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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Whether nuclear plants are considered a renewable energy source is open to debate, but it’s clear that over the last few years green has become one of the most popular buzzwords in the country — so popular that politicians utter it frequently in public to bolster their campaigns. Today, nearly everyone in America has adopted at least a small part of the green lifestyle. While some own green cars, others shop from an ever-expanding catalog of green products and services.

Still, executives like Michigan Biodiesel CEO John Oakley suggest that all this hype won’t solve the energy crisis or lead to the growth of alternative energies if it isn’t backed up with appropriate action. “If we were at all seriously engaged in the food-for-fuel debate,” he says, “there would not be one mile of interstate road system that had places where you couldn’t grow a crop. There would be crops on the median and on the shoulders of every road in the entire state.”

To augment availability and capacity, Oakley and his Bangor, Mich.-based company support added legislation to increase incentives, especially since only 100 service stations in the state offer ethanol pumps.

Dave Gloer, general manger of POET Biorefining’s corn-based plant in Caro — in Michigan’s Thumb — agrees that added legislation is crucial in the ethanol sector. “The problem we have is that the Environmental Protection Agency puts a 10-percent blending limit on corn-based ethanol,” he says. “For an industry where demand currently equals supply, it will be hard to grow unless the EPA changes that cap.” Increasing the cap to at least 15 percent, he adds, would allow cellulosic ethanol (made from abundant plants like switchgrass) to move beyond the development stage to the production stage.

As the green revolution finds its footing, proponents argue that renewable energy and energy efficiency cannot be total solutions. They say these should be pursued as a part of a bigger strategy that may involve the very source the country is trying to free itself of — coal — but a “new and improved” clean coal, which emits fewer environmentally hazardous compounds. That will have to wait, though, as Granholm recently put on hold plans to construct seven coal-fired plants in the state, including one near Bay City.

In her most recent state of the state address, Gov. Granholm directed the Department of Environmental Quality to evaluate “both the need for additional electricity generation, and all feasible and prudent alternatives before approving new coal-fired power plants in Michigan.” Her comments put into question the future of Consumers Energy’s proposed $2-billion, 830-megawatt, coal-fired power plant in Bay City. The utility estimates the plant’s net economic impact would be $1.2 billion and would create 1,800 construction jobs at peak, about 2,500 indirect jobs, and more than 100 permanent jobs once the plant is operational.

Nevertheless, key parties remain optimistic. “The governor hasn’t issued any hold on building new coal plants,” says CMS Energy spokesman Jeff Holyfield.

“[She] said before you get a permit, the utility [must conduct] a needs analysis and an alternatives analysis. We’ve done all that, and we’ve delivered our reports to the Michigan Public Service Commission and the Department of Environmental Quality.”

Several residents, along with the Michigan chapter of environmental-advocacy group the Sierra Club, supported Granholm’s decision, arguing that “the proposed coal plant will emit 8.1 million tons of carbon dioxide, 64 pounds of mercury, 1,820 tons of nitrogen oxides, 2,154 tons of sulfur oxides, and 911 tons of particulate matter each year.”

But, Holyfield counters, “The club has been on the record opposing any new coal-fired plants, so that’s not surprising. What we’ve been trying to explain to folks is that our new unit is going to produce 10 percent less emissions than the existing units. We’re even talking about retiring some of our older units after bringing the new unit online in order to have a net emissions reduction.”

Meanwhile, President Obama and the press relied heavily on the versatility of the “green” buzzwords to provide fetching sound bites to boost his presidential campaign; he was smart enough to link them to the real issues of his audiences. In Michigan, that issue is “jobs.” And he did not disappoint.

“We will invest $150 billion over the next 10 years and leverage billions more in private capital to build a new energy economy that harnesses American energy and creates five million green-collar jobs to assuage the nation’s economic and environmental woes,” he pledged at a rally in Lansing in August of 2008. But Obama never referenced this promise to any study or valid projections.

Until recently, hard numbers on the “new energy economy” were tough to come by. In response to the need for statistics, the Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives published the Michigan Green Jobs Report in May 2009, making Michigan only the second state (after Washington) to release a scientific survey on the subject of green jobs.

According to the report, Michigan has 109,067 private-sector green jobs — 96,767 direct green jobs and 12,300 green support jobs. From a sample of 358 Michigan firms, the survey found that the green sector’s workforce increased by 2,500 workers from 2005 to 2008, a growth rate of 7.7 percent, compared with an overall statewide employment decline of 5.4 percent during the same period.

Reflecting on Michigan’s automotive heritage, the report reveals that clean transportation and fuel research compose 41 percent of the green jobs. It predicts that this sector will grow exponentially as the Big Three automakers, their competitors, and suppliers develop alternative fuel, hybrid, and electric vehicles in Michigan.

Michigan is already several strides ahead of most of the country in transforming its state economy to embrace the new energy vision — with metro Detroit at the center. The city and region are banking on decades of industrious leadership to develop blueprints for prosperity in the new energy era.

To assist the effort, the state recently invested $6 million in a Green Jobs Initiative that will convert a portion of its blue-collar workforce into a lean, green production machine. Under the No Worker Left Behind program, Michigan intends to provide the tools for green enterprises to prosper in the state by financing academia to facilitate green-sector skills that will offer investors trained, experienced manpower. The state is also providing millions of dollars in incentives for advanced battery research (around $550 million to date) in addition to mandating the use of renewable energy.

If it works, Michigan will have positioned itself as among the greenest economies on the planet. If it fails, the experiment will simply go down as a very expensive green gamble.

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