‘Not incredibly popular’: Blue state primed to clear cut hundreds of acres of forest to make way for solar panels

Michigan is poised to cut down hundreds of acres of forest in order to make space for a solar panel development, MLive reported Thursday.

The state will soon start competitive bidding on approximately 420 acres of forested land near Gaylord, Michigan, to clear space for a solar farm while generating revenue and advancing the state’s long-term green energy targets, according to MLive. There is some evidence suggesting that such a move would actually increase emissions, and Michigan is one of the least-sunny states in the country, according to analysis conducted by The Washington Post.

“Not incredibly popular with everyone,” Scott Whitcomb, the director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) public lands office, told MLive. “I will be frank about that.”

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“We don’t give this land away for free,” Whitcomb told the outlet. “That lease revenue can go into natural resources management. So, I wouldn’t say it’s the only reason, but it is something we think about. The bottom line is, we have to pay for the activities of this agency somehow.”

Notably, one study published by Harvard researchers found that clearing forests to replace with solar panel developments may actually lead to an overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and a paper published by Chinese researchers also reached similar conclusions. There are also oil and gas wellheads in other areas of the woods that remain forested, according to MLive.

“This is pretty amazing. Michigan is not like California, it’s not like the sun is always shining there,” Dan Kish, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This is the theater of the absurd, and it’s all driven by tax credits and giveaways from the federal and state government, and by mandates that the governor there has implemented.”

Michigan’s Healthy Climate Plan states that officials should “avoid land-use conversion that causes a net increase in [greenhouse gas] emissions and prioritize land uses that reduce [greenhouse gas] emissions” with respect to the state’s waters and forests, but Whitcomb told MLive that he hopes to use some solar revenues to purchase land for uses like connecting habitat for wildlife or carbon sequestration. Whitcomb added that the 420 acres is already cut in half by a major transmission line that will make it easier to get the solar farm operational and make it less likely that new power lines will need to be built.

“I would rather make the development a little bigger here and avoid creating a new development elsewhere that has those same impacts,” Whitcomb told MLive.

The Michigan DNR and the office of Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

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