Forcing utilities to draw power from windmills is bad policy
Jackson City Patriot, www.mlive.com 5 April 2012
Jackson City Patriot, www.mlive.com 5 April 2012
I see Mark Muhich and the Sierra Club, in his recent column, are again pushing a requirement that Michigan utilities obtain 25 percent of their power supply from renewables.
They say it will create jobs. Requiring Michigan utilities to invest billions of dollars in wind turbines just because a small portion of that money will be spent on Michigan-based equipment and create a few Michigan jobs is bad policy.
In Michigan, virtually all the required power will come from a huge fleet of wind turbines. These turbines are huge, noisy eyesores that kill thousands of birds. They are also very expensive, much more so than the power that comes from out-of-state power suppliers. This 25 percent requirement will push up the cost of power from Michigan utilities.
Businesses are already complaining power from Consumers Energy and Detroit Edison are too high and that they should be able to buy power from other suppliers. Businesses will either leave the state or buy their power from cheaper non-green suppliers outside Michigan.
Subsidizing “green jobs” by eliminating non-green jobs makes no sense. Michigan residential electric consumers will have to pay dearly as they pay all the added costs for these uneconomic power plants.
— DALE PUCKETT/Jackson
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/04/05/forcing-utilities-to-draw-power-from-windmills-is-bad-policy/