Growing Michigan Together Council omits energy transition

If Michigan’s energy transition is the path to prosperity, why doesn’t Whitmer’s advisory board say so?

By James David Dickson | December 3, 2023

There is a glaring omission in the first draft of recommendations put forth by the Growing Michigan Together Council: energy.

“Our vision is to be a top-ten growth state by 2050,” the document begins. It depicts Michigan as a future climate haven. But nowhere in its 40 pages, first published by the news service MIRS, is the word “energy.”

It’s an odd choice. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer created and appointed members to the board.

This week, Whitmer signed into law a clean energy package that requires a 100% clean energy standard from Michigan’s large utilities by 2040.

Whitmer signed bills that strip local elected officials of their ability to zone out large wind and solar projects.

A year and a half before the clean energy plan was the law, it was a plan: the MI Healthy Climate Plan.

Listen for the dog that’s not barking, Michigan.

The state regularly blasts out its progressive bona fides on billboards in other states. Yet a board convened to grow Michigan’s population doesn’t mention the energy transition by name?

Perhaps “Move to Michigan, where appointees of the governor can fill the countryside with solar arrays, and the attorney general wants to shut down a pipeline” is too many words for a billboard.

In other areas, Whitmer’s plan and the board’s recommendations sync up perfectly.

“Build a lifelong education system” is strategy one of the plan, in a draft Nov. 28. On Dec. 1, the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential started work, by order of Whitmer. MiLEAP’s goal is education beyond K-12.

Michigan’s energy transition is not a plan for prosperity, except cleaner. It’s a new normal where the sources of Michigan’s energy are unreliable, matching distribution systems that are unreliable now.

There are days in Michigan when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. Using wind and solar to serve as the primary, not supplemental, means of generating electricity means bills will be bigger and service will be worse. Oh, and fallen trees will still knock out power in entire neighborhoods for a week.

Some of the money spent on solar panels and wind turbines could have been used to bury power lines. Instead, it was spent building the energy sources preferred by politicians. The people of Michigan may soon pay for those choices.

If Michigan gets to net zero carbon by 2050, the reward to Mother Earth is a 1/1,000th-of-a-degree drop in global temperature.

Nobody said it was cheap, saving the world. Or, apparently, effective.

When you hear of plans to reduce carbon, understand it to mean fewer jobs and less prosperity. That’s not a story that attracts newcomers.

And that’s why Whitmer’s advisory board remained silent on Michigan’s energy transition.

James David Dickson is managing editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential. Email him at dickson@mackinac.org.

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.

Public Service Commission ruling on the Line 5 Tunnel is a small pre-holiday win for Michiganders

One bit of good news to balance the glut of Grinch-like energy news coming out of Lansing

By Jason Hayes | December 3, 2023

The people of Michigan have one energy win they can look to as they go into the weekend.

This week has been a difficult one for Michigan residents as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed her extreme net-zero energy bills into law, leaving Michiganders with the dual specter of spiking electricity prices and impending electric grid instability.

On the heels of the governor’s blackout bills becoming law, state regulators at the Michigan Public Service Commission appeared to get a jump on pushing prices higher as they approved a $368.1 million rate increase for DTE customers. The optics of a rate hike falling a few days after the passage of the law, and a few weeks before Christmas, can’t be ignored. The average household that is forced to rely on DTE for its electric service will soon see a $6.51 monthly increase in its utility bill.

On a more positive note, state residents were thrown one pre-Christmas bone to go with these two Grinchy letdowns. In a separate ruling, the MPSC gave a green light to a much-needed state permit, partially clearing the way for Enbridge Energy to begin building the Line 5 Tunnel. Enbridge will need additional approvals from the state-level Mackinac Straits Corridor Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before it can start work on the tunnel, which will improve the safety of a valuable pipeline.

“The Commission’s order determined there is a public need for the replacement section of Line 5 and the products it carries,” noted MPSC spokesperson Matt Helms in an agency news release.

That order is a big win for people across Michigan as we are forced to look to Santa, prayer, or the Spirit of Christmas Present to bring us the weather we need if a wind/solar-reliant electric grid is to heat and warm our homes. A backup generator under the Christmas tree would be the right gift to protect Michigan families as the governor’s homespun version of the Green New Deal hollows out the state’s electric system. With the MPSC’s ruling on the Line 5 Tunnel, the affordable fuels that Michigan residents need to power a backup generator and keep their Christmas trees lit are a little bit closer to reality.

The language in the MPSC’s ruling also demonstrates the questionable thinking in a November 17 news release from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. In that statement, Nessel lauded the release of an ostensibly “game-changing” report by the consulting firm PLG, which discussed the potential economic impacts of shutting down the Line 5 pipeline. “The key takeaway is that energy markets will adapt – as they have always done and continue to do – in the event that Line 5 is shut down,” claimed the attorney general’s office. “With advance notice, the markets can be expected to do so without supply shortages or price spikes.”

But today’s MPSC ruling — signed by the governor’s handpicked commissioners — directly contradicts the attorney general’s claim that “Michigan does not need Line 5.” While the Nessel press release attempts to shrug off the potential for economic harm that would be caused by closing the pipeline, the MPSC recognizes a “public need” for the tunnel “and the products it carries.”

The commission’s order even mirrors past Mackinac Center statements when it points out that “without the pipeline’s operation, suppliers would need to use higher-risk and costlier alternative fuel supply sources and transportation for Michigan customers, including those who use propane for home heating.”

The consultants at PLG recommend exactly those options. Their report promotes increased waterborne deliveries and crude-by-rail shipments as “existing infrastructure” that could potentially offset all but 13% of Line 5’s crude shipments. Previous Mackinac Center publications explained that “the Line 5 pipeline was built in 1953 to ‘drastically reduce the amount of oil and gas traveling on the Great Lakes’ in tankers...” In fact, “The state of Michigan asked Bechtel Corp. to build the pipeline since tankers have a higher rate of accidents than pipelines.”

Michiganders have seen substantial energy setbacks over the past week. Rising electricity rates and the threat of Gov. Whitmer’s green energy mandates have joined with rising inflation to cast a pall over holiday preparations. Rather than enjoying soothing, cozy nights by a fire with family, Michiganders face anxious days as increased utility bills and power outages loom ominously.

But we can take heart in one piece of good pre-holiday news: that government regulators may soon allow the state to retain one piece of essential energy infrastructure that supplies affordable fuel for backup generators. At least we have that one bit of holiday cheer.