Gambling on Green

By mandating renewable-energy standards that would elevate employment and alleviate environmental woes, Michigan has jumped aboard the ‘green’ bandwagon. But at what cost?

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Myriad political and economic leaders tout energy independence as the solution to a plethora of America’s employment, defense, and environmental challenges.

The plan is to leverage renewable energy by investing billions of dollars and implementing policies that will enable America to kick its addiction to foreign oil, undermine the threat of terrorism, protect the environment, and create a new economy with millions of jobs.

A May 2009 Michigan Green Jobs Report suggests that a $2.3-billion investment in alternative energy in Detroit alone would create 23,880 jobs, while a $4.8-billion investment in the state of Michigan would create 54,000 jobs. However, Michigan relies on coal for about 57 percent of its annual electricity production. Even as unemployment in the state reached a record 15.2 percent in June, limited coal reserves mean that the state continues to rely on $2 billion worth of imports, helping neither the economic situation nor the environment.

Today, even as Michigan is home to a high concentration of highly skilled and well-educated workers, it struggles to balance the harsh realities of the economic recession with the burden of national debt and President Barack Obama’s vision for an energy-independent America. What’s more, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has decided to use millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds that were intended to be invested in new jobs and technology instead of making needed cuts in an over-bloated and benefit-rich public-service sector.

Despite these challenges, the state is headed down a new path of energy efficiency, having passed legislation that requires utilities to meet 10 percent of electricity demand through renewable energy and energy-efficiency programs by 2015 — while a new package of bills calls for 30 percent green-generated power by 2025. The federal government, meanwhile, through the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act, wants utilities to produce 20 percent of electricity through the same programs by 2020.

Politicians spurred on by environmentalists and businesses ready to reap the benefits of sustainable technology and investment are gambling that the mandates they’ve enacted or will soon pass into law will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in research and development, manufacturing, sales, installation, and service. Whether those goals are met remains to be seen, but it’s clear that those businesses that specialize in designing, producing, installing, or servicing wind turbines, biofuel plants, advanced batteries, and solar cells stand to benefit. Overall, more than $5 billion will be invested in green energy in Michigan over the next 20 years.

But reaching the goal won’t be easy. Detroit Edison, the state’s largest electric utility, is investing millions of dollars to meet Michigan’s renewable-energy mandate. A good deal of that investment will go toward wind turbines — some 600 are planned. Studies show the most active areas of the state for wind are north and south of Traverse City, around Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, and in the Thumb area. While wind is typically strongest on the Great Lakes (where there’s less resistance from forests and buildings), placing turbines in the water is a colossal challenge, given the constructional, environmental, and infrastructural hurdles.

For Trevor Lauer, vice president of retail marketing for Detroit Edison and the utility’s point man for renewable energy, the task of meeting the mandates is herculean: “Do we build turbines in the most active areas for wind, which may not be near transmission lines, or do we build turbines in areas that have less wind, but are near transmission lines?”

Lauer and his colleagues are charged with navigating the complicated process for locating towers more than 325 feet high and equipped with turbines that span 230 feet (or some 475 feet from ground to blade tip). “We’re still working all of those details out,” he says.

In addition to finding the optimal location for the turbines that balances wind power against the cost of building transmission lines, Lauer must also get municipal approval for the infrastructure — and not every community is eager to host the imposing structures.

“There are a lot of NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard) out there,” Lauer admits, “so it’s not going to be an easy process.”

Currently, Detroit Edison has garnered easements across 70,000 acres of land, and needs to reach 100,000 easement-ready acres to meet the energy mandate. Alan Ackerman, a longtime real-estate attorney and partner of Ackerman, Ackerman & Dynkowski in Bloomfield Hills, says the transmission lines needed to upgrade the electric grid are the “new freeways of the future.” The utilities, he says, will be “massive users of land that will bring in new investment and taxes, but not every community is going to allow the turbines to be built.”

In preparation for a differently fueled future, Detroit Edison and Heritage Sustainable Energy in Traverse City installed two German-built turbines last fall at the emerging Stoney Corners Wind Farm near Cadillac. In total, up to 60 turbines — each one producing around 2,500 kilowatts of power — are planned at the site.

In addition, the wind farm and others like it require a substation to transfer the generated power to the electric grid. “On average,” Lauer says, “the wind needed to move a turbine occurs about 30 percent of the time on a given day. Plus, there’s generally less wind in the summer months when you need it to power air conditioners.” Because wind is sporadic, the substations are needed to provide a steady flow of electricity to the grid, which can’t handle a sudden spike or drop in power.

On average, it takes about four years to get a turbine up and running, including gaining community approvals. While Stoney Corners is moving forward, Lauer says the Thumb area, including Huron, Tuscola, and Sanilac counties, offers the most promise for wind turbines. He hopes to start construction of a wind farm in the Thumb area next year.

Lauer says that, apart from wind, Detroit Edison is working on a plan to install thousands of solar panels to help meet the renewable-energy mandate. In total, some 2 million square feet of solar panels are planned. Some solar arrays will be built on large parcels of land, while others will be placed on the roofs of expansive structures like manufacturing plants or schools.

“As we gear up to meet the mandate, people are going to see some very visible signs of progress,” Lauer says, “whether it’s wind turbines or solar panels. We have some very sophisticated financial models that we use to determine the direction of our green efforts.”

On the nuclear front, DTE unveiled a reactor design last year for a proposed plant next to its Fermi 2 site in Newport, Mich. The alternative-energy plan of the plant would reduce the creation of greenhouse gases by an amount equivalent to the emissions of 1.5 million cars, DTE says. The plant could plausibly replace the same amount of electricity generated by traditional U.S. sources.

But nuclear power, for all its benefits, doesn’t fall under the state’s green umbrella mandate.

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