The board of directors of the Muskegon Area Chamber of Commerce Friday announced that it favored a Michigan energy policy that preserves electric competition, promotes renewable energy and energy efficiency, and also provides the opportunity for businesses to generate and sell energy into the grid.

In short, the chamber said, its members have benefited from the state Customer Choice and Electric Reliability Act of 2000. The chamber policy opposes current efforts to eliminate or restrict the current electric choice program which has benefited many of its members and has helped make Michigan more competitive with neighboring states.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
No. 08-OPA012

CHICAGO (Jan. 29, 2008) - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 announced today that five Fortune 500 corporations in the region are now buying a total of more than 286.6 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually.

They are Kohl's Department Stores, Menomonee Falls, Wis., 236 million kWh; Baxter International Inc., Deerfield, Ill., 20.5 million kWh; GE Healthcare Headquarters, Waukesha, Wis., 15.8 million kWh; General Motors Service Parts Operations, Pontiac, Mich., 14.1 million kWh; and Monsanto/Agracetus Campus Middleton, Wis., 399,000 kWh. Kohl's was ranked eighth nationally on the amount of green energy purchased.

The IRS has had tax deductions in place through the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which allow taxpayers to deduct the cost of energy-efficient equipment installed in commercial buildings they own. But publicly-owned buildings aren't taxed, and therefore, there is no additional tax savings to the building owner. However, the law allows the designer of the energy-saving portion of a public building to claim the tax credit.

Originally the term 'designer' was undefined, and it was unclear who could claim this deduction and how it could be applied. But the AIA has reported that the IRS has recently provided updated interpretation rulings that help clarify the Act and spell out how this rule may be applied.

By Craig DiLouie, Lighting Controls Association

Published November 2005

While new fluorescent ballast efficiency rules went into effect earlier this year, another batch of rules have just been passed that will affect lighting systems starting in 2009. This time, the efficacy standards have been set high enough that the vast majority of magnetic ballasts-including ballasts operating energy-saving T12 lamps-will no longer comply.

In September 2000, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published the Fluorescent Lamp Ballast Energy Conservation Standards (10 CFR, Part 430), which established new minimum ballast efficacy factor (BEF) standards that would go into effect starting in 2005. Ballasts that did not pass the standards would be phased out of production and sale in the United States.

March 14, 2008

No one ever said that the re-emergence of nuclear power would take the fast lane. The road, in fact, is filled with potholes that include some high profile deferments and ever-increasing capital costs.

Despite the delays, the long-term underlying fundamentals are favorable to the nuclear industry. Newer reactor designs are not only considered to be even more productive but also to have safety redundancies to give communities greater assurances. Emissions from nuclear energy, meantime, are negligible when compared to fossil fuels -- an important factor if one considers that regulatory pressures to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming will only intensify.