LANSING – Armed with a 12-foot tall effigy of Sen. Patricia Birkholz (R-Saugatuck) as puppeteer to three of her colleagues in the Senate and a 20-foot tall inflatable model of a coal fired plant, environmental groups staged a public outcry in front of the Capitol Tuesday against the Senate’s energy plan.

Terry Miller, chair of Lone Tree Council, said that Sen. Randy Richardville and (R-Frenchtown Township), Sen. Roger Kahn (R-Saginaw), along with Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester), are “stooges” to Birkholz, going along with her changes to SB 213 that will open the door to more coal plants and less renewable energy than the House package.

“Calling a senator a stooge is fairly harsh,” Miller said. “But what this energy plan is doing to Michigan is harsh, keeping it locked in the dark ages at a time when we should be moving away from coal and investing in the clean energy of the future.”

Matt Marsden, Bishop’s spokesperson, said that the name-calling typical of GOP opposition isn’t productive.

He said senators passed bills that they thought would open the door to alternative energy usage in the long run, but still offer affordable energy to customers now.

If environmental groups have suggestions for how to change the parts of energy policy still up for debate, they should meet with senators one on one, Marsden said.

But those groups complained this week that after spending a year working with the House to draft compromise legislation with which utility companies, the governor and environmental interests were comfortable, the Senate scrapped the House renewable portfolio standard and instead catered to the interests big energy companies.

Groups including Progress Michigan, the Sierra Club and Clean Water Action, said that as the price of coal continues to increase, Michigan residents will be forced to foot the bill of higher energy prices and to pay for eight more proposed plants in the state, which will employ a third of the people that alternative energy companies would bring.

Birkholz said in a statement that she thinks the Senate energy plan minimizes the economic impact on residents who are already dealing with record high unemployment and “an alarming increase in the cost of basic household needs.

“Senate Republicans refuse to impose an ill-informed government mandate for renewable energy that would require residents to pay significantly more for their energy needs – up to $6 billion to $8 billion more, she said. “I am a strong proponent of renewable energy and the environment, but we cannot be blind to the state’s economic woes and further handicap Michigan’s economy by supporting a costly government mandate.”

Jeff Holyfield, a spokesperson at Consumers Energy, which is set to build at least one new coal-fired plant in Michigan, said that his company would continue its plan to get 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources, no matter the outcome of the legislation.

He said he suspects that other energy companies will also still diversify their energy sources with alternative energy, but that the environmentalists’ call to end dependence on coal isn’t reasonable.

Renewable sources aren’t inexpensive or dependable enough to handle the state’s ever-growing energy demands, Holyfield said, and coal’s alternative, natural gas, is much more expensive and not as abundant.

In response to claims that coal plants increase pollution and the rate of health problems such as asthma, he said that according to Department of Environmental Quality air tests, the state’s air is cleaner than it was 30 years ago because of improvements made by energy companies to lessen emissions.

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