from $149/MWh to $288/MWh in 2010. These costs are 1.5 to 3 times higher than the average cost of wind contracts in Michigan from 2009 to 2011 ($94/MWh) and as much as 4.5 times higher than the state’s most recent signed wind contracts ($61-$64/MWh), according to the Michigan Public Service Commission. (emphasis theirs)

 “ …The use of indefensibly high wind cost assumptions extends through 2025 in both the average and high cost cases.”

Or, in plain English, the Mackinac Center report’s key assumption is garbage.

You can read the Scientists’ analysis and the back-and-forth between the Mackinac Center and the UCS analysis’ author and decide for yourself.

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Jul 26

Head in sand

No Olympic bikinis? News scribe’s latest jaw dropper cites Global Freezing

Detroit News editorial board member Henry Payne suggests this week that cool temperatures to start the London Olympics (“Global freezing” he calls it) will be a real downer for “media disciples of the Green Church…” who “have been frightening Michigan and the U.S. with tales of global warming-induced drought.”

The same writer invoked the visage of Nazis – those who tortured and massacred millions — in his column about Germany’s renewable energy program titled, “Sieg Heil, warmingmongers” last year. He warned darkly of coming “civil unrest” and “grim war” in the United States because of President Obama’s “radical green vision.”

He’s also the genius who wrote that, because of snowfall in Dallas last year, “global warming” had been “debunked on the grandest stage of all: The Super Bowl.”

Of course, 2011 turned out to be the ninth warmest year on record globally, and the 35th consecutive year that global average temperatures were above 20th century average. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record (dating back to 1880) have been since 2000.

What’s more, a colder Europe in the short-term is consistent with climate models for reasons that have to do with altered ocean currents and melting Arctic sea ice.

But Payne and his colleagues in the News editorial tower have little use for sources like NASA or the World Meteorological Association. Instead, Yahoo! Sports is his source: “It might be too cold for the beach volleyball players to wear bikinis at the Olympics,” he quotes Yahoo.

Detroit News readers deserve better.

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Jun 8

National Geographic 1981 cover "Energy"

Déjà vu

We’re a nation of champion procrastinators. That’s my conclusion after reading National Geographic’s special report, Energy: Facing up to the problem, getting down to solutions.

The piece is straightforward with hardly any breaking news. For instance, who (at least among those based in reality) doesn’t already know that the U.S. economy has been heavily dependent on cheap energy? Or that our insatiable thirst for petroleum sends countless dollars overseas and leaves us vulnerably dependant on unstable parts of world? Or that burning coal releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide, destabilizing our protective climate?

But why the unkind charge of procrastination?

Because the National Geographic special report was published way back in February 1981! (Special thanks to Chris Kolb who found it while helping his mom recycle her old magazines.) Read more

Apr 10

Tuesday Linkaround: Leelanau tops healthy list and U.P. mining gets national exposure

Or maybe it's Leelanau's grapes?

Michigan’s Leelanau County is at the top of the list of the state’s healthiest counties,  according to a recent study by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Parts of Southeast Michigan, the Grand Traverse area and West Michigan seemed to house most of the healthiest counties; check out where your county landed in the study. Do you think Leelanau’s ranking had anything to do with its utterly refreshingly lack of fast food restaurants?

Farther North yet, the Christian Science Monitor has surveyed the imminent mining boom in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with this reporting. The otherwise even-handed piece fails to note that the current type of mining is much different and riskier than the mining of the U.P.’s past. So-called sulfide mining is a explained here.

Moving into urban issues, the historic River Rouge coal plant was the largest of its kind on earth when it opened in 1956. Mother Jones has a terrific photographic essay on the aging plant’s visual legacy. Scroll down the photos far enough to see the Sierra Club’s indefatiguable Rhonda Anderson, along with a good analysis of how her organization (an MEC member and ally) is working not just to replace the behemoth with cleaner energy, but help the community better absorb the loss of jobs the plant’s closure will create.

One of the state’s most invisible environmental challenges are the thousands of leaking underground petroleum tanks across the state. These sites threaten drinking water, surface water, soils and in some cases public health. Here’s the first in a Bridge Magazine series done by Michigan journalist and author Jeff Alexander. He explains how if the state does not act decisively, the problem will only get more costly.

