In this episode, Michigan State Senator Sam Singh details the ambitious clean energy policies that have been enacted since Democrats won a legislative trifecta in 2022, including some bold reforms of clean-energy permitting.
Text transcript:
David Roberts
In the 2022 elections, something big happened Michigan politics: for the first time in over 40 years, Democrats won a trifecta — control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature. Longtime Volts listeners can undoubtedly guess what happened next: before the end of their first year in office, the new Democratic majority — thin as it was, with just a one-vote advantage in both the House and Senate — passed a sweeping, ambitious package of clean-energy bills.
Among them was a new clean-energy standard that would target 100 percent clean electricity by 2040, a bill reforming the public utility service commission so that it formally takes climate and health into account, and, perhaps most intriguingly, a bill that would move clean energy permitting decisions from the local to the state level, in the process effectively banning the local moratoria that had been popping up across the state.
Michigan is an extremely significant state in US politics — a “blue wall” state that the Dems need to win the electoral college; a state that has seen manufacturing, specifically auto manufacturing, hollowed out due to globalization; the home of one of the party’s rising stars, in Governor Gretchen Whitmer — so its lurch in a green direction is worth following closely.
To discuss the history of these bills and some of the details they contain, I contacted state Senator Sam Singh. Singh has a long and rich history in Michigan politics — he was the youngest person ever elected to East Lansing's city council and the first person of color to serve as its mayor; he was the first Indian-American elected to the Michigan House, and the first to serve as its minority leader; and in 2022, he became the first Indian-American elected to the Michigan Senate.
He is a long-time champion of progressive causes and a force behind this legislation, so I was eager to talk to him about what the bills do, what they mean for state utility regulators, how they balance speed with local input in permitting, and what's in store for next session.
Okay then. Michigan Senator Sam Singh, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Sam Singh
Thank you for having me.
David Roberts
This is very cool. One of my favorite genres of Volts podcast is talking to state leaders about cool things happening in states — as you know, following the federal government is a recipe for madness. So this is like little oases for me. So Michigan passed, late last year, a big package of clean-energy bills. Before we get into the details of some of those, maybe you could just tell us, just as an overview, what's gone on in the last four or five years of Michigan politics that has made this possible. Like, these are very big and elaborate and well thought through bills, and they passed relatively quickly after the 2022 election.
So, people must have been mulling them over before this. So what's kind of the recent political history here?
Sam Singh
Sure, I'll go back to 2016. At that point in time, Michigan had a Republican governor, Governor Snyder. I, as a Democrat, was in the minority in the state house as well as the state senate. And we were looking at energy policy then, and Democrats were trying to find a way to expand renewable energy and energy efficiency programs within that conversation. And for a long time, the Republicans refused to negotiate with Democrats, trying to see if they could find a solution on their own, and eventually got to a point — after almost two years of discussion, as we were getting to the end of our term — there was finally a recognition that they couldn't pass it with Republican only votes, they needed Democrats to come to the table. And so we were able to stand together as a Democratic caucus, and we fought for some minor expansion in our renewable energy standard. We went up to 15%.
David Roberts
Up to 15?
Sam Singh
Yes.
David Roberts
What was it before then?
Sam Singh
Yeah, I think it was at 5%, if I remember correctly. And so it wasn't bold policy we were making back in 2016 under the Republican administration. And then we also expanded our energy efficiency programs to 1% of annual sales of any of the utilities that were overseen by our public service commission. And I will say that even though these were modest, and for a lot of my colleagues in other states who were doing much bolder things back in 2016, this was the first time we saw a Republican-only legislature and governor, at least for a long period of time, actually see an increase.
We actually started that session with the original bill actually repealing any standards for energy efficiency.
David Roberts
The odious 5% standard that the utilities were suffering under.
Sam Singh
That's right. That was the context of where we were in 2016, and I was the lead Democratic negotiator on behalf of our caucus. And so I learned a lot about energy policy during that period of time. I wasn't on the energy committee. I had introduced some bills dealing with energy efficiency, but not on as deep of a dive as I had to put in there. And so because of term limits in Michigan, I had to take a four-year hiatus before my senate seat opened up. And I got elected in 2022. And when I got sworn in in January of '23, I knew that I wanted to continue on energy policy, this time, really focusing on doing something bold.
David Roberts
Yeah. And we should just note, in case anybody didn't get the news, in 2022, Michigan elected a democratic trifecta for the first time in 40 — a long time, the first time in a long time in Michigan, you had a Democratic governor and both houses.
Sam Singh
That's right. And so that really, I think, allowed us an opportunity. But prior to us getting elected and getting the legislature under Democratic control, we had Governor Whitmer get elected in 2018. And so, in her first term, she began to do a lot around energy policy and climate issues, obviously around doing executive orders and executive directives. She also then developed the MI Healthy Climate Plan by bringing together a very diverse set of stakeholders talking about how we can do much more things sort of in the space of the legislature, but also within state government. Obviously, in 2022, once the elections happened, now she had a Democratic house and a Democratic senate that was willing to talk about these issues in a very different way.
