A really good point about Proposal 3 that hasn't gotten any play, anywhere

by: Eric B.

Wed Sep 12, 2012 at 13:57:26 PM EDT

Okay, just for review, changes in the energy markets over the last few years have pushed the following: The cost of coal energy has risen dramatically, both in terms of construction costs for new plants (to the point where some coal projects have been canceled or softly canceled through a shelving) and in terms of importation (i.e. driving it, from West Virginia to Michigan). The costs for renewables have fallen, in part due to the natural softening of prices for new technology and in part due to subsidies by the Chinese government of that nation's solar power industry. The cheapest power plants to build and maintain are those of natural gas, but the giant rush on gas leases a couple of years ago has in many cases turned out to be a bust, and that coupled with questions about the safety of fracking have raised questions about the long-term viability of that feedstock. One final item, states that have adopted aggressive renewable portfolio standards have mostly seen energy prices fall as the market for those ramp up, and the savings has been passed along to consumers. That's mostly, by the way, because there have been a few places where the opposite has happened.

For some of us, the meat of Proposal 3 -- the 25x25 (now endorsed by the UAW) -- has been right on the money. If you like fact-based policy, it's really the way to go. What has caused us concerns was locking this all away in the state constitution, presumably to make sure it was safe from the tinkering of a perpetually incompetent state Legislature (and how awful is it that our political process is so broken that this is being done, and how awful is it that this reality is being blamed mostly on citizen referendums and not a broken political process?). Aside from the wisdom of using a framework to establish specific policy goals, it comes with the practical downfall of locking us into this specific goal through 2025.

This morning, someone e-mailed one of those fact sheets distributed by one side or the other. I normally don't pay mind to these things, for obvious reasons, but this one made a fairly salient point ... not adopting a more aggressive standard, and allowing to be built more coal plants (where, by the way, technology to clean emissions would have to be retrofitted since it doesn't currently exist in a form that is market ready) would lock us in to an even more goal for an even longer period of time. To make sure that a coal plant pays for itself, the utilities would literally have to take steps to hold back the renewable energy market for years. I mean, renewables are already mostly more cost effective than coal (when you add in cost externalities, which backers of coal energy never get around to doing), it's much better.

Boiled down, that's what this ballot question is. It's a question about the future of energy in Michigan. As we've seen with the last energy bill, the so-called flexibility that we'd have if it weren't locked into the constitution doesn't exist in practical terms. If it did, it would have already been amended. It's unfortunate that things have unfolded so that it's framed as "good idea, but it's unwise to do it in the constitution," because it's really about whether we want a Michigan that provides power based on the technology of today and tomorrow versus the technology that made the British Empire great.