By Judah Duke
Michigan lawmakers have a strategy for decarbonizing the state’s economy that has placed it among the nation’s front-runners. However, a potential ballot measure could get in the way.
The MI Healthy Climate Plan set the goal of achieving 100 percent carbon neutrality by 2050, but then Senate Democrats introduced a package accelerating the timeline to 2040. It was passed as the Clean Energy and Jobs Act last November.
The Act included a major shift: The ultimate approval for large-scale renewable energy projects will move from local municipalities to the state. The law goes into effect on Nov. 29.
The law gives developers interested in building large-scale renewable energy projects a way to get new project proposals reviewed by the state if a community’s zoning laws hinder it.
“There are areas of the state where communities are just flat out saying ‘no’ to any sort” of renewable energy development, said Liesl Clark, former director of Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, who worked on the plan. “It’s an opportunity to create another path forward.”
Clark said the bill will allow the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) to supersede only those local ordinances that are more restrictive than those specified by the commission’s own regulations.
But the new law is facing a lot of opposition.
“The unifying point is that we have to make applicable land use choices,” said Roger Johnson, who is opposed to the legislation. “It doesn’t matter what it is, if it’s renewables or industrial or if it’s residential — local circumstances need to be taken into account.”
Johnson sits on the ballot committee for Citizens for Local Choice, a bipartisan coalition formed for the sole purpose of challenging the law’s renewable energy siting stipulation with a ballot measure campaign. If it receives enough signatures, it would give voters a chance to repeal the law in November.
The Michigan Townships Association, the Michigan Association of Counties and the Michigan Farm Bureau have all backed Citizens for Local Choice.
Michigan State Representative Jennifer Conlin, who supported the bill, said her constituents in the 48th House District, which includes Ann Arbor and several rural communities, asked her not to.
“All of my townships, all nine of them, did not want me to vote on this because they wanted local control,” Conlin said.
Conlin was one representative who fought for amendments that ensured developers worked with local ordinances for four months before they could appeal to the state commission, she said, but the requirements did little to satisfy those in opposition.
“You really can’t come to the MPSC until everything has been tried,” she said. But the townships still opposed the bill “because they don’t want the MPSC to be able to come in under any circumstances.”
The petition by Citizens for Local Choice requires 356,958 valid signatures by May 29 to appear on the ballot in November, according to Ballotpedia. Johnson said the current number of signatures is not publicly available.
But the ballot initiative has faced scrutiny of its own, with some activists warning that the organization has ties to the fossil fuel industry. A report from the Energy and Policy Institute found that the administrators and moderators for the original organization’s Facebook group — established before Citizens for Local Choice was created for the ballot measure, and named Our Home, Our Voice — were on the payroll of a public relations firm, which represents a pipeline subsidiary partially owned by Mobil Pipe Line Co. and Sunoco Pipeline L.P.
In addition, the organization is accused of violating the Michigan Campaign Finance Act by sending money from Our Home, Our Voice to Citizens for Local Choice, according to a campaign finance complaint.
“This is a frivolous compliant [sic] with no merit, designed to distract the media, the campaign, and our volunteers from the overwhelming support we are receiving to restore the rights of local governments to zone large-scale wind and solar projects,” Citizens for Local Choice said in a statement Johnson shared.
Those opposed to giving the state the authority to decide where, and how, to site new renewable energy projects through the MPSC make up 87 percent of voters, according to the coalition. They contend that not only do locals know what’s best for their communities, but that Michigan has made excellent progress toward clean energy by keeping land use decision-making localized.
“It’s our position that the status quo has served Michigan well in the development of renewables,” Johnson said.
Michigan has made some progress in renewable energy generation. In 2022, about 12 percent of Michigan’s electricity came from renewable resources, with wind energy accounting for about two-thirds. Michigan ranks 16th among states in the amount of electricity generated by wind energy, yet it ranks among the top five states in residential-sector petroleum use and first in residential-sector consumption of propane.
According to the most recent data available from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, carbon dioxide emissions from the generation of electric power by all fuels in Michigan fell 20 percent, to 53 million metric tons in 2021 from about 65 million metric tons in 2011.
There are several constituencies that have much to gain from the legislation, not just developers, who can receive 30 percent back on their investment, before 2033, through the Federal Solar Investment Tax Credit. For landowners, Michigan also offers a property tax exemption for solar, which means that increasing a homes value by installing solar panels will not result in increased property taxes.
Nate Lada started a farm with his wife Jill in 2021 in the Ann Arbor area and now is part of Green Things Farm Collective, which runs on solar power. The array powering the farm is much smaller than the large-scale projects the law would allow, but Lada sees the law as a necessary step.
“I support green infrastructure, and I think that we should all be investing more heavily in renewable energy sources,” he said. “The ability to do that, or at least to have a secondary review beyond the township level, feels appropriate, especially given our experience with township politics.”
Not to mention that Michigan is experiencing significant climate shifts.
According to the EPA, temperatures in Michigan have risen two to three degrees Fahrenheit in the last century. The state has experienced increasingly heavy rainstorms and more extremely hot days that could impact public health in cities, and corn production in rural areas. The weather changes are driven by a rise in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that have warmed the planet’s surface and atmosphere over the past 50 years.
Currently, it remains unclear if the complaint against Citizens for Local Choice was resolved, but as of May 16, the organization continues to collect signatures in a race to meet the May 29 deadline for getting on the November ballot, as reported by ABC 12 News.