And so, we spent the first quarter working on a number of other issues. But as we were getting ready to go on spring break, we made a commitment that we would begin to take a look at codifying a number of the elements of her Healthy Climate Plan by putting a Democratic spin on some of those items. And so shortly after we got back in April from our two-week legislative break, Senate Democrats introduced what we were calling our Clean Energy Future plan. And it was a series of bills taking a look at a variety of different areas.
But obviously, the gold standard was to create a clean energy standard, to expand the energy efficiency work that we've been doing, and then making some modifications so our public service commission could do more. And there were some other bills that were part of that package, and so we introduced that. The governor held a climate summit where those bills were sort of first talked about by a set of stakeholders. And it really wasn't until the summer, then moving into the fall, that we had very significant negotiations with environmental groups, with utilities, both the larger investor-owned utilities, but our small co-ops, as well as our municipal and a variety of other stakeholders, labor groups and others.
And so when we got back after the spring recess, the focus really became that we needed to get the clean energy package done, and we wanted to get it done in 2023. And so that was the focus.
David Roberts
I'm just curious, in the end, did you get any Republican votes for any of these?
Sam Singh
I was hoping that in a couple of areas, especially around energy efficiency, where I knew that there was some Republican support around that, we also made some modifications to siting. I was hoping at one point in time, early in the process, that maybe we would have got some Republican support. But unfortunately, this became, I think, a focal point for the Republican minority. I think they saw this as a campaign issue going into next year's house elections. And it was clear that they were not going to negotiate with us, were not going to provide any votes. And so, especially over the summer, once we knew that and understood that, it made it very clear that at this point, I was negotiating amongst Democrats in both chambers and trying to find the common ground that would get everybody on board.
David Roberts
Got it. So a bunch of bills here to talk about in some ways, the one you call the centerpiece is, I guess, kind of the least interesting. I mean, it's awesome, the clean energy standard. But at this point, this is a policy that has basically been replicated now in numerous states. You can almost just kind of pull it off the shelf, although you have some interim targets that are, I think, really ambitious. So it's 50% renewables by 2030, 60% renewables by 2034, and then 100% clean by 2040. I know there was a little bit of controversy around what counts as clean.
How did that resolve? I know a couple of sources are in there that some of the environmental community is not a big fan of. Did that prove a sticking point?
Sam Singh
Yeah, that was a large part of some of the negotiations within the Democratic circles, in our caucus, in both chambers, for example, many states, obviously in Michigan, we did the same, include nuclear as part of clean energy. It is a clean energy resource. But there were a number of environmental justice organizations who don't believe that nuclear is an appropriate utilization. We have a significant deployment of nuclear already here in the state of Michigan. And so from a pragmatic sense, taking that off the table didn't make a lot of sense. So we wanted to ensure that that continued.
We had some debate around biomass and how we took a look at that. Obviously, we have, like many states, a lot of landfills and a lot of methane coming off of those landfills. And there were certain groups that didn't feel that was appropriate for us to capture the methane and turn that into energy. But there were some environmental groups who did — so sort of that sort of divide where I think pragmatic groups who said, "hey, some of these pieces were already in law, back in the 2016 law." And so we wanted to not push industry out of business.
But we also know it's a very small part of the overall energy creation here in the state. But we wanted to also ensure that. But we also then looked at our sister states that had already gone ahead of us. Right. Illinois and Minnesota here in the Midwest had already moved on their clean energy standards, and they also had included biomass. So, you know, we felt comfortable moving forward on some of that. But there was definitely a lot of debate on some of those outlining pieces on whether or not that should have been included or not.
David Roberts
Can I ask about nuclear? Just like, in your mind, was this mainly about counting existing nuclear toward the total clean, or is there some thought about building new nuclear in Michigan?
Sam Singh
Well, we had a nuclear facility called Palisade, which was in the southwest part of the state that went offline a few years ago. But there's always been an ongoing discussion about potentially bringing that back online. And the governor had put some resources in the last budget. I know there's been some conversations with the Department of Energy. There's a buyer there. And so we also wanted to facilitate not only the existing, but if this facility came back online, we wanted to allow for that, but we didn't put any restrictions. So if there is some additional, you know, I know everyone's talking about the smaller scale nuclear, that might be a potential.
This doesn't prohibit that. But I think overall, as we all know, the permitting process, the timing, the cost, makes other things like renewable wind and storage and other types of things more cost effective in the end.
