News Story

1,400 Michigan Wind Turbines Needed To Replace The Palisades Nuclear Plant

Michigan also plans to shutter all its coal plants

The Palisades nuclear power plant in South Haven is scheduled to close in 2018. That single facility puts out around 720 megawatts of electricity. A typical wind turbine in Michigan has an average output of about half a megawatt of electricity. So it would take around 1,400 wind turbines to replace the energy produced by the Palisades plant. There are currently 883 wind turbines working in Michigan, most in the Thumb region.

Wind energy is intermittent and needs backup sources like natural gas turbines for when the wind doesn’t blow. Michigan's big utilities have announced they plan to close all their existing coal-fired power plants and replace them with gas-fired power plants and renewable sources, which includes wind. The federal government gave the wind industry $5.9 billion in subsidies in 2013, the most recent year data is available from the federal Energy Information Administration. By comparison, nuclear power received $1.6 billion in federal subsidies that year.

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.

Editorial

Michael Moore: Trump Rule Change Means Human Extinction

Who sends the press release if humans are extinct?

President Donald Trump signed an executive order to nullify many of former President Barack Obama’s climate change regulations.

That sparked outrage from one famous Michigan resident, filmmaker Michael Moore of Flint.

 

ForTheRecord says: More than a few social media wags have wondered: If human life is extinguished and historians are human beings, how will they be able to mark the day their extinction began?

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.

Editorial

Media's Attacks on DeVos Rife with Factual Inaccuracies

Progressive narrative trumps facts in coverage of Trump education secretary

U.S. News & World Report is the latest media outlet to echo negative characterizations of Betsy DeVos as the U.S. secretary of education in its news coverage.

Reporter Lauren Camera wrote a March 24 story with the headline: “Liberals, Conservatives Agree: Big Mistake for White House to Push Private School Choice.”

From that article: “Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, for one. The billionaire and her family have spent millions of dollars lobbying for private school choice policies in her home state of Michigan, and have been major players in the proliferation of charter schools and voucher programs that allow students to enroll in religious private schools in and around Detroit.”

ForTheRecord says: Conservatives and liberals all agree? So, that’s everyone, right?

The mainstream media’s attacks on DeVos have been consistent in that many of them have some factual errors. For example, this article says the DeVos family supported “voucher programs that allow students to enroll in religious private schools in and around Detroit.”

Except Michigan has no voucher programs. Its constitution bars vouchers and any state support for religious schools.

The DeVos family did support a 2000 ballot initiative that would have changed the constitution to allow for vouchers, but it failed.

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.