Hey, there’s good news too: The Federal Government and five states, including Michigan, have come to an agreement to expedite the process of building off-shore wind farms around the Great Lakes region.

Finally, under the heading clean technology, some crazy Belgian is trying make pigeons poop soap, to help clean the cities they now soil. MEC has no position on soap-pooping pigeons.

— Marco Salomone contributed to this post

Mar 9

TGIF Linkaround!

Gotta make the boss happy so let’s start with this replay of MEC President Chris Kolb on last week’s Focus on the Environment show on Eastern Michigan University’s WEMU radio. Kolb, with co-host Lisa Wozniak of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, talked about Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget, the Kalamazoo River oil spill cleanup and other issues.

Next let’s visit our neighbors down south…you know, the ones we grudgingly sharedone-third of our Big Ten men’s basketball championship with this year.

Don't try this at home

They’re wrestling overhow much unregulated water users should be able to siphon from Lake Erie and its tributaries. We defer to our friends at the Ohio Environmental Council who say the proposal is getting better, but isn’t good enough. Oh, and see you in the Big Dance, Buckeyes!

Down in Brooklyn, MI, home of Pumpkin Quest (!), people turned out for a discussion on the rewards and risks of a new and more intensive wave of fracking in Michigan. MEC’s James Clift was a panelist, though he didn’t make this radio station’s audio clip report that included State Rep. Mike Shirkey, who organized the forum.

Up north, MEC ally and member group Michigan Land Use Institute has this excellent story on Consumers Energy’s solar lottery. Twice as many people applied for the program as there were slots. We think we should let more people participate, and the 25×25 ballot issue will be the way to do it. Or, we could just throw our burgeoning renewable energy industry under the bus like State Rep. Ray Franz would do.

In weather news …… WHASSSUP Springtime??!! MEC has two beekeepers in the office, and their girls were happy with the mild winter. But the loss of ice cover on the Great Lakes – 79 percent over 38 years – is no small matter. Also, we may see more nasty insects this summer as a result. Hey, maybe Grist is right and a climate change conspiracy theorists make no %$#!!& sense.

Finally, in the “we can’t make this stuff up” category, here are two things MEC is not staking out a position on:  This lunatic with a wood stove heater in his Volvo, and these people who are fertilizing soybeans with urine.

Have a good weekend, and don’t forget to spring ahead!

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Feb 29

Power transmission lines

‘All of the above’

It is trendy these days to champion every imaginable energy resource under (and including) the sun. Who hasn’t heard a politician, pundit, so-called energy expert or even President Obama declare support for using all options at our disposal to solve the nation’s energy problems?

This frustrates me. The trouble, of course, is that money is limited.  Money you spend to build a new baseload power plant (with a life of more than 40 years) is not available to upgrade the grid or fund energy efficiency.  At the end of the day we need to decide:  how much money should we allocate to generating energy, upgrading the grid, and to energy efficiency?

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Feb 24

1 Comment

Turning crusaders to milksops

Renewable energy sure takes a beating from free marketers like Heritage Foundation policy analyst Ben Lieberman, who said in November saying  wind power  is “a bubble which bursts as soon as the government subsidies end.”

In Michigan, bashing clean energy’s alleged dependence on subsidies is a staple for conservative activists including the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Detroit News’ editorial board, and WRJ’s Frank Beckmann. Subsidies for clean energy make them apoplectic ( the NY Times’ 21st most looked up word!)

So why do they turn from raging champions of the free market to milksops  when the topic turns to the huge and ongoing subsidies for fossil fuels? We’ve asked the question repeatedly, including at a Mackinac Center gathering in 2010, but have yet to receive a coherent answer.

Now, President Obama has outlined a plan to eliminate $39 billion in fossil fuel tax breaks over the course of the next decade. Consistency would dictate that the Heritage Foundation and its Michigan sidekicks promptly and loudly denounce these market-distorting tax handouts and support the President’s plan to eliminate them.

Don’t hold your breath.

 

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Feb 21

Wind farm

Bullroar!!

Since the ideal height of Michigan trees has been adequately covered by Mitt Romney, we tree huggers are moving on to a different topic.

Harken back to 2008 when opponents of Michigan’s first renewable energy standard warned darkly that it would make our rates skyrocket and our electricity grid unreliable. We thought that was hysterical bullroar. And the latest report from the Michigan Public Service Commission confirms those suspicions.

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