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Raise the curtain.

MI AG Mike Cox: Granholm went too far with coal plants order

By Theblogprof, Section News
Posted on Fri Feb 20, 2009 at 06:51:20 PM EST
Tags: coal, energy, government (all tags)

Cross-posted at theblogprof

No kidding! I posted on this topic just 3 days ago (Scrooge takes away Michigan's lump of coal! ). In that post, I also pointed out Russ Harding, former director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, who wrote an op-ed in the freep that actually defends the approving of new coal power plants. This excerpt is from that op-ed:

I was director of the DEQ for nearly eight years and can testify that the agency is ill-equipped to consider factors other than environmental ones. Requiring the DEQ to make critical decisions about Michigan's future energy mix is a recipe for stagnation or worse.

Amen to that! Related to this but in a different post a comment was made by an astute reader. In the comment, the reader had this to say:

Gov. Granholm is ... stretching if not breaking statutory authority to block coal plants.

It was an interesting thought. So I was happy this evening to read the opinion of Mike Cox in this post in the freep:

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox says Gov. Jennifer Granholm exceeded her authority by creating new legal requirements for building coal-fired power plants.
Cox issued an opinion today in response to an executive directive that Granholm announced in her State of the State address this month.

Nice that someone in this state (other than Jack) picked up on this. Further, Cox said

those requirements were not supported by Michigan's environmental laws.

Sounds about right. Looks like the ball may be in Granholm's court again. One more relevant quote of mine from a prior post:

Without these new plants, how does Sven (the author of the hit piece of an article) think the grid will be balanced when all of these supposed "solar arrays" and wind farms aren't putting out any power whatsoever? I've mentioned wind power several times already (see here and here). It's a nice supplement, but simply cannot replace more than 15-20% of energy needs. I'm not talking about 15-20% of Michigan's needs, just 15-20% of the west coast of Michigan's needs.

Looks like some common sense might be coming back to Michigan after all (but I'm not holding my breath just yet).

< Congressman Mike Rogers doesn't like the pork-barrel bailout! | Granholm FINALLY calls Special Election for 19th Senate >

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