Energy

Green energy expanding in Michigan communities

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By CHAO YAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Northport, a village in Leelanau County, gets half the energy for its wastewater treatment plant from a community-owned wind turbine. The village also claims the only 100 percent solar-powered golf course in the United States, according to Stanley “Skip” Pruss, former director of the Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth, who moved to Leelanau Township in 2008. Solar energy is used to power the clubhouse and other operations. “Our community members are feeling passionately that we are accelerating the transition to clean energy,” Pruss said. “Northport can be an example to other local communities in how to go about doing that.

Environment

In choosing energy, every source comes with detractors

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Hundreds of wind turbines line the high ridges along both sides of Interstate 80 in western Iowa, the state that leads the nation in corn-based ethanol production. Iowa is also the state that gets the highest proportion of its electricity – about 25 percent – from wind, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Michigan has about 675 operating wind turbines overall, with the largest wind turbine array in Gratiot County north of Lansing. Construction of Consumers Energy’s 62-turbine Cross Winds Energy Park in Tuscola County began last fall and is scheduled for completion this year. As of now, only 1 percent of the state’s electricity is wind-generated, according to federal figures.