The state’s Chief Executive met with the managing director of URV USA during her investment mission to Sweden where she announced the manufacturer of wind turbine castings will expand its Michigan operations in Eaton Rapids to accommodate increased market demand.
A new census from the Solar Foundation shows that 93,000 people are employed in the PV industry in the United States. The state of Michigan comes in No. 4 with 6,300 jobs.
This Brookings Insitution white paper outlines how the nation must focus on building the next economy, one that is oriented towards greater exporting, powered by a low-carbon energy strategy, driven by innovation, and that creates opportunities for all.
Solar and wind-farm developers are increasingly anxious about a key federal incentive that could prompt a slowdown in the U.S. renewable energy market if it is allowed to expire at the end of the year.
For most living in Michigan, a state whose pipelines are regulated and inspected by PHMSA, this suggested oversight would be warmly welcomed. Michigan experienced its own pipeline disaster in July when an Enbridge Energy pipeline leaked nearly a million gallons of oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River.
The program is known as Internal Revenue Service Section 1603, a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and industry leaders say the loss of the cash grants from the U.S. Treasury Department could mean a loss of business for solar, fuel cell and other
clean energy sectors.
Mulva emphasized the need for a “balanced energy policy that allows all sources to compete on the basis of abundance, cost, efficiency, and environmental merit. We don’t have that today as current policies stack the deck in favor of coal and renewable sources.”
“The banks just didn’t seem to want to do anything,” said Sagar Sheth, Moebius’ president. “Banks aren’t willing to support growth.” What happened to Moebius and Dearborn Mid-West are not isolated incidents. Banks continue to pull credit lines or refuse to renew them. And they have tightened their lending standards, making it harder for businesses to qualify for loans.
The board is trying to decide on allowing wind turbines to be more than 300 feet in height, a current city regulation for similar structures.
Danner would not comment on when the Northern Power 450 turbine will be commercially available. However, the company is also developing a utility-scale 2.2 MW permanent magnetic direct-drive wind turbine and expects the prototype to be installed in Michigan later this year.
“The Cleantech revolution has gained momentum at a staggering pace during the past year. The potential scale and political urgency of emerging cleantech industries is beginning to bear a semblance to the Space Race of the 1960′s,” said Tim Carey, U.S. cleantech leader at PriceWaterhouseCoopersLLP.
The Dow Chemical Company announced the creation of 100 new, full-time jobs to support the development of its revolutionary DOW™ POWERHOUSE™ Solar Shingles at its facility in Midland.
Chicago-based Invenergy plans to install 125 General Electric wind turbines on 30,000 acres near Breckenridge, west of Saginaw. The project is expected to start operating in late 2011 and will be able to generate 200 megawatts of wind energy.
Companies are scrambling this year to use another carrot that Congress passed with the economic recovery legislation, the up-front cash grant in lieu of the investment tax credit for wind, biomass and geothermal projects. Observers expect the grant program to expire at year’s end.
A123 Systems says its new facility, paid for in part by ARRA funds, is “the largest lithium-ion automotive battery production facility in North America.”
It’s the first ChargePoint networked electric vehicle charging station in Michigan under the $37-million ChargePoint America program.
