Subject: Resolution Request of Township Boards and County Board of Ottawa County
Dear Board Members:
Consumers Energy is indicating it will raise customer rates to keep the Campbell open in accordance with the Trump Administration executive order, when it should instead be offsetting those costs with reductions in its Net Zero agenda expenditures so that customer rates do not have to be raised. By its own admission, Consumers Energy is spending a large sum of customers’ money so it can brag about having the “most aggressive clean energy plans in the nation”, even though there are many warning signs that solar and wind do not provide reliable baseload and the Net Zero plan is misguided:
- The recent power outage even in our own regional grid (Louisiana) due to lack of electric supply to meet demand
- MISO and NERC have been warning for many months about the dangers of the Net Zero plan of the Consumers Energy/MPSC duo along with others
- Significant technical problems with the Net Zero plan
- Skyrocketing electric costs in the UK since all coal plants and other fossil fuel plants have been closed
- Recent blackout in Spain and Portugal associated with the Net Zero agenda
- Likely loss of solar credit which is so necessary to solar energy’s economic feasibility
Yet Net Zero zealots Consumers Energy and MPSC refuse to cut spending on their Net Zero agenda that could more than offset the costs of keeping the Campbell open. And they refuse to let a data center use some of the electric from the Campbell and pay top dollar for it, so that residential rates for customers can be lowered.
They have the audacity to ask for cost recovery money, and they blame the Trump Administration for keeping the Campbell plant open by executive order. They are buying Michigan farmlands and forests and converting them into solar panel fields which do not provide reliable baseload electric- a terrible misuse of this valuable Michigan resource. The MPSC is overthrowing local zoning control in order to carry out this misguided plan.
So we request the local Boards pass a resolution calling on Consumers Energy not to seek cost recovery from customers of costs to keep Campbell open, but instead to reduce its significant expenditures on executing its “aggressive green energy plans”, that go far beyond what Michigan law itself requires.
This resolution request we believe should be accompanied by an exploratory committee to investigate acquiring Consumers Energy’s interest in the Campbell, via local electric cooperatives, financed with the assistance of a data center that would utilize some of the Campbell’s generated electricity, and facilitated with the assistance of the Ottawa County Board and the Trump Administration. This use of the Campbell is consistent with the Trump Administration’s National Energy Emergency executive order, unlike the Consumers Energy plan.
Ottawa County’s local leaders can thus defend her citizens’ interests related to electric public utilities as the Michigan Constitution encourages. Thanks for what you have done so far in this direction.
Sincerely,
Joseph Parnell McCarter
Volunteer leader, SaveTheCampbell.com
Georgetown Township, MI