GAYLORD — A controversial plan to clear-cut 420 acres of state forest land for a solar farm is off the table following intense opposition from Republican state legislators.
RWE Clean Energy announced Monday that is “not seeking to lease state-owned land for this project,” according to company spokesperson Patricia Kakridas.
The state land in question is located in Hayes Township, Otsego County, just west of Gaylord and about 52 miles northeast of Traverse City.
Aerial photos show that the property has a mix of woodlands, tree seedlings, meadows and open areas, as well as close proximity to a high-voltage transmission line. It is managed by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
Some of the land features wellheads from oil and natural gas operations, as well as forest damage from a rare EF-3 tornado that hit the Gaylord area in May 2022.
Dropping the 420-acre site may not stop a solar farm development nearby, however.
RWE already has rights to about 1,000 acres of private land near the contested state parcels, and may proceed with a solar farm on that land.
RWE Clean Energy is a subsidiary of the RWE Group headquartered in Essen, Germany, which operates in 14 countries. The U.S. firm is based in Valhalla, New York, about 30 miles north of Manhattan.
A THORNY ISSUE
At issue in the political furor is whether the DNR should sacrifice forested land in northern Michigan to provide room for solar energy facilities.
Solar panels generate electricity with minimal carbon emissions, but trees fix carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Both help address the problem of climate change, but forests have the advantage of providing wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities.
In 2023, the state Legislature passed a set of laws requiring utilities to achieve 100-percent clean energy sourcing by 2040, up from about 11 percent today.
Based on that mandate, the state may need to devote another 209,000 acres of land to wind and solar energy, according to a report by Bridge Michigan. For comparison purposes, that equates to 326.6 square miles of territory.
Setting aside that land from has proven increasingly difficult because of growing opposition from farmland preservation advocates and wildlife groups.
Similar challenges are hindering clean energy projects in other parts of the country, from off-shore windmills in New England to hydro power plants in the West.
The Michigan DNR currently manages about 4.6 million acres of state-owned land, including state forests, parks, recreation areas, wildlife areas, and water access sites. These lands are open to the public and are not available for sale or private use, according to the agency’s website.
A map of those DNR lands shows that the vast majority of acres are located in northern lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, much of which has been leased for timbering operations in the past.
GOP UPROAR
News of the land lease plan unleashed a torrent of criticism Friday from Republican legislators, many of them from northern counties.
State Rep. Ken Borton, R-Gaylord, said, “I’ve got 140 acres of prime forest land here that I’ve worked over the years. I’ve had it forested by professionals for the health of the forest, and never, ever would’ve dreamed of just clear-cutting the property completely.”
In a public statement Friday, Michigan House Republicans called for “mass firings” within the DNR, stating that “this proposal was made in complete contrast to the DNR’s responsibility to protect Michigan’s wildlife and forests.”
Many sources interviewed by the Record-Eagle, including state Rep. John Roth, R-Interlochen, and state Sen. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs, said the goal of achieving 100-percent clean energy generation by 2040 is “unachievable” and will only cause “bad decision-making” by state agencies.
The relatively small number of DNR acres involved in the Gaylord controversy is not the point, they said, noting that forested land is “one of the state’s greatest assets,” second only to the Great Lakes.
“I’m in favor of clean energy, but cutting down trees to build a solar farm is exactly the wrong thing to do,” Roth said.
OPPOSING VOICES
Climate-change activist Peter Sinclair contacted the Record-Eagle via e-mail Monday to speak against the GOP criticism of the Gaylord land lease plan.
“Your coverage of orchestrated phony outrage over a planned use of State Land near Gaylord, for a solar project, perfectly illustrates the disingenuous and dishonest war on clean energy, coordinated by the fossil fuel industry, using social media and reliable political puppets, particularly among Michigan Republican legislators,” Sinclair wrote.
“The DNR, for their part, recognizing the need, has said that no more than 4,000 acres of the 4.6 million it manages will be considered for solar development, and that revenue from this project will be used to acquire replacement acreage, so that there will be no net loss of public land,” he added.
“Anti-clean energy legislators have made it clear they do not believe in pesky science, and the overwhelming consensus on the physics of global climate change …A decent respect for our children’s future, and the well-being of our state, and our planet, demands that we look deeper, think harder, and do better.”
Other observers, however, have argued that solar and wind energy are not reliable sources for “baseload energy” because of fluctuations in sunlight and wind velocity.
For example, modern solar panels typically generate just 10-25 percent of their rated capacity on cloudy days, according to Solar Alliance, an engineering firm that builds large solar installations.
In partly cloudy weather, they can operate at around 80 percent of their maximum power, depending on cloud density and coverage area.
On average, Michigan has between 65 and 75 clear days per year, according to the Michigan Weather Center.
Some clean-energy activists say nuclear energy and natural gas-powered turbines are necessary “bridge technologies” in the quest for climate-friendly electricity.
New designs for smaller-scale nuclear plants offer safer, more affordable alternatives, they argue.
But, in response to a Record-Eagle inquiry, the Michigan Climate Action Network stated it is against using nuclear power as a zero carbon emissions solution, saying that “solar, wind and hydropower can meet (our needs).”
According to Denise Keele, executive director of MiCAN, nuclear energy is “too dirty, too dangerous, too expensive, too centralized and too slow (for developing new plants).”
“Nuclear power = nuclear war,” she added.
Meanwhile, other critics of new energy plans pointed to the large-scale environmental damage from mining lithium and other rare minerals for use in batteries, plus the “hidden environmental costs” of manufacturing solar and wind facilities.