Echo

New report outlines attitudes on Michigan’s energy future

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In 2008, the state legislature passed Michigan’s Renewable Portfolio Standard. The law requires that by the year 2015, utilities must generate at least 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources. As 2015 approaches, state officials are working to determine the next steps for Michigan’s energy policy.

Nearshore

Mr. Great Lakes: Beach butts and renewable energy

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Mr. Great Lakes (Jeff Kart) reports from Bay City, Michigan’s Delta College Q-90.1 FM.  

 

This week Kart discusses renewable energy investments and the trash count from the Adopt-a-Beach Great Lakes cleanup program. Text at Mr Great Lakes

Echo

Green tax exemption proposed for homes

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Proposed legislation in Michigan may encourage the use of small-scale clean-energy devices by exempting them from property taxes.
Local governments say they must weigh clean energy’s impact on economic development against the loss of property tax revenue.

Energy

Tribes explore renewable energy prospects

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Native American tribes in the Northern Lower Peninsula and Upper Peninsula are seeking to develop renewable energy, but a lack of money is impeding many projects, experts say.

Michigan tribes have a potential for wind energy and wood-based biomass, said Roger Taylor, the principal project manager of the Tribal Energy Program.

Energy

Network of Great Lakes energy research centers could usher in ‘green economy’

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The Great Lakes region is key to developing an innovation-driven green economy, according to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. The report outlines the benefits of creating a region-wide network of energy research centers. “…a series of roughly six of these high-powered, market-focused energy centers would create a critical mass of innovation through their number, size, variety, linkages and orientation to pre-existing research institutions and industry clusters,” according to the report. Accounting for nearly a third of all academic and industry research development in the country, the Midwest “lies at ground zero of the nation’s need ‘green’ the U.S. industry,” according to the report. Each center would call on the region’s top research universities, national and private research laboratories and engineering expertise to examine energy problems ranging from the development of biofuels to the transportation of power.

Scientists to Congress: Count carbon from burning biomass

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Echo recently covered the prospect of the Great Lakes states supplanting their steady diet of coal with biomass — that’s trees, crop waste and other plants that can be burned for energy. It’s an attractive but tricky plan. If done right, it could be a “carbon-neutral” fuel because crops can be managed to absorb carbon dioxide and the vegetation would theoretically decompose and release its carbon anyway. If done wrong, we’ll rack up a carbon debt from still-recovering forest resources instead of fossil fuels. If it wasn’t already complicated enough, try figuring out how biomass emissions ought to figure into Senate climate legislation released this month by Sens.