Earlier this year, the group Clean Energy Now created a website that allows Michigan energy consumers to choose the sources for their energy needs and to compare those choices to what they have now. The new site, PicMyEnergyMix.com, is interactive, allowing the user to make choices about the mix of sources that power their lives. When you have completed the simple process, it gives you a comparison of what you want versus what you currently have and makes taking action easy.
I did it and this is how it looked when I was done:
As you can see, I chose zero percent for both coal and nuclear power. Coal is a nonstarter for the obvious reasons (destruction of our planet through destructive coal mining practices and massive pollution from burning the coal.) Nuclear power, while clean in its generation, leaves a legacy of radioactive waste that, so far, we have no answer for. There is currently no permanent repository (storage facility) for the high level radioactive waste that remains after the nuclear fuel is “spent” so it required to be stored onsite. In Michigan alone we have 2,820 metric tons of nuclear waste being stored.
So far this year over 1,000 Michiganders have used the PicMyEnergyMix.com site to pick their energy mix and most of them used the site’s functionality to send an email to Gov. Rick Snyder and Senate Energy and Technology Committee Chair Mike Nofs to let them know that they want things to change and for more progress to be made on Michigan’s transition to cleaner energy sources. As you can see from the summary of responses, Michiganders overwhelmingly chose more use of solar, wind, and increased energy efficiency as our path forward. For example, on average, users chose highly polluting coal as only 9% of their mix versus DTE’s current 74%.
Check out the site, pick your energy mix, then send an email to your elected officials to let them know how you feel. Click HERE to get started.
