The 5 Lakes Energy blog is our forum that explores the opportunities and challenges Michigan and the Great Lakes Region face in our inevitable transition to the clean energy economy.
We will discuss:
- Accelerating the adoption of clean energy generation technologies.
- Understanding the economic diversification, investment and job creation potential latent in the clean energy economy.
- Identifying the barriers to implementing more energy efficiency measures faster, with greater penetration and at lower cost.
- Adoption by our municipal and investor owned utilities of new business and service paradigms that anticipate structural changes in how we generate, use, manage and conserve energy.
- Reducing fossil fuel imports.
- The economic, environmental and moral imperatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Our blog seeks to increase public discourse and understanding and ramp up public interest and engagement in what are the most challenging and exciting issues of our times. Fundamentally, the consequences of failing to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels are unacceptable and the benefits of aggressive investment in the clean energy economy are clear, demonstrable and validated everyday – if we only pay attention.
Ultimately, the transition to clean energy is all about hope and opportunity. We can expand and revitalize our economy and our communities, we can begin to correct the irrational distortions in energy markets and accurately account for the benefits and burdens of our energy choices, and we can begin to correct existing economic and ecological imbalances by decarbonizing our economy.
John Gardner said it best “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities – brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”
Check back often!