In The News

The Environmental Protection Agency's proposed rules – including one affecting Consumers Energy's pumped storage facility – are out of line, according to a Michigan congressman.

U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, a Republican from Zeeland, and Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Flint, collaborated on a bipartisan amendment to the Ratepayer Protection Act. The amendment encourages the Environmental Protection Agency to include the benefits of clean energy storage in their emissions calculation under the Clean Power Plan.

The EPA has proposed a rule that would penalize the State of Michigan for the pumped storage facility in Ludington. Michigan would have to count the energy used to fill the Ludington reservoir at night while getting no credit for the emission-free power created when the stored water is released.

Huizenga discussed proposed EPA rules at a recent taping of WGVU's West Michigan Week:

"We're trying to make sure that as these rules are coming up, that they're smart and that they actually are workable. An example of what happened up in Ludington, it's crazy, is the EPA was going to say, 'We're going to give you this portfolio and a target you have to hit. We're going to count against you the power that it takes to pump all of the water up into the reservoir in Ludington.'

"How it works is at nighttime, when rates are low, they use all that energy to pump it all up, and then during the day, when they need to have peak power, and they need to have power quickly, they release it all and basically create a hydro dam.

"Well, the federal government was going to penalize all the energy and count that toward the usage of getting it up there, but not put any in the plus ledger of the energy that was being created, which was essentially free at that point.

"The EPA has not been the easiest to work with, and certainly has not been very clear about their objectives with how they're going to work with the states."

He also mentioned energy standards announced by the EPA:

"We just had the EPA standards announced. There had been an emphasis on natural gas when they originally were talking about this. This new rule, according to my friends in the energy sector, de-emphasizes a lot of the natural gas and emphasizes alternatives.

"It's like, that's great, but we have a significant base load that has been dependent on coal and has been shifting, at the insistence of this administration and others in the environmental community, to natural gas.

"We see that in Holland, right? They're getting rid of their coal plant and moving towards natural gas. CMS Energy in Muskegon is going to be losing their coal power plant. They've invested billions into the Port Sheldon Power Plant.

"And now ... the EPA is trying to change the goal line on them. There just simply is not the capacity within alternatives to be able to replace that."


This article appeared in the Muskegon Chronicle and written by Stephen Kloosterman on August 06, 2015