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November 4, 2009
INTRO: This is the 3rd and final day of The American Wind Energy Association meeting in Detroit. Governor Granholm came there yesterday to promote Michigan as a place to manufacture windmill parts. Reporter Chris McCarus spoke with another advocate who says windpower saves money.
Most of Michigan’s oil and gas and all of its coal comes from outside the state. That’s $26 billion dollars a year that Michiganders lose. Larry Flowers came from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.
“You guys don’t have a coal resource indigenous to Michigan. You don’t have a gas resource indigenous to Michigan. So all of that money goes out of state. So it just makes sense to capture the resource you have which is wind.”
Recent Michigan law forces utility companies to get 10% of their power from solar, wind or biomass by the year 2015. Most other states who’ve also passed renewable energy portfolio standards, made1 them higher.
Why doesn’t anyone develop water turbines that could be placed in fast moving bodies of water like the St Clair River or Detroit River where you never have to worry about the sun going behind the clouds or the wind not blowing? Constant motion 24/7.
Chris
we appreciate the Michigannow.org web site!
This is the kind of “creativity for good” that we need.
Continued success on all fronts,
Rich VV