{"id":11919,"date":"2012-11-28T17:51:58","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T21:51:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=11919"},"modified":"2012-12-04T17:54:45","modified_gmt":"2012-12-04T21:54:45","slug":"payne-nerd-turns-out-lights-on-granholm-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2012\/11\/payne-nerd-turns-out-lights-on-granholm-energy","title":{"rendered":"Payne: Nerd turns out lights on Granholm Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was 19 pages long. It was dull. It was a laundry list of everything environmental from farming to fish to fracking. But Governor Snyder’s\u00a0energy speech Wednesday laying out<\/a>\u00a0a blueprint for Michigan’s energy future was not only a welcome departure from the green goo of his Gore-disciple predecessor – it was a final policy nail in the coffin of Jennifer Granholm’s attempted transformation of Michigan to a dysfunctional, wind-powered, union-run European state.<\/p>\n

Together with his election defeat of Big Labor’s Props 2 and 4 power grabs, his restructuring of Michigan’s long-term budget liabilities, his education reform, and his leash on crony capitalism, Snyder’s sound energy policy completes the state’s return to economic fundamentals.<\/p>\n

Welcome back to Planet Earth, Michigan.<\/p>\n

Snyder’s energy speech was typical of the quiet, step-by-step reinvention of Michigan that Snyder has accomplished in two short years with a Republican Legislature. It understands the reality that Michigan is a manufacturing state, and that it needs cheap power to grow.<\/p>\n

That means exploiting the state’s natural gas resources. That means encouraging coal power. That means reversing course from the disastrous green policies of Granholm. Her wind-powered, government subsidized vision of a post-Rust Belt “Green Belt” economy has misused taxpayer funds, increased electric rates, and left a landscape littered with bankrupt, Lansing-subsidized, green companies.<\/p>\n

“Our energy needs to come at an affordable price to our businesses and homes,” said the ex-Gateway CEO, dusting off common sense that hasn’t been spoken by a Michigan governor in 10 long years. “Michigan’s electricity prices are the highest in the Midwest. That’s actually normal for Michigan, because our neighbors have more coal resources than we do and existing coal plants are hard to beat on cost. But of more concern is the fact that Michigan’s energy prices have been on a fast rise over the last few years.”<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Because of 2008’s re-regulation of Michigan energy delivery, Granholm’s quixotic 10 percent alternative energy mandate (Snyder publicly campaigned against a ballot initiative that would have increased that number to 25 percent), and EPA rules that forced Michigan coal plants “to spend $3 billion so far on new environmental controls to keep key coal plants running and to shut others down.”<\/p>\n

And then – steady yourself – in a rare Snyder moment, One Tough Nerd took a shot at Obama’s War on Coal.<\/p>\n

“I know people disagree about the new EPA rules for coal plants,” he said, “but I think we can all agree it’s not in the best interest of the environment or the country to risk massive outages to get there at a breakneck pace. During this campaign, President Obama pledged to take an ‘all of the above’ approach to energy policy. I am hopeful that reliability, affordability, and environmental protection will also be incorporated as guiding principles into federal energy policy.”<\/p>\n

Snyder’s plodding speech wasn’t without its political contradictions, including a shout out to the very alternative energy mandate that he acknowledges is hurting consumers with higher energy bills. But in an energy-hungry state that must have cheap carbon energy to survive, the speech was a welcome sign that Economics 101 – not Green Church doctrine – is once again Michigan’s guiding text.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was 19 pages long. It was dull. It was a laundry list of everything environmental from farming to fish to fracking. But Governor Snyder’s\u00a0energy speech Wednesday laying out\u00a0a blueprint for Michigan’s energy future was not only a welcome departure from the green goo of his Gore-disciple predecessor – it was a final policy nail […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[1908,61,1332],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11921,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11919\/revisions\/11921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}