Our message is clear: TCL&P board members should look far and wide for a new director, attract the best candidates possible, and interview them with wide-open minds and complete transparency. Like every utility today, Traverse City’s is at a crossroads. It must choose between its business-as-usual model and the new, even revolutionary 21st-century models now emerging around the world.
MLUI Welcomes New Members to Board and Advisory Council
The Michigan Land Use Institute Board of Directors recently welcomed its newest member. Tim Pulliam brings with him vast experience in the energy efficiency field as co-founder and president of Keen Technical Solutions, LLC. Keen provides clients throughout North America with analysis and energy conservation strategies. Inc. Magazine named Keen one of the “500 Fastest Growing Private Companies” in a profile last year.
Public-Private Partnerships Power Business Efficiency
You’d never know it driving by, but tucked into a nondescript warehouse district just south of town is an office and production space so airy and dazzling that it would turn heads in the hippest urban enclaves. The comfortable digs and lighting at Britten, Inc., are the result of several recent, major energy efficiency projects. They are making Britten’s workers happy, but the firm’s accountants are smiling, too.
Permit Is Renewed, but Rogers City Coal Plant Still Stalled
In a quick and quiet decision, Michigan environmental regulators have given Wolverine Power Cooperative another year to break ground on its long-delayed, highly controversial Rogers City coal plant. But stricter coal plant emission limits, soaring coal-power costs, cheap natural gas, and falling demand for electricity could still doom the 600-megawatt project.
Holland OKs Gas Plant, Turns To Efficiency Projects
In an historic vote, the Holland City Council has pre-empted longstanding plans to build a highly controversial coal plant in the city and, instead, approved a natural gas-fired power plant that will likely provide more power than the town actually needs.
Momentum builds for a regional energy plan
The 88,000 people in Grand Traverse County spend $306 million a year on energy. Of those millions, 70 percent leaves the community-a huge tax and a drain on the people and the economy of the region. But what if we dedicated ourselves to making sure more of that money stays in the region? What if we embarked on a deliberate plan to cut back on those energy costs, capture the energy that’s being wasted, and invest in new energy sources locally? Those were the questions asked last week at a workshop in Traverse City.