DTE breaks ground on Blue Water Energy Center in East China Township | News

“This is a historic day for everyone here today,” Trevor Lauer, president and chief operating officer of DTE Electric, told a crowd of about 200 people gathered in the Belle River Power Plant Clubhouse on Aug. 21 for the symbolic groundbreaking on the Blue Water Energy Center. “This is the first time DTE has built a new power plant since Belle River opened in 1984.”

The Blue Water Energy Center, billed as a state-of-art, $1 billion natural gas power plant, is set to be constructed in East China Township, east of the Belle River plant.

Kiewit Engineering Co., the Detroit operation of the international firm of the same name, will build the plant, spending a minimum of $200 million on Michigan-based labor and materials. GE Power will manufacture the major generation equipment for the plant.

Gerry Anderson, chairman and chief executive officer of DTE Energy, focused his comments on the company’s commitment to reduce its carbon emissions.

“We believe our company and our country have a responsibility to address climate change,” Anderson said.

Anderson talked about DTE Energy’s pledge to reduce its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050.

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“In fact, we’re already doing it,” he said. “Since 2009, we have driven investments of more than $2.5 billion in renewable energy with more investments coming. But as we continue to retire coal-fired power plants — all of them by 2040 — we need to complement wind farms and solar arrays with high reliability assets.”

Anderson said he and his company love renewables.

“But as we Michiganders know well, the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine in our beautiful state,” Anderson said, gesturing to the rainy weather outside. “And that’s why we need natural gas-fueled plants like the Blue Water Energy Center. When it begins operations in 2022, it will represent our single largest step in reducing carbon emissions to date.”

Construction is slated to begin next spring.

The plant will have 70 percent fewer carbon emissions and 99 percent fewer nitrous and sulfur emissions than a typical coal plant.

DTE Energy will retire three coal-burning plants when the Blue Water Energy Center comes on line: the St. Clair Power Plant, also in East China Township, and the Trenton and River Rouge plants.

“It’s a great day in St. Clair County,” said U.S. Rep. Paul Mitchell, who represents Michigan’s 10th District, which includes St. Clair and Macomb counties.

Jeff Bohm, chairman of the St. Clair County Board of Commissioners, noted that DTE Energy was responsible for 11.5 percent of the county’s state equalized value and a stable producer of employment.

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“I would like your second and third plants and I’m not shy about saying that,” Bohm told DTE Energy executives.

Lawsuit to stop the plant

Not all Michigan residents were cheering the new plant.

“A coalition of organizations are filing briefs appealing the regulatory decision which would allow DTE Energy to increase electricity rates for customers to pay for the plant,” a press release from the groups involved states.

The clean energy groups are the Ecology Center, the Environmental Law and Policy Center, the Michigan Environmental Council, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the Solar Energy Industry Association, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Vote Solar.

“The organizations contend the three-member Michigan Public Service Commission failed to require DTE to demonstrate its plant was the ‘most prudent’ way to generate electricity, as required by state law,” the statement reads.

The MPSC issued DTE Energy its required certificate of necessity in April.

The groups argued that the “new gas plant will be more costly and far riskier than a portfolio of cleaner, cheaper resources, like solar, wind, energy efficiency, battery storage and demand response.”

They said a $1 billion investment in such a portfolio would generate 10 times more construction jobs and four times more permanent jobs than the Blue Water Energy Center.

The new plant is expected to create more than 500 construction jobs and about 35 permanent jobs.

“DTE did not prove that its plan was the least risky and most cost-effective choice for its customers,” Margrethe Kearney, senior staff attorney for the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said in a statement. “In fact, DTE failed to do the analysis necessary to fairly compare this plan to a portfolio of other resources that included renewable sources, demand response and energy efficiency.

“Under Michigan law, DTE should have been sent back to the drawing board to re-do its analysis. We believe the commission erred in approving the plant given the inadequate analysis presented by DTE.”

Jim Bloch is a freelance writer. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.