Governor Rick Snyder’s administration says it will ask for a lot of flexibility to meet new federal clean air goals. The federal government wants to cut carbon emissions by 30% over 15 years.
We have more from The Michigan Public Radio Network’s Rick Pluta.
Dan Wyant is the director of the state Department of Environmental Quality. He says the goal attainable if the federal government lets Michigan figure out how it’s going to get there.
“And so we support, on the environmental side, a carbon emission reduction,” he says. “Yet, we know it can be disruptive – reliability and affordability can be impacted if we go too fast, too hard, too soon.”
Wyant says the state already has renewable energy standards that utilities are complying with. He’d like the federal government to also allow them to claim energy efficiency as part of their compliance, and not just switching to alternatives to coal for generating power.
It will take a year for the final version of the rule to be drafted and adopted.