(The Center Square) – Both the Michigan Senate and House of Representatives are debating bills aimed at 100% carbon-neutral energy generation by 2035.
On Thursday, the Senate Energy and Environment Committee heard testimony related to Senate bills 271-277. Among other things, the package would require the expansion of renewable energy production to 15% of total energy generated; prohibit all coal-fired energy production after 2030; implement a Construction Decarbonization Strategic Plan aimed at achieving zero building greenhouse gas emissions after 2026; and reduce the carbon dioxide intensity of all transportation fuels by 25% below 2019 values by 2035.
House Bills 4759-61 were introduced last week, and include provisions that would raise Michigan’s renewable energy mandate from its current 15% to 60% to mandate the elimination of all greenhouse gas emissions from electric power generation by 2035.
Thursday’s Senate Energy and Environment Committee included remarks from Sen. Sam Singh, D-East Lansing, who introduced SB273. The bill, he said, aims to increase the state’s current 1% energy waste-reduction program.
Opponents of the bills include David Tudor, CEO of Missouri-based Associated Electric Cooperative Inc.; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioners’ James Danly and Mark Christie as well as FERC Acting Chairman Willie Phillips; National Electric Reliability Corporation CEO Jim Robb; and Jason Hayes, environmental policy director at the free-market Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Chief among their concerns is what they claim would be reliability issues with the state’s power grid should the bills become implemented.
Hayes referred to the proposed Senate legislation as “blackout bills.”
“They will impose staggering cost increases for Michigan’s electricity services while drastically reducing reliability,” Hayes said in a statement. “Early results of modeling indicate that SB271-277 would add more than $120 billion in additional costs by 2035 and more than $385 billion by 2050.
“If lawmakers wish to achieve Governor Whitmer’s CO2 reduction goals, there are far more moderate plans that could be adopted without imposing electricity shortfalls and blackouts. Our modeling shows that a more reasonably paced plan, which adds carbon capture to existing coal and natural gas plants will still achieve these goals, while saving more than $90 billion through 2035 and almost $180 billion through 2050. The bills reviewed in the Senate Energy Committee today are a dangerous and economy crushing rush into green energy caused shortages. Michigan legislators should reject them immediately.”
Kevon Martis is executive director of the Interstate Informed Citizen’s Coalition, a bi-partisan nonprofit organization advocating for energy and land use policy. He also serves as a Lenawee County Michigan commissioner.
“If Democrats and the eco-industrial complex were serious about ending CO2 emissions in the power generation sector, they would crawl to Lansing on their hands and knees on broken glass and demand an all-out push for nuclear power,” Martis told The Center Square. “No one who is serious about tackling climate change proposes 100% reliance upon intermittent and unreliable wind and solar generation, particularly in a state like Michigan which is in the bottom five states nationally with respect to solar resources and whose wind resource is anemic at best. Renewable energy is driven primarily by a quest for corporate profits and the most lucrative path forward for wind and solar profiteers is convincing the Michigan legislature to essentially outlaw their competition, in this case most forms of conventional generation. Both our ratepayers and our environment deserve better.”
