Groups warn that planned Rogers City coal plant could raise electricity rates

A dozen environmental groups are asking the Michigan Public Service Commission to take a hard look at a analysis submitted by Wolverine Power Cooperative in support of its proposal to build a 600 megawatt coal-fired power plant in Rogers City.

“Electricity co-op customers in the Western Upper Peninsula learned recently that they will be hit with a 33 percent increase in electric rates due to $2.3 million in new coal fired generating units constructed by WE Energies,” James Clift, policy director with the Michigan Environmental Council said in a statement. “We are asking state regulators to take steps to head off such a drastic increase in the Rogers City area.”

The Sierra Club Michigan Chapter, the Environmental Law and Policy Center, Citizens Exploring Clean Energy and others wrote:

[T]he available evidence shows that energy demand is flat or even decreasing, and that energy efficiency, renewable energy and existing natural gas capacity can satisfy demand. As a result, the Michigan Public Service Commission (“PSC”) should recommend that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (“MDEQ”) deny the Wolverine air permit application, rather than approving an unnecessary project that would impose undue costs on ratepayers, pollute the air, exacerbate climate change and weaken Michigan’s ability to seize the opportunities offered by the green energy economy.

The comments, thousands of pages of them, were submitted on the final day of the public comment period on Wolverine’s “feasibility of alternatives“ analysis — a new requirement for coal plants created in a February executive order from Governor Granholm and characterized by some as a “moratorium on coal.”