Michigan is rewriting the rules that DTE Energy and Consumers Energy must follow as they plan what gets built—or retired—for the next 20 years. There are at least 3 things wrong with the way we do it now:
1. Too many Michiganders cannot afford the rates DTE and Consumers charge. Too many Michiganders are forced to decide between paying their electric bill and buying groceries. Inflation was the big issue in the 2024 election. It still is and DTE’s and Consumers’ rates are going up at 2 and 3 times faster than other costs.
2. Residential rates are exploding because of unjustified speculative frenzy around AI and data centers. DTE and Consumers want residents to pay for new methane-burning plants to power these data centers without any financial commitments from the big tech companies. Runaway speculation on data centers also strains our ground water and the Great Lakes.
3. Michigan has the worst electric outages in the nation. It takes our utilities an average of 12 hours to recover from outages. Even with a guaranteed 10% return for shareholders, they have failed to make the necessary investments in our grid infrastructure. They just keep blaming the trees.
At the Sierra Club, our mission is to ENJOY and PROTECT the wild places on Earth. We can’t enjoy them if we can’t afford to visit them because we had to pay our utility bill or because we had to throw out a refrigerator of food after an outage. We can’t enjoy them if the new data center has dried up the wetlands next door.
We’re not protecting them if we allow utilities to blow past our commitments to 100% clean energy by 2040. Burning coal and methane is warming up the Great Lakes, making our fisheries even more susceptible to invasive species. Rising temperatures are driving wildfires, flooding, an increase in tornadoes and ice storms that are wreaking havoc on our parks and forests.
The Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC), the regulatory agency that approves our utilities’ plans, is holding public hearings about what rules should be used in approving these plans. This is an opportunity for all of us, as members and supporters of the Sierra Club, to exercise our mission to enjoy and protect our wild places.
The MPSC will have a public hearing on Monday, October 27 from 6:00 to 7:30 PM at Oakland Community College in Auburn Hills. It will be in Building F, Room 123 at 2900 Featherstone Road. There will be a rally beforehand at 5:00 PM. We need as many people as possible. Please attend and RSVP here!
If the idea of offering public comment makes you uncomfortable, please attend our prep session on Wednesday, October 22 at 6:00 PM. Sign up for this video call at Here. We’ll have sample scripts to make it easy for you, which you can view ahead of time here —Sample Model Comments. This is about numbers and enthusiasm. It doesn’t take great debating or oratory skills. Bring a friend for support. Meet other people who care about the issues you care about. You can do this!
If these dates don’t work for you, you can offer a comment directly to the MPSC online. The Sierra Club has created an easy tool for you — Submit your public comment now! Please share this link —https://act.sierraclub.org/actions/National?actionId=AR0586897– with your friends. Post it on social media. We need numbers!
Are you concerned about data centers threatening our water and climate? Have you ever been frustrated by a power outage? Do you know someone who has struggled to pay their utility bill? Has your neighbor lost food because of an outage? Are you upset about bills that go up and up? Has your favorite park been impacted by increasingly frequent heat waves? Do you miss the snow?
Now is a time for us to flip the script; to put people and nature before investor-owned monopoly utilities, to protect our groundwater and the Great Lakes from thirsty data centers, to pump the brakes on speculative construction of fossil fuel burning power plants, to make electric bills fair for everyone, and to make sure Michigan lives up to its promise of 100% clean energy by 2040. All we need is YOU.