Power to the People

The world is still changing, and ever-faster.

Largely, that has meant industrialization, electronics, digital migration, and above all, more electricity. Of course, we generate that electricity in a number of ways, from the quickly-shrinking coal industry to the locally-controversial wind turbine.

While people disagree about how to generate electricity in the future for many reasons, what nobody is saying is that we’ll need less electricity. The need and desire for more and bigger screens, more environmentally-friendly cars, faster computers, and more powerful (and ubiquitous) air conditioning around the world is driving our power consumption to grow as fast as 5% globally per year.

If we don’t continue to generate increasing amounts of electricity, we’ll have to start picking and choosing what to go without, or when to cut our power use. Or someone else at the power company will.

As evidenced by the groups that have sprung up to oppose local industrial wind energy production, many local people aren’t enthusiastic about the idea of large, visible, and possibly disruptive additions to the local landscape.

I think that’s understandable. The landscape here is quite varied and beautiful, and in some ways ecologically unique. It may not be pristine, but it is wild, and it is recovering. The wildlife and landscape are what I moved here for, and it’s what many people live here for, or visit to see. I’ve commented more than once how power lines have ruined picturesque scenes. I like to think wind turbines are somewhat more aesthetic, but I can’t say I won’t find them just as frustrating to my photography.

And in the face of questionable tax benefits and regionalized energy benefits, I can’t blame anyone who feels turbines or other industrial power generation near their homes are going to lower their quality of life more than it’s worth and opposes them on that basis.

But the need for more power remains, and the need to produce it cleanly is also increasingly obvious. If you can’t take my word for it, meteorologists’ word for it, climatologists’ and world leaders’ words for it… well, the effects are getting strong enough that you should be able to observe them for yourself if you have a decent memory or keep some basic records.

Meanwhile, the state of Michigan, years ago, was bought out by power companies that got them to pass limits on the distributed solar generation that can be sold back onto the grid. People generating their own power threatened their business model, so DTE, UPPCO, and other power companies had to find a way to make it less attainable and less profitable.

But if we’re going to meet the demands of the future, we need every tool in our toolbox (to quote a couple of researchers I know), and for the Upper Peninsula, distributed generation would be a cost-effective, low impact, and resilient way to meet short-term energy needs as infrastructure expands. I’m sure we can find a way to make it work for UPPCO, too.

Thankfully, a bipartisan group of legislators (including our own Rep. Greg Markkanen) has introduced a bill that would eliminate those caps and allow any number of people to install solar panels or other generation equipment and sell excess electricity back to the power company.

Of course, bills like this have been proposed before, only to die in committee at the end of the year, and that may be the future of this bill, too. It’s currently in the House Committee on Energy, under Chairperson Rep. Joe Bellino, a Republican who represents Lenawee and Monroe Counties. Unless he decides to bring the bill up for discussion and passage by his committee, the bill will almost certainly expire at the end of the legislative session, and we’ll be back to square one.

It’s what happened last year, and not much has changed since then.

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True accessibility in government is sorely lacking