Unfortunately, community members are only a small portion of the driving force behind the push for green energy. Rather, outside funding, that promotes public-private partnerships, and big businesses looking to improve their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores appear to be much more influential.
Across the globe countries, states, and communities are making moves toward green technologies. Renewable energy production comes in the form of solar panels, geo-thermal heating, and wind turbines. Private homes are filled with water-efficient toilets and energy efficient dish-washers, furnaces and refrigerators, all of which are more expensive and less durable than their less efficient ancestors. Electric vehicles are popping up more frequently on roads as coal power plants are being taken off-line. Politicians would like us to believe local community members are inspiring these changes from the bottom up. While small numbers of local people with very loud voices are advocating for transformation, the real driving force comes top-down from so-called stakeholders in national governments, international organizations (WEF and UN), academia, business, and nonprofits.
Green technology innovations are pitched to the masses by stakeholders involved in public-private partnerships with promises of safety, job creation, cost savings, and of preserving the planet for centuries to come. Just as proponents of wasteful taxpayer funded football stadiums promise economic growth, proponents of green energy initiatives make similar promises. During the July 15, 2024, Grand Haven City Council meeting, Executive Director of Michigan Energy Options, John Kinch, gave an update on Grand Haven’s community energy plan. Kinch stated, (2:22:40) “Introducing more renewable energy, in particular solar and storage, to our community - that’s a local asset that gets built and gets operated here. So that’s jobs. That’s indirect economic benefit. It’s direct economic benefit. Induced economic benefit. So, we can really be thinking about growing our local economy by also growing more energy resilience, and more solar power in our community.”
Then, speaking of barriers to implementing a community energy plan, and more specifically cost, Kinch stated, (2:31:30) “I do like to twist this a bit and suggest you think of this as investment. A lot of the investments you make in local clean energy projects pay back. They have an ROI (Return on Investment).”
In Grand Haven, Kinch, a typical stakeholder, is ready to pursue outside funding opportunities. During the July 15, 2024, meeting he stated, (2:23:12) “We’re kind of at the point now where we are looking to come forward with our strategies and a plan to have you folks take a look at, and let us know if it’s what you want us to be doing or not, and then ideally going after more funding, and then getting programs and projects in place.”
Kinch is especially enthusiastic about electric vehicle related opportunities. He mentioned both increasing the number of electric vehicles owned by government as well as increasing the amount of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. (2:29:30) “Transitioning fleets is a really good idea for local governments.” (2:29:35) “The other thing that’s out there is getting on EV charging. There is lots of money from the outside to help build up the EV charging network in the community. [] If somebody decides to drive from Chicago around the lake and all the way up through the UP and back down to Chicago, they won’t have range anxiety.”
Council member Keven McLaughlin asked about what’s driving change. (2:39:36) “Do our local industries get their arms around this? Have you worked with our local industries? The big industries in town, is this something that they can get their arms around? Are they working with you?”
Kinch replied, mentioning a meeting he had with Shape, and then went onto say, (2:39:55) “In business, sometimes the businesses are driving the change in the community because they need to have higher standards themselves for their energy efficiency, for reducing their own carbon, for onboarding renewable energy. So sometimes they are leading the community because they are working in a national or multi-national environment in which the expectation of that environment is that you are going to be doing these things. It’s all your scope 1, 2, and 3 missions. All your ESG. All of those other kinds of things that are driving business today. So, it’s not a nice to have anymore. It’s an essential strategy to be competitive in the business world. So, we have some of these companies here.”
Council member Mike Fritz then added to the discussion. (2:41:25) “I was talking to some of the owners of the big businesses around here, and a lot of the requirements is for them to be energy efficient, and all these contracts that they get, they are required to make it more efficient.”
Unfortunately, as both Fritz and Kinch alluded to, it is not the community members driving most green changes. Kinch mentioned ESG. In a nutshell, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is a scam run by large private investment firms in cooperation with public organizations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), the United Nations (UN), and the US government’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to force companies to comply with ever-changing environmental and social justice targets as conditions for receiving external investment. Companies are being coerced to improve their ESG scores, so they can secure loans or new contracts with ESG-compliant businesses.
Here in our state, Ford Motor Company is an excellent example of an industry leader that has fallen prey to ESG compliance and its forced changes in business strategies. Ford is hemorrhaging money in an effort to bring electric vehicles to market, mostly because consumers aren’t interested in them. So, when you think of green technology initiatives, remember it is generally a misguided incentive structure put in place by environmental activists in influential positions that is driving the sustainability movement. Kinch really says it better himself. (2:25:10) “There’s money available now. We should be going after that money to put programs and plans into place.”