The speech begins at 1:12:00 of the board meeting video.
Here is the text of it:
Joseph Parnell McCarter, Georgetown Township, speaking on behalf of the exploratory committee for a locally controlled electric cooperative.
This is in follow up to the invitation that all board members should have received by email. The invitation is from the exploratory committee, consisting of elected representatives from seven township boards and hopefully more to come, elected public officials like State Senator Victory and his district director Kyle Terpstra, and others of Ottawa County.
It asks members individually and for the County Board as a whole to participate in the exploratory committee, to investigate obtaining local control of our electric grid via an electric cooperative for those parts of the county without it. Of course, much of the county already successfully has such local control. As the invitation notes, an elected local electric cooperative board does not preclude contracting management to a party like Consumers Energy. But it puts us more in control locally.
The current Net Zero path is unrealistic, as evidenced by continued warnings from NERC and Max Gen events this past winter. Grand Haven Board of Light and Power general manager recently said: “We think it would be best to keep this plant online to keep the reliability of the grid what we’ve come to expect.” Replacing reliable fossil fuel plants like the Campbell with unreliable solar/wind/battery, and in the process wasting our valuable farmlands, is misguided. To the concern we will be stuck with the costs of clean-up of ground contamination at the Campbell site, a purchase contract can be structured so that Consumers Energy bears the clean-up costs, since it happened under their watch. The committee has already been contacted by industry and data center reps interested in partnering with such a cooperative.
We have already made great strides in pollution control with the Campbell, and technology is becoming available to improve it even more. We can be a model in environmentally responsible fossil fuel plants, while at the same time maintaining our energy security.
It should be emphasized that this exploratory committee is for information gathering purposes only, and can do nothing legally binding on parties represented or participating individual members.
Ottawa County should not allow ourselves to be held hostage by voters on the east side of the state, but should pursue more local control of our electric grid with the help of the Trump Administration.
Thank you for consideration of this request.