LANSING - Billions of dollars in construction activity is expected to be unleashed in Michigan as the result of the Sept. 18 bipartisan passage of three bills that re-regulate the state's electrical utilities.

The plan has a number of features, according to a state House analysis, including:

• Requiring Michigan to increase the amount of electricity generated from clean, renewable sources such as wind and solar to 10 percent by 2015. Doing so will make Michigan competitive with nearly 30 other states that already have such a standard.
• Requiring utilities to establish programs that help residents and businesses use electricity more efficiently, which will save consumers billions of dollars by reducing their usage.
• Fixes outdated rules to clear the way for construction of power plants needed to meet rising demands for electricity so that businesses will locate and expand in Michigan.
• An income tax credit for working families and seniors to help with energy costs and tax credits for the purchase of energy-efficient appliances.

"I am extremely pleased the legislature approved the energy package," said Gov. Jennifer Granholm. "Having a Renewable Portfolio Standard is a strong selling point in making a business case for Michigan, and helps us lay the groundwork for investment and job creation in the alternative energy sector. Our skilled workforce and new economic development tools are also powerful in helping to persuade global companies to invest in Michigan."

The Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council and other union groups have been supporting the efforts to toss out Public Act 141, which essentially deregulated Michigan's electrical utility market eight years ago. While that law opened the state's doors to alternative electrical suppliers in the hopes that customer costs would go down, it created tremendous uncertainty for traditional utilities like DTE Energy and Consumers Energy.

Public Act 141 allowed alternative utility providers to cherry pick highly profitable customers, and ignore out-of-the-way or other unattractive power consumers. That and other problems with the law clouded projections about their customer base, said the traditional utilities, and as a result they put the clamps on the construction of new power plants until the rules were changed.

On the day those rules were changed and the three bills were adopted, DTE Energy announced it would start the process of building the first new nuclear plant in Michigan in 20 years - a $10-billion reactor that would be erected in Monroe next to the existing Fermi 2 plant.

Last year, Consumers Energy announced that it would construct a new $1.5 billion coal-burning plant, and possibly a second unit, at its Karn-Weadock plant near Bay City - if the state's electrical regulatory environment were changed.

DTE Energy CEO Anthony Earley said Michigan is not along in repealing utility deregulation, as 34 other states have "repealed, delayed, suspended, or limited their deregulation experiments or are simply maintaining their fully regulated systems."