Posted on 11/25/2013 9:18:17 AM PST by MichCapCon
Court battles over the Colorado and Minnesota renewable energy mandates could potentially mark the beginning of the end for similar laws in other states, including Michigan.
In June, Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Court wrote that Michigan's in-state renewable energy mandate violates the Commerce Clause and is therefore unconstitutional. Judge Posner's statement did not have the weight of law because the issue wasn't directly before him. Nonetheless, many received it as a wake-up call and possible harbinger of things to come.
In 2008, the Michigan Legislature passed a law mandating that 10 percent of the state’s energy be produced by in-state renewable energy sources by 2015. This law was supposedly enacted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, aspects of it appear inconsistent with that goal.
The law did not include monitoring requirements to test what effects, if any, the mandate actually has on emissions. Also, although there are several so-called renewable energy sources with wind energy the predominate source used to meet the mandate in Michigan. This has been so in spite of the fact that the federal government says Michigan is not well-suited for wind energy production.
If courts find that in-state renewable energy mandates violate the Commerce Clause, many think it would virtually kill wind energy in Michigan. Such a ruling would force Michigan's wind energy industry to compete on an open market. Wind energy cannot be produced efficiently in Michigan. As a result, without an in-state mandate, Michigan produced wind energy would simply lose out to cheaper energy produced from other sources or even by wind energy from some other states.
At the U.S. District Court in Colorado, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute (E&E Legal) is arguing the same point Judge Posner made. At issue in the lawsuit, ATI v. Epel, is whether Colorado's 30 percent renewable energy mandate violates the Commerce Clause.
"The case against Colorado demonstrates that nearly every state's renewable energy mandate violates the Constitution's Commerce Clause." said David W. Schnare, general counsel for E&E Legal and lead attorney on the case. "A state may not tell an electric company outside its borders how to make electricity or how to make renewable energy credits.
"Once we prevail in Colorado, the first domino will have fallen and we expect to see state legislatures throughout the nation scrambling to find a Constitutional way to mandate renewables," he said. "They will not succeed, as the only way to do so and still remain within the Commerce Clause is to pass a federal mandate."
Some believe the U.S. District Court in Minnesota could be the first to rule that in-state renewable mandates violate the Commerce Clause. Two years ago, North Dakota filed a lawsuit, The State of North Dakota v. Swanson, over Minnesota's 25 percent renewable energy mandate, which was signed into law in 2007.
The Minnesota mandate law prohibits utilities serving Minnesota from importing energy from other states unless any additional carbon dioxide emissions are offset. North Dakota, which sits on the world's largest deposit of lignite coal, clearly has a great deal at stake in this case.
Attorneys for North Dakota argue that the Minnesota mandate violates the Commerce Clause. According to media accounts, they also claim the Minnesota law is just a "symbolic gesture" against global warming.
Damn straight it is. Even the proponents admit that it would never be achieved but they wanted it anyway. They just want it to use as a club.
I despise these Gaia worshipers and their fetish with so called renewable energy (economic despotism).
Same bunch that worships the earth is all for murdering babies via abortion. Truly, it is mental illness.
The left will only be happy when 100% of electricity is made from unicorn milk.
Just great more money flushed down the toilet for more stupid projects that do not work. It is bad enough in the small town that I live in the UP where the City Council took money from an Enterprise Fund to make sure the money was in the pension fund. Another state mandated fund had money taken from there too. so the police department cut in half, water and sewer funds in the red. as one of many taxpayers we are getting pissed off.
As a form of derision, maybe we should refer to these as “Don Quixote Laws”!?
Pawlenty signs bill increasing ethanol content in gasoline
by Laura McCallum, Minnesota Public Radio
May 10, 2005
Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Greg Davids celebrate the signing of the ethanol bill on Tuesday. (MPR Photo/Laura McCallum)
Minnesota is the first state with a law mandating 20-percent ethanol use by the year 2013.
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/05/10_ap_ethanol/
thanks, Guv T-Paw.(R-rino)
What are they teaching students in law schools? Certainly not the Constitution and its history.
The statement above from the referenced article must be based on the PC interpretation of the Commerce Clause by FDR's activist justices in Wickard v. Filburn. The problem is that FDR's justices wrongly ignored that not only had Thomas Jefferson clarified the limits of Congress Congress Clause powers in the favor of the states, but the Supreme Court had also previously officially clarified those limits.
Using terms like "does not extend" and "exclusively," Thomas Jefferson had clearly indicated that Congress has no business sticking its big nose into intrastate commerce.
“For the power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State, (that is to say of the commerce between citizen and citizen,) which remain exclusively (emphases added) with its own legislature; but to its external commerce only, that is to say, its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes.” –Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson’s Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791.
The Supreme Court had reflected on Jefferson's clarification of the limits of Congress Commerce Clause powers in Gibbons v. Ogden as evidenced by the following excerpt.
"State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. (emphasis added)" --Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Sadly, since state lawmakers get the same anti-state sovereignty indoctrination in law school that everybody else does, they don't question when misguided judges make unconstitutional decisions that weaken state sovereignty.
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