Michigan is one state suffering the most during this Second Great Depression. The bad national economic climate is compounded by a declining auto industry, once the heart blood of Michigan's economic life. But there is an industry on the horizon that can help replace Detroit's shrinking industry, and that is clean energy manufacturing. Governor Granholm announced earlier this month the first production of utility scale wind turbines entirely in the state. A power purchase agreement between Consumers Energy and wind farm operator Heritage Sustainable Energy made the production of direct drive wind turbines by Northern Power Systems
[photo] possible. The direct drive design eliminates the need for a heavy reduction gearbox and increases efficiency by 15%. Michigan passed a renewable energy standard in 2008 as part of comprehensive energy legislation and requires a modest 10% of the state's energy be produced by renewable resources by 2015. Research indicates that Michigan could generate as much as 16,564MW of wind power on land and additional 448,756MW offshore in Lakes Michigan and Huron. Thirty thousand jobs are expected to be created in Michigan from the wind manufacturing sector alone according to the US Department of Energy.
The energy pyramid for the US is: coal, petroleum, nuclear, renewables, efficiency. Your job dear reader, should you decide to accept, is to invert that pyramid so it reads: efficiency, renewables, nuclear, petroleum, coal. Not an easy task, but
US Person has confidence in you. The
demand for gasoline is dropping after seven decades of increasing demand, and your refrigerator uses 75% less energy than it did in 1975 even though it is 20% larger.