David Roberts
Right. And the one other piece of this that looked like it caused a little bit of controversy is about community solar. I know a lot of states have done kind of a carve out for community solar, so you can have a solar project owned by a third party that is sort of tied to a local area and locals can invest in it. And there's nothing about community solar in the bill. Is that on your radar as something for later, or was there some reason that it didn't make it in?
Sam Singh
Yeah, one was — there was a set of community solar bills that had already been introduced in the legislature prior to us doing the significant negotiations, and that was one that was creating, I think, some tension points within the legislature. And as we were talking with the administration and trying to find the landing spot. And so that was one of the pieces, as we were beginning to get closer and closer to our deadline, which was session was going to be ending the first week in November, it was one of those pieces that we reluctantly said, "well, this is probably going to have to go on in a future session."
We're back in a new session now here in the new year in 2024. And so, yeah, we weren't able to find the right landing spot for that. And I know a number of groups that were focused on the community solar aspect were disappointed that we weren't able to find common ground. Now, I do think there's some opportunities for them even before we look at new legislation. We do have some of our marketplace — we do have a 10% sort of independent market that's been deregulated. Those providers are now required under this new law to also hit some renewable energy targets, as are the investor-owned utilities and others.
And so I won't be surprised that in that space that you could see some community solar arrangements created as well. As we take a look at that topic here in 2024 and beyond.
David Roberts
Sort of a quasi-political question, how much was everybody talking about IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the sort of giant pot of federal money that it has uncorked? How big a role did that really play in your thinking and planning here? Was that on your mind, like, trying to tap into some of that money, or did you just bracket that?
Sam Singh
No, I think it was a significant reason why we actually got this done in the timing that we did get it done. I think whenever you're doing something big and bold, there's always this group of people that are like, "Well, we could spend a little bit more time. We could do this next year. We don't have to resolve this." And I think the sense that there are these dollars and resources available at the federal level that if we don't take advantage of, other states will, and we won't get our fair share. And so as we had a number of our stakeholder groups that utilize that as part of the reason why to do it this year in 2023.
And so I think that was a very convincing piece for some of my colleagues who might have wanted to take a little bit slower, a little bit more methodical approach to this. You know, in past years, as I mentioned, even in that 2016 rewrite of our energy policy, it took two years to get it done. And so we obviously introduced these in April, and we got them done and signed by the governor in November.
David Roberts
Yeah, you put a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; it kind of focuses everyone.
Sam Singh
If that money wasn't there, I think there could have been this sort of desire to kind of push some of the harder parts of the conversation into 2024.
David Roberts
That's the clean energy standard. Another bill I think that probably isn't maybe as sexy for the public, but to me is of intense interest, is Senate Bill 502, which is about reforming the Public Service Commission, the State Public Service Commission, the state body that regulates utilities. I've been doing a couple of podcasts I just actually published today, a podcast with the lead regulator in Connecticut. So I'm very keen and interested in these state public service commissions getting a little more ambitious and innovative. So 502 implements a number of reforms to the way Michigan's Public Service Commission operates.
So tell us a little bit about what that does.
Sam Singh
Well, one of the things we had heard from the commission as stakeholders were involved in our integrated resource planning, the IRP process, they would oftentimes bring up ideas and the commission would say, "This is an interesting idea, but we don't know if we have the legal bandwidth within existing law." And so we kind of saw that happening time and time again. And so from a legislative perspective, we wanted to make sure that was very clear. And so we wanted to make sure that the Commission had the authority to take issues such as climate into their integrated resource planning, as they worked with utilities.
We wanted to make sure that health considerations could be taken into account while they were doing their work. We also wanted to make sure that affordability was there. We also wanted to make sure, as there were new developments happening with energy production, that we were taking a look at environmental justice and especially those communities that have had a negative impact by past production. How do we help support that transition and so forth? And so 502 was really critical in providing a broader purview for the commission to take in different ideas as part of the IRP process.
I think it's probably one of the game changers for those that sort of follow this policy and want to make sort of inroads and be more equitable on how we take a look at a clean energy future here in Michigan. So we were really pleased that we were able to find the right landing spot for 502. That was one of the ones that we spent probably more time on the 100% standard and this. Because that was the most complicated part of the negotiation.
David Roberts
Yeah. And I would imagine that the big utilities are quite sensitive about this particular area of policy.
Sam Singh
Yeah, absolutely right. And that's why I think having the right compromises in the end, but at the same time pushing this idea of equity, we had a number of key senators, Senator Sue Shink from Washtenaw, Senator Erika Geiss from Taylor, Michigan, really pushing those ideas of equity and making sure that we were helping the commission move in the right direction. We're really critical of making that happen.
