The Sierra Club Michigan’s Beyond Coal Campaign is launching an attack Tuesday on DTE Energy over the utility's coal burning.
Ads aimed at DTE Energy with the theme “DTE Hurts,” aim “to unmask one of the most coal-dependent utilities in the country and how its actions hurt Michigan families’ health and pocketbooks every day,” according to a Sierra Club statement.
The environmental nonprofit plans a news conference outside DTE’s Detroit headquarters at 11 a.m. Tuesday, writes Keith Matheny in the Free Press.
DTE and other major utilities’ renewable energy plans are before the state for consideration now, said Brad Van Guilder, an organizing representative for the Sierra Club.
“DTE is looking to do the minimum they need to do to meet their 10%” by 2015 renewable goal, “and there’s nothing limiting it to that,” the Sierra Club's Brad Van Gelde told Matheny. “Renewable energy is cheaper than current electricity generation and will be a lot more sustainable for the public.”
The Sierra Club cites air pollution from coal-burning plants and its impact on asthma, and in a statement noted that Wayne County, home to DTE’s coal-burning River Rouge Power and Trenton Channel plants, “has the highest number of pediatric asthma cases in the state, combined with the highest state population living in poverty.”
DTE spokeswoman Randi Berris to Matheny the utility is “committed to renewable energy while providing affordable and reliable power to our customers.” DTE is investing $1.3 billion to achieve its 10% renewable goal by 2015, she said.
Berris cited a Huron County wind farm project in the works by DTE that will “create hundreds of jobs across the state.” She added that DTE has reduced particulate emissions by 90% and nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide emissions by more than 75% over the past 40 years.
