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.

  • PowerCrazy
    17·
    7 months ago

    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.

      • PowerCrazy
        16·
        7 months ago

        While overall Germany has managed to cut it’s emissions since the 80’s, that little uptick since 2020 was what I was referring to when I said they would choose what was cheaper over what was cleaner. Anyway, my digs at Germany are beside the point.

        Proposals like this often sound good on paper, but in practice if they are just using accounting tricks to achieve “net-zero” emissions, they are ultimately nothing more then feel-good measures that will be ignored as soon as it’s economically or politically expedient.