DTE continues its pattern of actively restricting rooftop solar and community-owned power generation, and its emphasis on voluntary renewable energy programs makes them more costly and less accessible. DTE also limits the amount of energy efficiency in their plan. Smaller energy efficiency programs mean less energy efficiency benefits for low-income customers who face a higher energy burden. These benefits include lower energy bills, preservation of affordable housing, and healthier homes.

DTE’s proposed plan prioritizes profit for their shareholders over serving their customers. By limiting energy efficiency + renewables and continuing to rely on gas + coal for decades to come, it means the plan is not as affordable as it could be. The plan also proposes an expensive and unproven carbon capture and sequestration project, which would drive up costs for ratepayers without actually reducing pollution in the most impacted communities.  Additionally, they did not choose the plan that modeled the least cost options.

While DTE included more stakeholder outreach than in its previous plan, the final result was not inclusive nor designed to build community power. Planning principles gave lip service to community impact, but failed to meaningfully work with communities to come up with solutions. DTE claimed it is committed to a just transition for workers and communities impacted by coal plant retirements but has not been fully transparent about the details. DTE continues its pattern of actively restricting rooftop solar and community-owned power generation while pursuing false solutions like carbon capture and sequestration which allow for ongoing fossil fuel extraction and combustion in impacted communities.

Pollution from power plants is linked to many health conditions, such as asthma, chronic lung and heart diseases, various cancers, low birth weight, and many others. Additionally, air pollutants like those emitted from DTE’s coal units are known to exacerbate climate change. 

Gas has many negative public health impacts as well, such as methane leaks and localized water + air pollution from extraction/fracking. The worsening climate crisis will have negative impacts on Michigan and the health of our residents, especially our most vulnerable populations. 

To combat this, DTE must analyze the earliest possible retirement dates and move to clean, renewable energy instead of other fossil fuels. As for clean energy options, energy efficiency not only avoids pollution but also improves indoor air quality.

• DTE proposes to stop burning coal at its Belle River plant by 2026 and retire half of its massive Monroe coal plant by 2028, with the remaining half retired by 2035

• Add info about the wind, solar and battery storage additions DTE proposes to add 15,400 megawatts of new solar and wind power and 1,810 megawatts of battery storage, which is significant, but much of it planned for planned for future decades

• The company targets an 85% reduction in carbon emissions by 2035 and 90% by 2040.

• However, DTE’s plan would continue relying on fossil gas for decades to come, and their carbon capture proposal would allow for continued extraction pollution in the hardest hit communities.

• While DTE put all generation units through US EPA’s EJ screen, they did not perform a thorough environmental justice or retirement analysis of their existing peaker plants.

Energy efficiency helps customers reduce their energy use and save money on bills, but instead of expanding its programs, DTE proposed scaling them down. DTE is targeting only a 1.5 percent average annual savings from its energy efficiency programs despite the fact that it achieved 2 percent savings in 2021 and 2022. DTE also is projecting only incremental improvement in demand response programs, which provide financial incentives to customers who can reduce or shift energy their use during times of high demand.

DTE overestimated renewable energy costs and placed arbitrary limits on its buildout timeline. The proposal does not meet the state’s goal of achieving 60% renewable energy on the grid by 2030, and it locks in fossil-gas power for decades to come. Additionally, they failed to request proposals from third-party developers that could have been more cost-effective. DTE’s proposal continues its pattern of actively restricting rooftop solar and community-owned power generation. Finally, they proposed to develop the majority of their renewable energy through a voluntary program that asks customers to bear additional costs.

DTE proposes to stop burning coal at its Belle River plant by 2026 and retire half of its Monroe coal plant by 2028, with the remaining half retired by 2035. Monroe is the 3rd largest greenhouse gas emitter in the county, so this represents a meaningful acceleration of the utility’s coal phase-out, but DTE’s plan still falls short of the state’s 2030 coal-free target.   

DTE took a step in the right direction by including an assessment of environmental justice and health impacts, but DTE must do more to prioritize public health, access to clean energy benefits, and influence in decision-making for overburdened communities.

DTE’s plan proposes to spend $135 million on fossil gas by converting the Belle River plant coal to fossil gas fuel in 2025 and 2026. In 2035 it proposes replacing the Monroe coal plant with gas in combination with an expensive and unproven carbon capture system that would allow for continued extraction pollution in the hardest-hit communities. DTE’s proposal slow rolls building out renewables and misses a crucial opportunity to mitigate the need for gas power to replace the Monroe plant. Altogether, this proposal would lock us into relying on fossil gas for decades to come.

While Michigan families sit in the dark and struggle to pay utility bills, DTE has been giving massive payouts to politicians and funding an army of lobbyists to advance its corporate interests, actively opposing policies that would mitigate climate change and unlock Michigan’s full renewable energy potential. Recent reports show DTE spent over $1.4 million in a single year on federal lobbying, $1.2 million contributing to nearly every member of Michigan’s legislature, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in dark money to prematurely repeal Governor Whitmer’s COVID protections and even influence policy in other states like California.