Michigan Utility Trading Coal for Gas-Fired Electric Plants
Consumers Energy, Michigan’s second-largest power provider, will quit burning coal to produce electricity by 2025 and instead will purchase four existing natural gas-fired power plants for $1.3 billion. At least if the company can get approval from state regulators. The company says buying existing gas-fired plants (instead of building new plants) will help it transition to carbonless energy over the next 20 years. Buying instead of building means the company won’t have “stranded assets” when (we say if) they eventually foreswear using fossil fuels to generate electricity.
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In late 2018 the final two segments of the already-operational Rover Pipeline went online, making the project 100% complete (see 
You may recall MDN covering the story of the compressor station in Michigan that caught fire and exploded in January (see 
One of the arguments often heard from those who oppose natural gas pipelines is that “nobody” benefits from the pipeline except the sleazy Big Corporation that builds and profits from it. A single pipeline running through Ohio and Michigan puts that lie to rest. Rover Pipeline, built and operated by Energy Transfer, paid out some $73 million in local property taxes in 2018 when the pipeline first began operation. For 2019, with the full pipeline operating at 100% capacity for the entire year, Rover says they will pay out ~$180 million in property taxes! Taxes that fund schools, roads, first responders and other worthy causes.
Last week a pipeline at a single Michigan compressor station caught fire and exploded (see 
At the end of July NEXUS Pipeline was 80% complete and made big boasts that it would be ready to flow during the third quarter of this year (see 
Is there any fixing stupid? We suppose not. So-called environmentalists are opposing a plan by the University of Michigan to update the main campus’ Central Power Plant with a natural-gas fired turbine to produce electricity for the Central and Medical Campus buildings. By doing so, the University will leapfrog to achieving 50% of its goal to reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2025 (seven short years from now). Put another way, by building this gas turbine and using the electricity it generates, the University of Michigan will be halfway to their emissions reductions goals. One turbine. Clean natural gas. It’s a win/win all the way around. Yet environuts oppose the plan because it is a “long-term investment in fossil fuels.” Again we ask, is there any fixing stupid?…
An order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued yesterday allows Energy Transfer (ET) to begin full operations along the North Market Segment of the Rover Pipeline–a $3.7 billion, 711-mile natural gas pipeline that runs from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and on to Canada via the Vector Pipeline. On April 13 ET asked FERC for permission to start up service along another major chunk of it’s massive Rover Pipeline (see 
Last June DTE Energy filed paperwork in Michigan to build a new “state-of-the-art” natural gas-fired power plant in St. Clair County (see