RightMichigan.com || The Michigan Coal Stimulus

Advertise on RightMichigan.com

NEWS TIPS!

RightMichigan.com

Buzz

Who are the NERD fund donors Mr Snyder?
Tweets about "#RightMi, -YoungLibertyMI, -dennislennox,"

Raise the curtain.

The Michigan Coal Stimulus

By Theblogprof, Section News
Posted on Mon Feb 23, 2009 at 04:26:58 PM EST
Tags: coal, DEQ, energy, environment, government, Granholm, Michigan, Mike Cox (all tags)

cross-posted at theblogprof

I wrote about the opinion MI AG Mike Cox made yesterday basically telling Governor Granholm that she can't just do whatever she wants. Specifically, that she exceeded her statutory authority in having the DEQ do things well beyond its charter. Like predict the energy mix in the future. In fact, I pointed out this quote in a prior post (Scrooge takes away Michigan's lump of coal! ) that was made by Russ Harding, former director of the Michigan DEQ:

Requiring the DEQ to make critical decisions about Michigan's future energy mix is a recipe for stagnation or worse.

About sais it all in that one sentence. In yet another former post, I defended the need for new coal power plants and had this to say, amongst much else:

Maybe the environitwits can think of this as "investing in our decaying infrastructure." You know - "creating jobs." There! Is that better now?

Apparently, no - it was not. But that one quote is what I want to expand on in this post for "stimulus" reasons. But first, from today's article in The Citizen Patriot via MLive:

Gov. Jennifer Granholm overstepped her bounds when she ordered new legal requirements related to coal plants in the state, Attorney General Mike Cox said Friday. That was welcome news at Jackson-based Consumers Energy, which is planning to build a $2 billion, 800-megawatt advanced supercritical pulverized clean coal plant near Bay City.

$2 billion. Quite an "investment" in Michigan, wouldn't you say? In fact, let's compare numbers here, shall we? The non-stimulus stimulus boondoggle will yield $5.5-7 billion for Michigan in pork (apparently, someone is still reading the bill that had to be rushed through immediately with no debate to prevent a national calamity, and was signed a full 4 days later after Obama came back from a long-weekend vacation).

In any case, here we have a private company willing to invest $2 billion in Michigan, with no stings attached (unlike the "stimulus"), putting Michigan moms and dads to work to fix a crumbling infrastructure - almost a full third of what we are to be getting from porulus. In fact, if you consider the other licences applied for to build modern, cleaner coal power plants in the State, there's more "stimulus" money there than porkulus offers, won't put our children and grandchildren in debt, won't add to the national deficit, won't cause inflation to limit economic growth, and it will be home-grown right here in Michigan.

Moreover, the power plant to be built in Bay City is an "advanced supercritical pulverized clean coal plant." That's right - much better for the environment than the old delapitated plants that pump out power for our homes now. This is a win-win for consumers in this great State.

Just don't hold your breath yet. Federal regulation may come to Granholm's rescue here. As I pointed out in a prior post:

To add to the difficulties new coal plants will face getting permits, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just announced that it is reconsidering a Bush-era memorandum that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. This will give reinforcement to states such as Michigan, where governors have effectively put a moratorium on building new coal plants. It probably will also make it nearly impossible to get financing for such plants until this issue is resolved.

So, in a nutshell, the federal government doesn't want private companies to stimulate the economy here in Michigan. Instead, they want to borrow more money, and/or print more, to give it to us under the condition that they tell us exactly how to spend it. Gee... No. GTE.