Michigan News
(2007-12-19)
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Right now, Michigan generates about 3 and a half percent of its power using renewables, most of it from hydro-electric dams in rivers and from scrapwood-burning generators.
Governor Graholm's plan is to use requirements,called a renewable portfolio standard,to generate jobs and draw new fuel entrepreneurs to Michigan. She wants a quarter of the state's energy to be generated using renewable resources within about 12 years with a focus on wind and water.
The governor used a visit to Dowding Industries in Eaton Rapids to make her case. The manufacturer just landed a big contract building elements of wind turbines. That's good news, she says, but Michigan should be winning more of that business.
"Lots of jobs are being lost because we don't have a renewable portfolio standard. All of these potential component manufacturers or turbine manufacturers themselves -- they're not going to manufacture here unless there's the demand here because it costs so much to transport them, so we need to create the demand here in order to create the jobs here and that's what a renewable portfolio standard does," Granholm said.
Jeff Metts is a believer. He's the chief operating officer of Dowding Industries.
"You've got the waterways for transportation that's cheap. The manufacturing mindset is here. The machinery is here. It's not all over the country. It's in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana -that's where this stuff is that makes these size of components," Metts said.
Metts says a renewable energy mandate would create a market for the components in Michigan, and that would lure more manufacturers looking to fill the need.
A Michigan State University researcher says states that pass renewable energy mandates now will reap the benefits later.
M-S-U economist Soji Adelaja says 24 states as well as Washington D-C have already enacted some type of energy mandates,and the field is starting to get crowded.
"The economic impact could be tremendous as Michigan begins not only to capture the manufacturing side of the value added, which is a lot, but as Michigan begins to produce for other states, so the implications are quite significant," Adelaja said.
Environmentalists say generating electricity with renewable resources could help Michigan meet the growth in demand for energy without having to build new coal-burning power plants.
But not everyone agrees that a renewable energy mandate will be a net win for Michigan. Utilities say it will drive up costs for their customers because they won't be allowed to seek out the cheapest fuels. The Mackinac Center,a free market think tank based in Midland, says that will drive jobs out of the state as manufacturers and other high-volume energy users seek locations that allow them to control those costs.
Senator Bruce Patterson is the Republican chair of the Senate Energy Policy and Public Utilities Committee. He says many consumers are already opting to pay a little more for their electricity under power companies' green energy programs, and businesses like Dowd Industries and John Deere are getting into the renewable energy business without government mandates.
"So I am not prepared at this point, I'm unconvinced but still willing to listen, to mandating certain things. I think free choice is an essential component of our society and I'm interested in providing incentives to make sure that we continue to move toward more energy efficiency, more conservation, more renewables," Patterson said.
Senator Patterson's committee and the House Energy and Technology Committee will continue hearings on renewable energy in the new year, possibly sending bills to Governor Granholm's desk in early 2008. © Copyright 2010, Associated Press
