New York Times touts West Michigan’s, state’s growing clean energy industry

A New York Times report touts Michigan’s burgeoning clean energy industry, citing the industry’s growth in Holland with the promised electric-vehicle battery manufacturing.According to excerpts from the story:In February 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which among other things, provided $2.4 billion to encourage the development of a domestic industry to make lighter, more energy-dense lithium ion batteries to power electric vehicles. Two weeks ago, on July 15, the president flew to this small city on the shore of Lake Michigan to attend the ground-breaking for a $303 million, 650,000 square-foot battery plant operated by Compact Power, a subsidiary of Korean company LG Chem, and to see other evidence of the stimulus bill’s influence in Michigan. He did not have to travel far. There are 17 new plants in production, under construction or approaching ground-breaking in Michigan’s nascent electric-vehicle battery sector, according to the state Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth. Two of them, representing an investment of $523 million, are in Holland, a city of 34,000. Read the complete story here.