Legislature OKs Energy Plan LANSING (MPRN) -


The Legislature today approved a new energy strategy for Michigan that includes generating more electricity using wind and solar power.

Its supporters say it's a first step toward making Michigan less dependent on fossil fuels, and creating a new alternative energy sector of the economy. Critics say it won't keep its promise of making sure energy is affordable and available far into the future.

The two bills represent a sweeping re-write of Michigan's energy policy that could affect the state's economy, its environment, and its landscape.

Its supporters say in a few years, open fields could be home to windmills - constructed with Michigan-made components - that would help the state generate the electricity it needs without more fossil fuels.

Governor Granholm - traveling in Japan on a trade visit - says she's already talking up Michigan's energy plan to the business leaders there.

"A lot of the companies that I've met with are alternative energy companies. No surprise, the first question that I am asked is, Have you got a renewable portfolio standard in Michigan?" says Granholm.

Granholm says she's anxious to sign the standard of generating 10 percent of Michigan's electricity using wind and solar power by 2015, and 25 percent by 2025. She says the targets will help make Michigan a player in a Midwestern industry constructing and shipping wind turbine parts and solar panels.

"There's been a lot of penetration for wind turbines in California and in Texas. Not so much, yet, in the Midwest, and so, because we're adjacent to water and that is the easiest form of transportation for these huge turbines, it's very intriguing for them to look at Michigan. We're now on the map," says Granholm.

Marc Pauley manages a power generation plant located on top of a landfill owned by the Granger company a few miles outside the city of Lansing. A hundred trucks a day move in and out of the landfill.

They dump household and commercial garbage that decomposes and creates the methane gas that runs six generators here in the plant.

The plant has a contract with Lansing's city-owned utility, but Pauley says this could be a bigger business if utilities have to generate more electricity using renewable fuels.

"Well, we've got additional waste that's been collected over a larger period, and that generates the fuel, the landfill gas that we use. That fuel source is growing over time and, therefore the fuel availability grows over time," says Pauley.

But a coalition of business groups says the new policy will also put a cap on outside entrepreneurs who might otherwise come to Michigan to market renewable energy directly to customers. That's because it places new limits in the Michigan law that allows businesses, factories, and school districts to buy electricity from a power company other than the major utility serving their region.

D-T-E in metro Detroit and Consumers Energy, which covers much of lower Michigan, say they need protection against losing customers if they are going to get financing for new power plants.

The two utilities stand in the way of people wishing to bring renewable power to Michigan.

David Waymire of the Customer Choice Coalition says tax breaks in the legislation to help consumers with the short-term higher cost of wind- and solar power-generated electricity might not be necessary if utilities were forced to compete with energy entrepreneurs.

"We're going to see 15 percent increases over current rates over the next year. If this legislation doesn't pass, those high rate increases will be an incentive for people to leave those utilities and go to other organizations to provide them with power," says Waymire.

And no one is promising there won't be rate hikes. That's pretty much guaranteed as the cost of fossil fuels go up. Supporters say the best Michigan's energy customers can hope for under the new plan is that their utility bills won't go up as fast as they might have otherwise. © Copyright 2009, MPRN