LANSING – Sweden shows how Michigan can lead the nation in creating new jobs and providing new sources of energy through alternative means, Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Tuesday in reviewing her trade mission to the Scandinavian country and Germany.

“It was a very exciting trip,” Granholm told reporters that creates some real possibilities for Michigan. State and Swedish officials will set up another meeting in January 2008 about the time of the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Center in Detroit.

Granholm said she met with executives from some 60 companies in Sweden and other six companies during her brief visit to Germany. Directly from the trip three companies have pledged to make investments in Michigan, which could result in more than 200 jobs.

But most promising was the similarity of Michigan’s geographic and environmental footprint to Sweden’s in terms of forest and water and resources. The success that corporations have had in Granholm’s ancestral homeland in converting those resources into alternative energy that can be used to power vehicles as well as homes and companies can be replicated here, she said.

James Epolito, president of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, (and himself half-Swedish), said the trip to Sweden was probably the most rewarding of any trade mission he had been on.

“I love it when a plan begins to come together,” he said, saying that the effort to position Michigan as a leader in alternative fuels had begun several years before and now the efforts were beginning to match up with corporate possibilities for the state.

V.W.: Ms. Granholm said the administration is trying to set up a meeting with top Volkswagen executives either here or in Germany to discuss the possibilities that the company may move the headquarters for its Audi subsidiary out of Michigan.

Epolito said there have been many meetings with VW executives over the years, but that executives were unavailable for meetings when officials were in Europe. They were out testing cars, he said.

Granholm said there was no business reason why the company should move out of the state, especially with Michigan implementing a new business tax.

Epolito said he wasn’t clear that the threat to move was at this time a serious threat.

This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com

a>>