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The long road for the immediate future of Michigan’s largest utility is over, for now. On April 15, the Michigan Public Service Commission approved a revised version of DTE Energy’s integrated resource plan (IRP), the utility’s plan for the mix of coal, natural gas, solar, wind, energy efficiency and other resources it will use to […]

The Upper Peninsula Energy Task Force has submitted to Governor Whitmer its formal recommendations on how to avoid a propane crisis in the region, where over 18% of households use propane, primarily for heating, compared to just under 8% for the Lower Peninsula. The final recommendations are very similar to the draft recommendations we discussed in a recent

The Upper Peninsula Energy Task Force just finished accepting comments on its draft report about how to supply the UP with propane given the possibility of supply disruption. Over 1,000 discrete comments have poured in on the task force’s work since it began, Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) Director Liesl Eichler

Public comments have closed on the Upper Peninsula Energy Task Force’s draft report on how to avoid price spikes in propane used across the UP for heating, especially in the case of a Line 5 shutdown. (Links to our previous blog posts are here, here, here, here and the first here. All of the public comments submitted on draft report will be

Percentage of Households with Propane, Draft of “Analysis of Propane Supply Alternatives for Michigan,” Public Sector Consultants, March 2020 The developing coronavirus crisis shows how everyday life can be upended by low-probability events. In energy, people are always talking about the importance of “resiliency.” Resiliency essentially means a system’s ability to respond to many different

Last summer the Citizens Utility Board of Michigan wrote about how a utility’s integrated resource plan (IRP) is an important roadmap for the future of the business and its customers. DTE’s long-term plan, proposed last year, could force its 2.2 million customers in southeast Michigan to pay millions on their electric bills for power plants that may

The debate over the future of the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline has been one of the biggest energy and environmental stories for Michigan over the past couple years. The Line 5 controversy was one of the contributing factors in Gov. Whitmer’s decision last summer to form the Upper Peninsula Energy Task Force to examine how

Amid mass power outages this past summer in the DTE and Consumers Energy service territories, tens of thousands of Michigan residents learned the hard way that the state badly needs to update its basic standards for electric service. Also, after more recent power outages, DTE COO and President Trevor Lauer recognized in a Dec. 31 interview that