Three state legislators in Michigan have put together a bill
to kill the state’s renewable energy mandate, while their colleagues have
already moved on to planning the second phase after it meets its current goal.
Michigan State Rep. Tom McMillin (R), introduced a bill on
October 1 that would repeal the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS),
Midwest Energy News reported on Tuesday. Passed in 2008, the RPS
stipulates that 10 percent of Michigan’s energy come from renewable sources by
2015.
A working group headed up by the office of state Sen. Mike
Nofs (R), who chairs the Energy and Technology Committee in the Michigan State
Senate, is currently playing with various ideas for how to reform the RPS,
including upping the target.
State Reps. Ken Goike (R) and Ray Franz (R), have joined on
as co-sponsors for McMillin’s bill in the Michigan State House of
Representatives. The trio made a previous attempt to scuttle the RPS back in 2012, but the bill
never made it out of committee.
Nofs told Midwest Energy News that he hadn’t yet spoken with
McMillin or the bill’s other two co-sponsors about repealing the RPS, nor has
he read their bill. He did say he and other members of the working group were
“surprised” by the proposed legislation. “I understand there are a lot of
concerns with it automatically,” Nofs said.
According to James Clift, the policy director for the
Michigan Environmental Council, the idea of repealing the RPS sits outside both
mainstream public opinion in the state, as well as mainstream opinion amongst
the state’s Republicans. “I don’t think there’s support within their caucus to
move this legislation,” he told Midwest Energy News. “It’s the minority point
of view. A majority of members in the Legislature see the benefits of renewable
energy.”
Consumers Energy, a major utility in Michigan which has
participated in Nofs’ working group also expressed opposition to McMillin’s
proposal. “The legislation … would create great uncertainty about the future of
renewable energy in the state,” said the utility’s spokesman, Brian Wheeler, in
an email. Investors both in America and around the world have become increasingly vocal in recent years about the need for
government policy to create reliable long-term paths if investment in renewable
generation is to reach the scale necessary to ward off climate change.
A group called the Michigan Conservative Energy Forum (MCEF)
actually formed in the state around the end of 2013 to push for more renewable
energy based on conservative priorities. Larry Ward, the group’s executive
director, points to issues like coal pollution’s detrimental
effects on health and environmental conservation, as well as the undress of
millions that leave the Michigan economy each year to pay for coal supplies
from other states.
Polling the group ddi find strong support of 53 percent for renewable energy over
and above coal throughout Michigan’s populace, and across its party lines. And polling by other groups in February of this year found
69 percent support for the RPS specifically.
Nofs told Midwestern Energy News he hopes to release draft
legislation for updating Michigan’s energy efficiency mandates in the next few
weeks, and the best case scenario would be passing final laws just after the
November election. The schedule for reform of the RPS specifically is less
certain. Nofs has said the reform my change the RPS to a “goal”
rather than a target or standard, and that he’d like natural gas to qualify
under the revamped law — though leakage throughout the industry’s
infrastructure likely renders it no better than coal from a climate
change perspective.
But Ward and Greg Moore, the legislative director for Nofs’
office, both emphasized the reluctance of many Michigan Republicans to get into
the subject of climate change, and focused on the potential health benefits and
conservation benefits of the RPS instead. “It throws people off and gets us off
on a subject that’s far too political, unfortunately,” Moore told ThinkProgress
in an interview.
A 2013 data-gathering campaign kicked off by Michigan Gov.
Rick Snyder delivered a report near the end of that year that Michigan’s RPS
could be expanded to a 30 percent target in 2035 without economic consequence,
relying on resources within the state. Moore didn’t rule such a target out, but
he was ambivalent. “I know the [Snyder] Administration has had some misgivings
about that being put out that way, that the costs of actually doing so were not
factored in and were not clearly illustrated,” Moore said. “So I’m not sure
they’re still holding it at 30 percent.”
“We’re less concerned about a number than we are about the
goal being clean energy, however it’s produced, whether it’s through wind and
solar, whether it’s through gas and nuclear or clean coal.”
No comments:
Post a Comment