- cross-posted to:
- climate
- cross-posted to:
- climate
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/3616688
As soon as today, Michigan lawmakers are expected to vote on a sweeping package of environmental bills, including legislation that requires the state to reach 100 percent clean energy by 2040.
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Any one from MI with thoughts on Gretchen Whitmer?
Think she’s got a shot at a presidential run?
Personally not really. I think here being a Trump foil for Biden is ultimately going to cost her a chance at higher office. There’s some low hanging fruit from her tenure that would be problematic for presidential runs.
She won re-election big, against a terrible candidate. Maybe 4 years from now things get forgotten or become less relevant and she has a chance to run.
Well right on. I’m still shopping. My number one qualification for a progressive candidate is “has won election to some level of higher office”. I might disagree with you on the Trump foil thing being an issue. I think if you are trying to run to the center, sure. If you are running a progressive campaign, that shit won’t ever fly. You have to motivate a stonger base to the left of center, so its not necessarily relevant, or could even represent an advantage.
I wonder how Michigan, the home of the big 3 automakers defines “clean energy.” If carbon offsets are involved, this is just bullshit.
Article actually answers this question:
The definition of “clean” energy includes solar, wind, nuclear, landfill gas, biomass and gas-fired power plants that capture at least 90 percent of their carbon emissions.
So natural Gas and other burning still count as “clean.” Also doesn’t address any other governmnetal pollution such as the fleet of cars that the State runs, not to mention the biggest export of the state (vehicles).
Nobody is going to build a gas-burning facility which captures 90% of its emissions - it makes it so expensive that it isn’t cost-effective.
which means the existing gas-fired plants will just get a perpetual waiver making the legislation worthless. Not that it was intended to actually do anything to begin with.
If the legislation passes in its current form, it explicitly shuts them down.
That’d be cool. I’ll stay pessimistic until I see a new nuclear plant commissioned, or maybe they just buy power from coal/gas power plants outside of michigan.
Renewables are significantly cheaper than nuclear for the first 80% or so of decarbonization, so I don’t expect to see nuclear plants commissioned until the very end, and then only if they cost of storage doesn’t drop sharply.
Michigan has a shit load of renewables already, if they didn’t they wouldn’t even be considering this piece of legislation at all. But renewables are also cheap and require very little investment, plus you get a lot of cheap political points. But building an actual clean power plant, i.e. a continuous always on source of power, that requires capital investment and will only be done if the proposal is serious. Hence the pessimism. I expect this bill to look more like Germany where they talk about clean energy, but wouldn’t you know it, it turns out coal is actually cheaper, so they went ahead and built more of those.
I should also note that Michigan isn’t unique in having a ton of windmills/solar power generation. That kind of infrastructure is everywhere. But there is large gap between building a wind farm, and building a clean power plant.
Germany managed to cut their emissions:
The only real question is whether they could have cut it faster if they had not shuttered nuclear power at the same time; it’s not actually clear because they had fairly expensive to operate nuclear facilities.