This report is made possible in partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.
Last year, Michigan became one of the latest states to adopt a broad clean energy standard. legislation The agreement requires the region’s public service providers to use 100% clean electricity by 2040 and sets renewable energy development targets.
Now that law is in effect, the Michigan Public Service Commission, the energy regulator charged with enforcing it, must pay special attention to the Upper Peninsula. The commission must recommend by Dec. 1 whether and how to adapt the law to suit residents, businesses and utilities.
They have a lot to do. The Upper Peninsula, commonly referred to as the UP, is a large, sparsely populated region in the north, separated from the rest of the state by the Straits of Mackinac and sandwiched between Lake Superior, Michigan, and Lake Huron. The UP has a large number of utilities for a small population of just over 300,000, requiring a greater level of cooperation among them. Plus, the grid built With power-hungry industries like mining and paper mills in mind, the fluctuations in industrial demand have meant that residents in the area have had to shoulder high costs for years, with some utilities charging residents some of the highest rates. Michigan and nation.
And the Public Service Commission said natural gas power plants Approved Michigan set a goal in 2017 to transition to clean energy to replace coal, but that hasn’t stopped the state from meeting its clean energy goals.
These natural gas plants, powered by reciprocating internal combustion engines called RICE units, came online just five years ago and were built to last for decades, exceeding the state’s 2040 clean energy goal. The mining company, Cleveland-Cliffs, agreed to pay half of the $277 million price tag, but the rest of the cost was passed on to the state’s more than 42,000 utility customers.
Michigan’s New Energy Law Special mention They saw UP’s expensive new natural gas engines as a stumbling block and asked the Public Service Commission to figure out what to do about them.
The law doesn’t require the engines to be shut down completely. But since only natural gas combined with carbon capture is considered “clean,” utilities that operate the engines will have to deploy a lot of renewable energy instead or find other ways to comply with the new rules. It’s unclear what all this means for the future of the five-year-old engines.
Commission Chairman Dan Scripps said the state could adjust its approach to RICE units to reduce or offset emissions. Another option, he said, is to think holistically about the region’s energy goals. “How do we effectively get to net-zero emissions by 2040, but also have more flexibility around carbon capture and things like that?”
The committee is coordinating diverse opinions.
Mine management and employees supported the continued operation of the RICE unit. Public hearing This is a meeting held by the committee this summer.
Ryan Korpela, general manager of the Cleveland-Cliffs Tilden mine, asked commissioners to allow the mine to run its natural gas engines without renewable energy credits or new generation, calling it “the perfect solution to a difficult problem” and noting that ratepayers are already paying for it.
Cleveland-Cliffs officials said the engine Cleaner and more efficient It is cheaper than coal, allowing customers to save on transmission costs. But organizations like the Sierra Club say Express in words They opposed its installation in places like neighboring Wisconsin, arguing for incineration. methane — a major component of natural gas — is harmful to the climate and to people living near power plants, according to climate think tank RMI. Say many comparison For coal and gas, it only considers end-use emissions and does not account for methane leaks during production and transportation, according to RMI. analyze According to a report published last year, these leaks mean natural gas could have the same climate impact as coal (methane released into the atmosphere is about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide).
Upper Michigan Energy Resources Corporation, the utility that operates the RICE unit, is working to deploy renewable energy, spokesman Brendan Conway said in an email, but they are balancing that with the immediate need for reliable energy. “These units perform a critical function in areas of the state where access to transmission is limited,” he said.
Other groups, including the Environment and Energy Group, Got pushed Enforce state laws, including clean energy mandates, as written.
Abby Wallace, a member of the Michigan Environmental Protection Commission, wants to find a compromise on natural gas engines. “There are ways to make the RICE unit itself more efficient,” she said at the hearing. “And I think it’s premature to say that UP can never meet the goals that the rest of the state is asking for in the legislation.”
According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, four states across the country have 100 percent renewable energy portfolio standards, and 16 states have adopted broader 100 percent clean electricity standards. August Report. (Clean energy includes a wider range of technologies than renewables, so these figures do not include states like Vermont. Renewable Energy Standards (It became law earlier this year.)
Michigan’s goal is ambitious, said Galen Babos, a researcher and author of the report.
“Most other states have goals that are further out in time,” he said. “By setting a 100 percent goal by 2040, Michigan is one of the most aggressive states in terms of timeline.” Babos also said the state is taking a more gradual approach to the transition than other states, with a goal of getting 80 percent of its energy from clean sources by 2035.
Behind Michigan’s energy transition lies the unreliability of its power grid, which could have dire consequences for people living in the UP.
“When a squirrel sneezes, the electricity goes out,” says Tori McGessick, explaining how some locals view the area’s reliability. McGessick is a member of the Rock View Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, who now lives across the northern border in Wisconsin. She serves as the tribe’s climate resilience coordinator.
She said it often takes longer to respond to power outages in remote areas, and unreliable power has a major impact on communities, especially the elderly and those with special medical needs.
“It also affects harvest rights,” McGeshick told Grist. “A lot of people harvest or hunt or fish in other seasons, and when there’s a power outage, they lose all of that, their supplies.” She added that the Public Service Commission should get more tribal input as it weighs the new bill against infrastructure, cost, and grid reliability.
Not everyone agrees that natural gas is a long-term solution for reliable, affordable energy. Roman Sidortsov, an assistant professor of energy policy at Michigan Technological University, says gas prices are volatile and hard to predict. “People tend to forget that fossil fuels, especially oil and gas, are incredibly volatile businesses,” he said. “There’s very little price stability.”
Sidortsov, a member of the state UP Energy Task Force Years ago, UP said it was dealing with different environmental factors and customers than other parts of the state. The grid was built to serve industries that weren’t as robust as they once were.
He believes much of the region’s demand could be met by distributed generation, which energy experts say involves getting power from smaller, more localized sources. discuss For years, Sidortsov said the right way forward is to develop grid energy storage capacity and smaller, more distributed renewable energy sources.
“So when we talk about achieving the goals that the legislature has set, we probably need to rethink UP’s grid, update UP’s grid, and make sure that we can accommodate regional solutions and decentralized solutions.”
Michigan became the leader among: main “We’re trying to make sure that all energy is compliant with the clean energy standard,” said Douglas Jester, managing partner of policy consulting firm 5 Lakes Energy, which helped develop the state legislation.
And while the Clean Energy Standard still allows utilities to sell a certain amount of fossil fuel power to the grid, that may not make financial sense by 2040 as surrounding states increasingly transition to renewable energy, Jester said.
This report was supported by: Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources.
Editor’s note: The Sierra Club is an advertiser for Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
