Within the Department of Energy, the Office of Energy Dominance Financing provides an avenue for our Exploratory Committee of Locally Controlled Electric Cooperative to pursue support, especially to help with financing of the Campbell purchase.
The following communication has been sent :
Dear Sir:
Ottawa County, Michigan thanks the Trump Administration for delaying the closure of our Campbell plant, and now many townships in the county seek to take advantage of the Administration’s newly issued executive order assisting energy infrastructure efforts. We need it to help a newly forming local electric cooperative to purchase the Campbell plant from Consumers Energy and contract with a co-located data center for use of a portion of the Campbell’s electric generation. Consumers Energy is on the misguided Net Zero path, but we want a local electric cooperative committed to the sound energy path promoted by President Trump, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and others in the Administration. Many townships in Ottawa County are represented on the Exploratory Committee.
We have a path to form an electric cooperative and purchase the Campbell with Trump Administration assistance, so that it can generate electricity both for residents at subsidized rates, and a co-located data center at premium rates. It also helps get us off the hook of wasting our valuable farmlands on what are really unreliable forms of energy (solar/wind/battery) in Michigan for baseload electric. We need more local control of our grid to pursue the common sense approach to electricity of the Trump Administration. The Campbell not only can provide electricity for a data center, it can also provide much needed water for its cooling system. Many of us would like to see investigation of Campbell wastewater usage for the data center’s cooling system. We would also like to explore more industrial use of its fly ash, even including for rare earth mineral extraction.
As Mlive has reported, electricity bills are causing financial stress for Michigan families. A locally controlled electric cooperative board holds out the prospect of introducing competition where there is none now, but only the Consumers Energy monopoly rapidly raising prices.
Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of this request.
Sincerely,
Joseph Parnell McCarter
Moderator, Exploratory Committee for a Locally Controlled Electric Cooperative
Georgetown Township, MI