David Roberts
Right. So just for listeners' benefit, in case anybody's unclear about what we're talking about here. So utilities have to submit these integrated resource plans, basically telling the regulators "this is what we're going to build, these are our targets, this is what we plan to do for the next five years." And so what this bill does is just give regulators clear authority to take climate and health and equity and things like that into account when assessing those plans before they approve those plans. The reason I think this is important is because across the country there are lots and lots and lots of state regulatory bodies who do not have the legal authority.
They literally legally can't take climate into account when they're assessing those things. And this is like an obscure, I think, from the public's perspective, but super important sort of fulcrum point for a lot of policy. This was, to me, one of the more surprising and interesting parts of the bill. So while we're on that subject of the state regulatory body, another bill that is just, to me, the most fascinating and interesting part of all this is House Bill 5120, which is about siting and permitting. So this is a very hot topic now at the federal and state level, the slowness of permitting and the difficulty in siting — the sort of NIMBY opposition, the local opposition, et cetera.
So basically, this bill says rather than local communities, it is the State Public Utility Commission that now can approve siting for projects. So tell us a little bit about why you did this and what this bill says.
Sam Singh
Yeah, and this is, I want to give credit to my colleagues in the House. The siting bills, the two bills that came over from the house dealt with the siting question, they were done by Abe Aiyash and Ranjeev Puri. And basically what we were seeing happen throughout the state is that most of our decisions when it comes to critical energy infrastructure are already done by our Commission. If you're talking about pipelines, plants, natural gas plants, location where pipelines go, and all that is all done by the Commission. There's obviously input from the locals, opportunity for public testimony and gathering of information, but in the end, it's done by the Commission.
And so it's really only been these renewable pieces that were sort of left to local governments.
David Roberts
Do we know why that is? It seems like a weird exception.
Sam Singh
Yes, I really don't know the history of that, but because it wasn't part of the initial work of utilities and it sort of came on at the end, I don't know if people had really thought through what communities might do or might not do in the process. We want to be really respectful to our local governments and work with those who are willing to find the right place. But what we ended up seeing is that in some communities, they were just outright banning it. They weren't saying, "hey, we're going to find the right place in our community to do this."
They were just saying, "hey, we don't even want to have the conversation." And that's where I think we began to realize that, one, we were going to have to continue down a very expensive path of continuing down the current energy pathway, or we could go this lower energy route by much more cost-effective wind and solar and storage. That's where a tension point really came forward. So the final compromises, and there were a lot of compromises between local governments and the legislature in the final days before those bills passed. So the process still starts at the local level.
There are now standards that are created at the state level that locals are required to either adopt those standards or if they decide they don't want to — and we have heard from some communities that they don't want to deal with this issue because sometimes it's a very tough issue in a small community. They'd rather have somebody else doing it, so they can allow the commission right from the beginning to do that. But if those communities who want to create their own ordinance, they have some ability to do that, but they can't go over certain parameters, and if there's a conflict, then the commission would come in and finalize that.
David Roberts
Right. So they can't implement standards that are more strict than the states.
Sam Singh
That's correct. And so we do believe that a lot of the developers will work with local communities. They want to, right. They want to make sure that these are being put in the right place, but at the same time, they don't want to just be told, "hey, you can't come in at all." We do believe in property rights. I do believe if somebody has property and they can put this in on their vacant land, they should be able to do that. Right. And so a local community shouldn't tell somebody that, "hey, you can't do this at all" when it has an ability to be done and could be done in an appropriate way.
So there's setback standards that are actually much stricter than what is found in most states. So there was a lot of protections put in for local governments when all was said and done. But we want to ensure that those individuals who want to put solar on their property now have the ability to do so within these new state standards.
David Roberts
Right. And so, of course, Republicans are framing this as sort of jack-booted state government thugs coming in and taking over local — telling locals what to do. So just to be clear — and you mentioned this before, but I want to kind of pull it out — just because the public utility commission has the final authority does not mean that local feedback and local desires and preferences are excluded. The public utility commission, by law, has to hear from locals in this process.
Sam Singh
Yes, absolutely. And the locals have a process. We even included pieces in there that the developer is required to put resources into the community so the community can hire legal staff if they have questions about where the placement is and things like that. So there are requirements beyond just paying the landowner. There would also be community benefits and resources that would have to go back to the whole community as well, that's part of this. One that starts off with that there's got to be a person who owns land in that community who wants to see this move forward.
So we're never going to put in a situation where the state is going to say, "this landowner has to put this in." Right? And it starts with that landowner saying, "I'd like to move forward with this project," and now it has a set of rules and regulations around it. But there are resources that are provided to locals to help them manage that process because many of them don't have the expertise to sort of be in front of the Commission and so forth. So I think some of those pieces are pretty innovative in ways of making sure that the locals have the resources not only to do this, but when it happens, to make sure that it's more than just the landowner and then the entity, who's obviously, they're going to receive some tax dollars for the taxes on the facility, but there's also additional benefits that are required to be given to the community.
