A couple of years ago I was part of a FaceTime call with a gentleman in Nepal. It was winter and although he was at home, he was wearing his winter coat and knit cap. I was struck by the fact that this was normal life to this man, he wasn’t complaining, and I thought about how fortunate we are to live in America where heat in the winter and cooling in the summer is available through switch on the wall. As I think about our energy debates here at home, I am reminded of this encounter.
In Port Sheldon Township there is a perfectly good power plant. The J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant provides 1500 megawatts of baseload power to residents of Ottawa County. It’s a succession of three plants, Campbell 1 commissioned in 1962, Campbell 2 in 1967, and number 3 came online in 1980. In the 1960s coal was the favored and most cost effective form of energy and remained so until after the turn of the century when gas and renewables started to make the scene.
Energy planners, due to the size and scope of their business, must look at the long-term needs of its customers. In 2016 Campbell 3, to meet 2015 clean air standards, completed a major $800 million renovation. Among other improvements, this work upgraded scrubbers and filters to reduce emissions from the plant. The size of the investment was reasonable as the plant was expected to be running past the year 2040.
With this major renovation work completed, some of us are baffled to see the plant scheduled to shut down in May of this year. This is akin to doing a major remodel on your house and then deciding to close it up and move away while continuing to pay the mortgage. The rate payers will continue to pay for the work whether the plant even exists. Consumers customers will find your portion under the Power Plant Securitization charges in the itemized portion of your bill.
For the utility customers, this decision will take the J.H. Campbell output of 1500 megawatts off the table. In 2023 Consumers bought a natural gas plant, the 1200-Megawatt Covert Natural Gas Generating Station, but that plant is not new energy. It’s an existing plant so Covert is not adding to the overall power supply of the state, just putting it under new management. There is nothing replacing the loss of Campbell, so we have a net loss of production as energy use continues to increase.
I visited the Consumers website and it’s pretty. There are well-written, good public relations articles short on details, long on telling us how well intentioned and environmentally responsible they are.
Consumers’ name gets the headlines, but there are forces at play that are not created by Consumers. They like every utility must deal with the regulatory hand they are dealt. That most recent hand is Michigan legislative mandates for a net zero policy. The mandate states that by 2040 100% of power must be clean generation, by 2030 50% must be from renewable energy and 2035 60% must be from renewables. By legislative fiat we are headed to a carbon zero world. The authors of the legislation don’t have to answer for the price or reliability of power generation or transmission systems. They wrote the law; their job is done. It’s someone else’s job to make it happen.
A few weeks ago, London’s Heathrow Airport closed for hours due to a fire at a substation and left 220,000 passengers around the world either stranded or in various states of uncertainty as the largest airport in Britain shut down. Shouldn’t a major airport have backup generation, one may ask. Heathrow used to have diesel backup generators but due to Britain’s move to a net zero policy, the backup is biomass which is sized and designed to work alongside the major power source, not replace it. So, when the substation went down there was not enough power to replace it. Bummer for all those stranded passengers in the air and on the ground.
My brother lives near Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk is home to a huge naval base and shipping port on Chesapeake Bay. Driving past the port on a recent visit, I saw acres and acres of coal awaiting transport. This coal is loaded on freighters and shipped around the world, mainly to China and India. They love our coal to run the power plants they are building to satisfy their growing needs for electric power to grow their economies. Coal is a reliable source of base load power, and these developing countries, working to surpass the United States in productivity, are ramping up production.
In 1970, in large part as a reaction to Rachel Carson’s 1960s book Silent Spring, the Environmental Protection Agency was established by congress to protect human health and the environment. Over time, this agency has grown to have an inordinate effect on almost every aspect of life in the United States. It regulates water and air standards, auto emissions, appliances, toilets and showers, even the lowly gas can. Hence the half billion dollars of work that was done at Campbell 10 years ago. Then in November of 2023 the Michigan legislature enacted the carbon neutral timeline, the scrubbers in the stack take care of a lot, but not carbon. There is no economical way to meet those standards for carbon.
The average citizen is stuck between legislators that enact mandates, and government agencies who enforce these standards on the power industry. They must follow the maze of regulations and still bring baseload energy to their customers. Look at California, which is a few years ahead of us in going all renewables buying energy from neighboring states. Across the pond, Europe is having its own power issues with less reliability and much higher cost. More people there are looking to supplement with wood burners to ensure an independent source of heat for the winter. They now have a wood shortage.
The question is, can we still have a growing economy with reliable and affordable power by eliminating baseload gas and coal and depending only on wind and solar? Many experts say no, as the evidence we see tells us to walk carefully down this path. I see hopeful signs, maybe not regarding the Campbell, but overall. With the right leadership, we won’t put all our eggs in the renewable basket before its ready for primetime.
Geri McCaleb was born in the Netherlands, the youngest of 5, and came to America with her family in 1951. Her hometown, Scheveningen, is a beach town near DE Hague on the North Sea. Her parents found a home in Grand Haven, a beach town on Lake Michigan. Her family lived through the years of Nazi occupation in Holland, and she grew up on stories of hardship and survival during those war years. It shaped her thinking and showed her the importance of faith in God and freedom. Geri served on Grand Haven City Council for 8 years, 2001 until 2009. She decided to run for Mayor in 2011 and served 4 terms ending in 2019. After her time with the city, she was a Community Columnist for the Tribune for several years. She and her husband and have 2 children and 4 grandchildren and now live in Grand Haven Township.
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