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Posts from the ‘environmental health’ Category

Oct 16

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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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Apr 19

Michigan finally bans open garbage burning. Some of it, anyway….sort of

This week Michigan became one of the last Great Lakes state to outlaw burning trash in outdoor burn barrels.

But, not really.

The legislation signed into law allows open burning, but prohibits the most toxic items. Stuff like foam, plastic, rubber, chemicals, electronics, etc.

That’s better than nothing. And the evidence that open burning is a huge health hazard is unequivocal.

But we’re disappointed the ban didn’t include all household wastes. And, that it included language forbidding the state from outlawing the burning of any materials not on the legislation’s list.

With more than half the state’s residents living in places that exceed allowable levels of particulate matter, there’s no need to add to the harm. It’s 2012, and we have better systems in place to recycling, reuse, and more safely dispose of our garbage.

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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

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