David Roberts
Right, yeah, you mentioned these are called community benefit agreements. Maybe just explain what that is, because these are things that I think in other parts of the country or in other contexts are generally voluntary, but I think a lot of the better developers do them as a matter of course, just because they've learned that it's better to get in early and get some agreement early so you don't have a fight later. But maybe explain what a community benefit agreement is.
Sam Singh
Yes, we do this, obviously, in a lot of places, like you said, in some of the typical economic development, it's done on a voluntary basis between a developer and the community saying, "Not only are we going to develop this property, so you'll see tax-based growth, and so therefore, that comes to the community, but we're going to do other things in the community for the benefit of the larger community and for individuals and so forth." So what we wanted to see happen here was that this was done on the proactive side. We have seen, unfortunately, in Michigan, some previous developments that were not as thoughtful by developers that I think put a bad taste in a lot of local governments, as well as with labor organizations in our state who labor groups were asked to come and testify on this, and then a group decides, "hey, I'm not going to use labor as part of the build-out of this facility," and so forth. So for us, we wanted to make sure that the developer was having all of these conversations on the front end.
The community knew once they were moving forward, what they were going to get, versus some of it sometimes being very vague and so forth. And so this was, I think, another key part in getting the final support of legislators. Many people, including myself, have a lot of rural areas of the state. Not all of this will be done in rural areas. We have to do all of this in a variety of different areas. So there's going to be a brownfield component on how we do more additional solar. I think there's some opportunities to take a look at big box stores and empty parking lots and things like that.
So that might be another set of policies that we look at here in 2024. We've got a lot of state land that we're beginning to look at how we use solar and other types of development there. So there's some opportunity to do more in some other spaces. But we wanted to ensure that community benefits were part of the conversation.
David Roberts
Right. And these community benefits could be like helping to fund a library or just anything, really.
Sam Singh
Yes, they'll work with the developer to develop that on their own.
David Roberts
And you're also requiring labor agreements. Is that in the bill?
Sam Singh
Yeah, that's right. That was not only in these siting bills, but there were also some pieces in that other part of the Public Service Commission bill. We want to ensure that these are built to the best standards. And especially when you're taking a look at these utility-grade projects, you need to have people that are developing these that have the experience and so forth. All our larger investor-owned utilities are already using organized labor to sort of build out their pieces. And so this, I think, will continue to ensure that those higher standards are met as additional solar and other products come online.
David Roberts
And labor, in the end, was a proponent of the bill, came around?
Sam Singh
Yeah, they eventually became supporters of the bill. A lot of our dialogue and discussion, we did have a set of conversations with labor. I know environmental groups and labor had a number of conversations amongst themselves and with the utilities. One of the other bills I know we'll get to, Senate Bill 519 was another critical part of getting labor's support in the end for this package.
David Roberts
One other question about this, it's maybe a slightly sensitive question, but one of the reasons that these local moratoria started happening, and there's been a couple of sort of — not enough, I think — but a few media exposés about this, is that there's a very intentional and very well-funded effort on the right to basically go into these communities and spread fear and misinformation. And that's what is driving, I think, a lot of this rural resistance. It's a free country, so people can say what they want, but is there anything you can do about that? Or how do you think about that?
Sam Singh
We saw a lot of that, where there was a lot of misinformation. There's still misinformation being put forward on what even these bills do. Right. There's this sense that the state could come in and force a property owner to do this. That's at least the thing that they're trying to suggest. Everyone knows it's not true. There's even language that specifically prohibits eminent domain acquisition in the actual bills. But that doesn't stop some of these kind of astroturf groups from coming in and trying to scare people and turning this into more of a campaign issue. And that's, I think, one of the reasons why I will say that I've had elected officials who are Republicans who see this as a benefit to the tax base, to their communities, saw the issues in their communities.
And I think for some of them, and I'm not saying for all of them, but for some of them, I think they are almost glad that they don't have to sort of deal with that misinformation and have someplace else —
David Roberts
Take this off our plates.
Sam Singh
Yeah. And then you can blame the state or somebody else. Right. Because in the end, a lot of people believe in property rights. I think that's a difficult thing for some of my conservative colleagues as well as some of my district, where they believe in the property right and the right of the individual, but then they've been given this misinformation, so it scares them about what they should do or how they should be able to utilize renewable energy.
David Roberts
Yeah. And I don't know if the state really has any role in this, but it seems like at the very least, developers or somebody should at least have their eye on the kind of public relations side of this. And it could be just as simple as, like getting people from communities where these things have gone in and communities have benefited and communities are happy to have them: just have those people go speak to the next community. Like, is anybody thinking about information warfare on the other side?
