Granholm's energy answer isn't blowing in the wind
In her State of the State speech, Gov. Jennifer Granholm outlined a restructuring of Michigan’s energy infrastructure that aims to meet this industrial state’s future energy needs with wind power. The plan is radical but hardly new. The governor’s policy closely parallels the failed experiment of Denmark — a similar peninsular water state that has invested billions of dollars in wind generation during the last 25 years.
In an interview with The Detroit News after her address, the governor was curiously unaware of Denmark’s experience, even though she toured Scandinavian countries in 2007 and cited them as models of an alternative energy future. But it is crucial that the state understand the lessons of Denmark and the very real limitations of wind power.
With close union ties, the governor is an advocate for government work programs. She is also a global warming true believer. During her tenure in office, she has eschewed fundamental economic reforms and instead spent heavily on road and infrastructure projects while trying to marry her green and labor constituencies under central planning schemes (a new law she pushed mandates 10 percent renewables by the year 2015) to save the planet and guarantee jobs at the same time.
“Climate change is affecting everything from the icebergs to Great Lakes levels having gone down,” she warned in 2007. “The question for us as a state and as a nation is how we make sure we reduce global warming and create jobs.”Now, with Michigan reeling from a nation-leading 10.6 percent unemployment rate, the governor is proposing her boldest scheme yet. She devoted the bulk of her State of the State address to an energy policy that would wall off this state from America’s cheapest energy source, coal, and instead build thousands of windmills to power its industrial infrastructure.
In the 1970s, Denmark’s government also experiment with ridding itself of imported energy sources, namely coal. Today, Denmark’s energy prices are the highest in Europe at a staggering 30 cents per kilowatt-hour — more than three times the cost of Michigan’s electric rates (about 8 cents per kWh), which are already high among its Midwestern neighbors.
Granholm’s Denmark-like “45-20 plan,” she says, will in 20 years”reduce our reliance on fossil fuels for generating electricity by 45 percent. We will do it through increased renewable energy, gains in energy efficiency and other new technologies. You heard me right: a 45 percent reduction by 2020.”
Yet nothing of the kind has happened in Denmark, where not a single coal plant has been shuttered in 25 years. Yes, Denmark’s massive wind subsidies did attract wind companies, but at unsustainable costs.
Granholm insists that wind power is more affordable than coal or nuclear. Typically, utility rates for wind are double those of conventional sources. Indeed, when Denmark slashed its huge, bank-busting state subsidies in 2005, the wind industry dried up. Not one wind project has been built since the subsidies were removed. Even two decades on the government dole yielded a pittance. Despite building 6,000 windmills accounting for 20 percent of the nation’s energy capacity, wind power accounts for 3 percent of Denmarks’ energy production because of its unreliability.
In other words, even when subsidized to competitive costs, wind’s unreliable nature (because the wind doesn’t blow all the time, wind’s capacity factor is only 20 percent compared with coal’s 75 percent) means that it cannot be a primary source of electricity generation. As a result, most of Denmark’s wind energy is exported because it is consigned to surplus power.
Granholm’s speech came as temperatures hit a bone-chilling 7 degrees outside the state capitol, with Michigan suffering through the latest in as series of below-normal-temperature winters. And this year’s snowfalls are at record levels. Even lake water levels are on the rebound. Yet Michigan’s governor is betting the state’s future on unaffordable wind power.
“This new energy sector represents our single best hope for new investment and new jobs,” she says. Michigan under Granholm already leads industrial states in greenhouse gas reduction because it has hemorrhaged jobs and population. And her new initiative is likely to accelerate those numbers as business reacts to her plan by looking elsewhere for reliable, cheap energy.
Will the last one out of Michigan, please turn out the lights?
By Henry Payne
Henry Payne is The Detroit News’ editorial cartoonist.
10 February 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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