Why Michigan’s Clean Energy Bill Is a Really Big Deal

A comparison with laws in Illinois and Minnesota shows the scope of the state’s ambition.

Michigan is set to become the third state in the Midwest and twelfth in the country to require a shift to clean electricity.

Of all those states, Michigan is one of the most ambitious because of the extent of the change it is making.

Michigan’s target year for reaching 100 percent clean electricity is 2040, which is as soon or sooner than every state except for Rhode Island. (The bill that would do this is heading to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk for an expected signature, as Aydali Campa and I wrote this week.)

And, Michigan is starting from a place of having unusually dirty electricity, with nearly two-thirds of its current supply coming from fossil fuels.

To better understand this, I spoke with Jacob Corvidae of RMI, the clean energy research and advocacy group. He walked me through an analysis of the Michigan legislation in the Energy Policy Simulator, an open source forecasting tool put together by RMI and the think tank Energy Innovation.

I asked him to compare Michigan with Minnesota, a state that passed a clean electricity requirement in February, and Illinois, which passed its law in 2021.

All three states made leaps forward with their laws, but Michigan stands out for the “huge shift” it is making, Corvidae said with some state pride. He was born in Detroit and raised in the Detroit area and in a small town near Ann Arbor. He got his undergraduate degree at Kalamazoo College and has had several stints doing clean energy advocacy and analysis work in the state.

In 2022, Michigan got 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources and 23 percent from nuclear power, according to RMI. With those two together, the state got 38 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources. (Note that these percentages are slightly different than the ones from the Energy Information Administration, which I often cite, because of variations in counting methods.)

PHOTO: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is expected to sign several clean-energy bills that recently passed. (By Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)