Sam Singh
I would say one of the critiques for the developer community was that they did not do enough of that in a proactive way. And in many instances, they didn't work with local communities to do things beyond just the relationship with the landowner. They could have been voluntarily doing community benefit pieces. So other people in the community saw the benefit for the installation. As I mentioned, there were some instances where they didn't do a real good job of taking a look at setbacks and other types of things.
David Roberts
And you better believe the other side is going to find every one of those stories and blast them out.
Sam Singh
Yeah. So I do agree. I do think there's an educational component that I'm sure that the Commission and others will take a look at. But I really do feel it's really part of the developer community, the environmental community and others have to really get that message out. The government can only do so much. But I agree with you like that peer to peer learning, that community to community learning where the benefits are, how they've seen the positive nature of this. We heard from farmers who really have saw a benefit by utilizing some of their farmland for solar.
David Roberts
As we said, with IRA and everything else, that's a big pot of money that they're tapping into.
Sam Singh
Absolutely.
David Roberts
Bigger than it used to be. Both the Senate Bill 502, which reforms the Public Service Commission in a bunch of ways, and this bill that we're discussing, which puts siting and permitting power in the hands of the Public Utility Commission; both those, I think, serve to raise the salience and importance of the Public Utility Commission. So are those appointed positions or elected or who appoints them and how are you thinking about — you know, because just like the decision of who's on that commission now is a bigger deal maybe than it used to be.
Sam Singh
Well, I think it's always been a big deal in Michigan. Our Public Service Commission is a three-member board. It is appointed by the governor. So that's why these ideas, especially putting the legislation into effect and making things clear, was very important for us as part of this process. I know some other states elect their public service commissioners and so forth, but Michigan, it's an appointment by the governor.
David Roberts
Got it. Okay. The other big piece here is Senate Bill 519, which creates a Just Transition Office. So tell us a little bit about the thinking behind that and what that office will do.
Sam Singh
Yeah, we were able to take a look at a couple states, Illinois as well as Colorado, who have created Just Transition Offices. In both instances, they're fairly young and just getting started. But the principle behind this is that there will be changes in the types of jobs that will be available. We saw this as utilities were moving off of coal, which was very intensive from an employee perspective. As you move to natural gas, you needed less employees. As you're moving to more storage or solar, you even need less employees. And so what we wanted to ensure that we do is that we had somebody within the state that could coordinate with the utilities to ensure if there was going to be a transition, let's say that people needed different type of training, that we could then use the state dollars that we have available for training, workforce development, or the federal dollars that flow through our local workforce boards, that we can then help galvanize those dollars and resources to ensure that as these transitions happen, that the workers are made whole, that there's ways of training them for the new jobs and so forth.
I will give a lot of credit to our larger investor-owned utilities in the state. As they've moved off of coal, they've done that without any significant layoffs. They've done a lot of retraining. That's because of this IRP process where you're looking five years ahead. You know that this coal plant is going to be decommissioned at a certain point in time. And so they were able to retrain people. Or if people knew that they were going to retire, they might provide some incentive to retire a little early and so forth. So for us to have that kind of statewide office was very important.
And so, as I mentioned, two other states at least, that we were looking at as a model. But as we were having our conversation, we also said, "hey, the energy sector is not the only sector that's changing."
David Roberts
Yeah, for sure.
Sam Singh
Obviously, here in Michigan, our automotive sector has been who we are as a state and as an identity. And as we're moving away from the combustion engine to electric vehicles, there is another transition happening.
David Roberts
Also fewer employees.
Sam Singh
Fewer employees, different types of parts that need to be developed and so forth. And so we made sure that that was added. So we're the only state now that allows for not only energy transition for this office to look at that, but we're also saying, "hey, automotive transition, whether it's one of the main kind of auto companies or one of the suppliers that we'll work with those groups again, take a look at the training and technical assistance dollars, see how we can make people help them make their transition into this future." And we left a piece, and we didn't want to start off with trying to do everything through this office, but we also gave the ability for the office if they saw other trends that were happening that were changing the makeup of business or the workforce.
And one of the topics that came up in our hearings was with the advent of AI all throughout different industries and how that's going to impact potential jobs and so forth. So I wouldn't be surprised, maybe not in year one or two as they're focused on these two pieces that are squarely put into this office. But I wouldn't be surprised if AI and some other types of changes don't be added to some of the focus points of this new office and state government.
David Roberts
It'll be an interesting site of innovation, maybe in coming years. And this was hashed out with the labor unions, too. I assume they were heavily invested in this piece of things, trying to look out for their members.
Sam Singh
Yeah, that absolutely was, I think, the final piece that got them from some level of opposition to eventual support of the package.
David Roberts
So those are the big pieces. And you've sort of, in passing, mentioned a few things, but what are the, in your mind, things you didn't get to that you would like to do on the energy and climate front in this coming session or soon?
