There was so much wind and methane in Governor Granholm’s State of the State Address last night it is easy to see why people got excited about alternative energy. Yet, as we have come to learn with our governor, it better to trust what she has done than what she says she will do.

Case in point: Alternative Energy. Here’s what the governor said last night:

But let me talk for a moment about one sector that has blockbuster potential for Michigan: alternative energy. Why alternative energy? Because – to borrow a line from Wayne Gretzky – if you want to win, “don’t skate to where the puck is – skate to where the puck is going.” The puck is going to alternative energy. Any time you pick up a newspaper from here on out and see the terms “climate change” or “global warming,” just think: “jobs for Michigan.” Because of the need to reduce global warming and end our dependence on expensive foreign oil, the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries will create millions of good paying jobs.

But when the governor had chance to actually do something that would offer incentives to create some renewable energy she vetoed it.

In 2004, state Sen. Cameron Brown, from the Sturgis area, introduced Senate Bill 955, which proposed to offer tax credits to farmers as incentives to turn cow poo into usable methane or bio-mass that could be used to generate power. This bill passed the state Senate and House with strong bi-partisan support.

It’s a simple concept and a good one. Large farm operations — and there are few small farm operations anymore — produce a lot of animal waste which normally would sit in a large cement lagoons until it is pumped into trucks and hauled away, usually to be dumped on some farm field someplace. Yuck is right.

But today the technology exists that would take much of the cow pies created by a large dairy operation, say, and convert it into usable methane. That methane — which is clean-burning natural gas — would in turn be used to power electric generators or heat livestock barns on the same farms where the waste is created. Senator Brown’s tax credit bill would have made it cheaper for farmers to use this technology and to turn waste into energy. Sounds like a good source of renewable energy to me.

But the governor kowtowed the enviro whackos in her own party who saw the tax breaks as sop for large farm operations, commonly referred to a CAFOs (Commercial Animal Farm Operations), which the Left loves to hate. Never mind the fact that offering incentives to large farm operations to deal on-site with the waste they create — and create some energy in the process — just makes a whole lot more sense than trying to regulate them into oblivion.

SB 955 offered an tangible opportunity to create real alternative energy jobs, right here and right now. Not the pie-in-the-sky hopes about which the governor waxed lovingly in her address last night.

That’s the difference between Granholm Rhetoric and Granholm Action.