LANSING – Although Governor Jennifer Granholm has directed what she calls a laser beam focus on developing the state’s alternative energy industry, until the state has a renewable energy portfolio standard Michigan will likely continue to struggle among the mediocre performers in the nation in most areas of renewable energy research and development, experts say.

David Gard, energy director for the Michigan Environmental Council, said one main way his group judges Michigan’s progress is by looking at the lack of a renewable portfolio standard, which 24 states and Washington D.C. have already implemented to some degree.

“That tells us that we are certainly in the bottom half of our country in terms of renewable energy policy,” Gard said, adding that only 3.5 percent of Michigan’s power comes from renewable sources, which doesn’t bode well for the state’s alternative energy performance.

“I don’t know if people should be surprised that we’re not further along in using alternative energy sources, but they should be frustrated that we’re not acting more quickly.”

Both the House and Senate are considering legislation to set an RPS.

One example of a state with aggressive policies toward building a renewable energy portfolio is Minnesota, where Governor Tim Pawlenty has implemented several “clear, strong policies toward energy efficiency and independence,” Gard said.

“If Michigan wants to compete in this area, we have to do what half of the other states have already done and lock in an RPS standard,” he added.

Minnesota’s legislation to have 25 percent of its fuel come from renewable sources by 2025 is the same RPS standard as Illinois and the same goal outlined in Granholm’s 21st Energy Plan, which Gard said the Environmental Council agrees with, although it would like to see an earlier goal of 20 percent by 2020 set first.

Liz Boyd, spokesperson for Granholm, said that interim benchmarks, such as those used by the Environmental Council and by the Legislature in proposed legislation are useful and don’t preclude the administration from getting to 25 percent by 2025.

The governor said earlier this week that she plans to shed a lot of light on her future goals for alternative energy at her State of the State address in January.

Until then, Boyd said, the administration is encouraged by the bipartisan support it is getting to appropriate money to fund companies that research renewable energy and to establish an RPS benchmark.

If Michigan did end up with a 25 percent by 2025 RPS, it would be among the most ambitious states, while New York would still lead the way with a 24 percent goal by 2013. Michigan would trail Wisconsin and Illinois in implementing an RPS but would do so before Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, three states in the region that have yet to enact an RPS.

The impact of Granholm’s RPS plan could be billions of dollars added to the state’s economy through wind power, making it one of the largest wind energy producers, instead of its current ranking of 30th, said a Michigan State University Land Policy Institute report released on Wednesday entitled: Projected Impacts of Renewable Portfolio Standards on Wind Industry Development in Michigan.

“(T)he employment and income impact of manufacturing wind components in Michigan for installations in Michigan could be huge, perhaps as high as $6 billion a year,” the report said. “Given Michigan’s recent history of manufacturing job loss and heightened interest in new opportunities, wind appears to be an interesting option.”

While projects in the Thumb Area set to begin energy production in the coming weeks will increase Michigan’s wind energy production 20 times over, bringing it to 60 megawatts per year from its current 3 megawatts, without RPS standards the state won’t realize the vast amount of potential it has to generate energy from wind sources, MSU researchers said.

The single policy recommendation given by the Land Policy Institute to up Michigan’s wind energy production: enact an RPS.

“(I)t is clear that without strong RPS legislation, it will be difficult for Michigan to develop its wind capacity and pursue energy sustainability,” the report said. “We offer no other policy recommendations than the adoption of a good RPS legislation. The correlation between such legislation and wind industry development seems very obvious.”

Using Granholm’s RPS goals, the report said the state would produce an estimated 981 megawatts per year of wind power by 2009, 1,761 megawatts by 2010 and 9,584 megawatts by 2020.

Among the states currently leading the way in wind energy production, Texas is number one, cranking out 3,953MW per year, and California is second with 2,375. Those numbers are on the rise since both states have projects in the works, according to the American Wind Energy Association, which has a graph of each state’s wind energy projects on its website.

Meanwhile, Indiana and Kentucky have zero output thus far, along with most of the southern United States.

Christine Real de Azua, assistant director of communications for the American Wind Energy Association, said Texas is a good example of a state that has used policy to successfully tap its wind resource.

She said the state has a well-designed renewable portfolio standard, put in place in 1999; has non-discriminatory access to transmission lines for renewable sources of power; and has invested a lot of money into making wind power a reality.

What made Texas’ goal so noteworthy, said Real de Azua, was that it was “modest and enforceable but market-friendly,” since it could be met with renewable energy credits.

While Michigan is “playing catch up” in a number of renewable energy policy and research areas, it is poised to take the lead in other types of research, said Bryan Ritchie, associate director of external strategies for the MSU Office of Biobased Technologies.

Ritchie said that while states such as Iowa and Nebraska will probably always be the winners at the now-established technology of getting ethanol from grain, sugar beets and corn, MSU is in the top 10 percent of research facilities vying to produce a new kind of fuel, called cellulosic ethanol, on a wide scale.

Cellulosic ethanol is made from the grasses, woody biomasses and other plant scraps and is usually used for transportation. It is about 50 percent more carbon-friendly than corn-based fuel, with 85 percent less carbon emissions than oil, according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

While getting fuel from edible sources such as corn creates a battle between food and fuel, using cellulosic materials poses not such threat, said Bruce Dale, an engineering professor at MSU who has been working on developing cellulose fuels for several years.

Another reason cellulose technology could top corn ethanol is the processing industry it could create, Ritchie said, adding that the materials leftover from cellulosic production, such as biobased plastics, fertilizers and building materials, could give Michigan’s economy a big boost.

“If we got our proportional share of the national fuel bill, we could get $5 to $10 billion a year,” Dale said. “It’s a lot of money.”

Meanwhile, the University of Michigan is a leader in solar technology that’s competing for federal grant money with such prominent solar power research universities on the West Coast such as the University of California, Berkeley, said David Walker, associate director for outreach and development at the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute at UM.

UM has also become a frontrunner in the study of batteries and hydrogen storage, which it hopes to use instead of plant-based fuels, bypassing the issue of carbon emissions altogether.

Walker said Michigan and other states are taking the lead over the federal government on passing laws to help the industry.

Whi