Sam Singh
Yeah, as we already discussed, we weren't able to find a landing spot for community solar. So I know that will be an ongoing conversation here in the state. We talked briefly about should we develop a clean fuel standard here in Michigan. We've also been talking about sustainable aviation fuel and how we incentivize our airline industry here in Michigan, having a significant hub in Detroit to sort of move in that direction. We're still trying to figure out what is the role of building decarbonization. So I think there's a lot of really big and heavy topics on the energy side, but on the other side of climate, whether it's kind of water issues, like water affordability, but making sure that we're protecting our water because of the changing climate, I think that will be another significant issue that we look at here in 2024 as well.
David Roberts
A big piece of IRA and a big piece of the federal legislation that has passed recently is about clean manufacturing, about trying to sort of restart America's manufacturing sector and bring more manufacturing home. I know in Michigan that's been a big part of the state's history and identity. And I keep reading IRA is bringing all these battery factories to the South and Midwest, and there's new EV manufacturing facilities. Is any of that coming to Michigan? Or is that on your mind? Is there anything in these packages that's meant to induce manufacturing to come to Michigan?
Or how are you thinking about the sort of manufacturing end of things?
Sam Singh
You know, there are other programs within state government that are focused on that. So these bills don't specifically address those items. But our governor has been very bullish about trying to attract more EV battery development. Taking a look at bringing chip production to Michigan. You know, we've had, I would say, nine or so significant investments of development here in Michigan over the last three years, a lot in the last year where we are, you know, utilizing other economic development tools to try to bring some of that development here to Michigan, you know, a lot of that will be spread out across the country.
But we want to ensure that Michigan gets its fair share. And so there's been a strong focus around our economic development work, our Michigan Economic Development Corporation, called MEDC, that's been a significant part of their work. You know, obviously the clean energy bill is really focused around, you know, public service commission and all that. But our economic development partners in state government are focused sort of on that, making sure that we're bringing clean energy manufacturing and other types of manufacturing back to the state.
David Roberts
Let me ask a question getting back to the PSC a little bit, back to utilities a little bit. This is something that's come up when I threw it open for questions on social media. This is something that came up a couple of times, and I've read a couple articles on it about. So, residential utility customers in Michigan pay relatively high rates compared to other Midwest states. And the big investor-owned utilities have sort of worse records on blackouts and service interruptions than a lot of utilities in the Midwest. And both those big investor-owned utilities, as is customary in many states, plow hundreds of thousands of dollars into the legislature, into the governor's office, into politics in general.
So I know in some other states, and in Connecticut is the big example that I just covered, there's been some attention to trying to put a little distance between the utilities and the politicians trying to rein in the utilities in terms of their lobbying and political influence, in terms of their ability to use ratepayer money to lobby. Is any of that on your mind? Do you feel like the utilities have undue political influence? And is there anything on the horizon to kind of address that?
Sam Singh
First, going back to the first element where you talked about a lot of the outages that have occurred here over the last 24 months in Michigan, there is a set of accountability measures that were separate from this conversation on clean energy that the legislature is taking a look at. I know my colleagues in the House, Elena Scott is the chairwoman of the energy commission, she had a significant task force that spent the entire summer kind of going across the state pulling together ideas on utility accountability.
David Roberts
Oh, interesting.
Sam Singh
And my understanding is we were obviously so focused on the clean energy pieces of this that she, at one point, had told, I think, people that there could be as much as 13 or 14 bills that she was considering.
David Roberts
Whoa.
Sam Singh
I don't know if she's still thinking of that pathway or not, but I think we would welcome some additional accountability measures by the legislature. Again, our focus last fall was really on trying to get this clean energy piece done, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some accountability measures put into place to ensure that we're getting some of the best pieces of coverage here in the state.
We also, in some of our bills, really wanted to make sure that our low-income residents were being helped out. And so we didn't talk specifically about the energy efficiency bill, which was Senate Bill 273. But one of the provisions in that bill that I'm really proud of is that it requires all of the utilities to have at least a minimum spend of 25% in low-income communities. And sometimes that's been difficult to see happen. And we want to sort of ensure that we're starting at that 25% and sort of building up over time. But this is the first time in Michigan that we have at least a minimum spend —
David Roberts
Interesting.
Sam Singh
that we are requiring. And so that's another part of that accountability that we don't want just a clean energy future to be helping individuals or people that are more affluent. We want to ensure that everyone has access to this. And so that was one of the reasons why our energy efficiency programs, I think, were really important for this, is — if we can help low-income families reduce their consumption, that's going to be a significant cost savings for them. And so that's one of the pieces that's also, I think, something we're beginning to also continue to look at here in 2024.
David Roberts
Interesting. Yeah. And this actually raises another question that came up a couple of times, which is aside from electricity, heat is a big deal in Michigan. It's pretty cold there. And I know a big piece of household expenditures as well. Is there any talk about something like a clean heat standard, some way to begin dialing back on the fossil gas network?
