Gov. Rick Snyder will be presenting his annual State of the State Address on Thursday, Jan. 16, at 7 p.m. The three major topics he plans to focus on are mental health, seniors, and ENERGY! The speech offers us an opportunity, given our interest in having a positive impact on state policy that supports the good work we are engaged with in northwest Michigan, to publicly acknowledge this landmark event and provide collective feedback both before and after the address.
The problem that supporters of the proposed 600-megawatt plant never recognized was this: Planet Earth is not a perfect place to build a coal plant. Coal is too dirty; it has become too expensive to mine, ship, and burn; and it is the number-one source of climate-changing carbon emissions. If the world hopes to escape the worst effects of airborne toxins and global warming, it must stop burning the stuff-the quicker the better. So Wolverine’s cancellation of its so-called “Clean Energy Venture” puts the firm in step with the rest of the country and the world.
Michigan’s clean energy entrepreneurs and advocates hope to hear some good news from Lansing about renewable energy next week.
That’s when the Michigan Public Service Commission and the Michigan Energy Office release the first of four draft-summaries of comments the public gave them earlier this year regarding the state’s future energy goals.
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.
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.
Reading the text of Governor Rick Snyder’s Special Message on Energy and the Environment, which is a bit more detailed than the remarks he delivered last Wednesday, it’s clear he’s serious about energy efficiency and, to some extent, renewables like wind and solar power. But he was also less detailed than some hoped.