Sam Singh
There's obviously, as part of the energy efficiency pieces, I think there's ability to make some transition. We still have many of our homes that are focused on propane. We'd like to obviously see some changes there. We also allow, for the first time, as part of our energy efficiency legislation, people can begin to utilize heat pumps and other types of new technology that weren't allowed under the previous 2016 laws. So, yeah, I think we're trying to address a number of issues. I'm not going to suggest that even though I'm very proud of everything we accomplished last year, that we got everything done; I think there's obviously going to be more opportunity.
One of the things that we did do, an expansion of, we have a Michigan energy assistance program for low-income families who get behind on their bills and so forth. And we made sure that that program became permanent. There was a sunset on that, and so every few years it had to be reauthorized. We removed that sunset last year. We're talking about how we expand that to more families. And so that'll be another conversation we have here in 2024. But we're really wanting to ensure that every resident has access to cost savings here, and that's why we required some things in the legislation.
But then we're also taking a look at how we help some of our most vulnerable families, that if they get behind on their utility bills, that we can find a way to help them manage that during that potential crisis that they might have.
David Roberts
Yeah. Okay. As a kind of final question, you mentioned that many of your constituents are in rural areas, and I know that as the energy transition proceeds across the country, this is sort of emerging as kind of a key site of contest of fighting rural areas. I think you find a lot of people who will say, a lot of people who will say rural areas are being asked to kind of bear the brunt of this and host all this new industrial equipment, but we're not getting cut in on the benefits. And I know that a lot of state bills have tried to sort of address that.
But I'm just sort of curious, as a general matter, what are you, sort of, in terms of the temperature, the vibes that you hear from rural constituents? How are rural people thinking about this? And do you think there's a path to sort of this helping rural communities and them feeling more positively about it in a general way?
Sam Singh
Yeah. Listen, I think that's part of this education process that has to happen. Right? I think part of that is us, as legislators, explaining what we did and why and where the benefits are. I think sometimes we have to go through a cycle of developers building some stuff, people seeing the community benefits go into place. They're beginning to see, "hey, these setbacks really are being implemented." We're putting the berms up, all the types of things that had created some of the disdain in some communities. So I think giving people that opportunity to see that and feel that, I think at the same time, I don't think we will be doing our job if we don't ensure that everyone's doing their fair share.
And as I mentioned to you, I do believe that there is a significant brownfield component that we should be using. And we have a lot of places where warehouses or factories have gone out of business or they're not being used. We can now use that for utility-grade solar. So there's a lot of, I think, opportunity. But I do think if we do things well, we make sure that everyone has a component, whether it's in a suburban community, an urban community, or a rural community. I think over time people will begin to see the benefit. But I think whenever there's change, especially when there's a very active misinformation, that's a big concern.
I know when I talk to people and say "this is what we did," there's a lot more level of comfort. I'm not saying that they agree with it, but there's a better sense of comfort when they realize all the protections that we put into place.
David Roberts
Right. Okay, so you're going to tackle a lot more of this this year, and then there will be elections. Maybe you're not the right person to ask this, but how secure is the Democratic trifecta in Michigan if you're laying odds on holding onto it? How are you feeling about the 2024 elections?
Sam Singh
Well, obviously the House is up for election here. The Senate's not up till 2026. So my sense is that we have a good chance of keeping majority. But just to remind your listeners, there's only a one-seat majority in the House and a one-seat majority —
David Roberts
It's wild how much you got done with a one-seat majority. I will say that's pretty remarkable.
Sam Singh
Yeah, and it's a testament to the leaders, our Senate Majority Leader, our Speaker of the House, and many others, of getting these things done. So, listen, it'll be very competitive. A lot of times I think some of our final seats are decided more by the top of the ticket than they are by just work of the candidate themselves. And so we've seen some benefits of that. The governor did really well here in Michigan in her reelect when President Biden did well here in Michigan. But when Secretary Clinton didn't do well here in Michigan in 2016, we thought we would be gaining seats and we didn't gain any seats that year.
Right. There will be an element of that. And so I think everyone's taking that very seriously. And so the campaigns starting this summer and fall will be a critical part. We did have here in Michigan, two of our House colleagues won local elections. So right now, the House is in a 54-54 split until some special elections. Now, those are fairly Democratic seats, so we'll be back to 56-54 by April timeframe. So there's a lot of different dynamics that are happening in 2024 that are a lot different than in 2023.
David Roberts
It's good to see this happening, at least this much happening in a purple state, regardless of what happens next year. All right, Senator Sam Singh, thank you so much for coming on and talking us through this. It's really cool what you all have done there. So thanks for sharing.
Sam Singh
All right. Thank you very much.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf. So that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.
Michigan targets clean electricity and faster permitting