State facilities will utilize 100 percent renewable energy by 2025, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Thursday.
The plan will be achieved by partnering with DTE, Consumers Energy and Lansing Board of Water and Light.
“We all have the same goal," said Lansing Board of Water and Light General Manager Dick Peffley.“Reducing our carbon footprint. Making this planet a better place to live and leaving it better off when I leave office than when I got into office.”
The energy purchased will expand the utilities' renewable portfolio in Michigan, rather than simply rerouting existing renewable energy that is already being generated, Whitmer said.
“Thanks to partnerships with utility companies like DTE, Consumers, and Lansing Board of Water and Light, the energy purchased by the state will expand renewable energy and create more clean energy jobs right here in Michigan," said Whitmer.
Peffley said it's important to reduce the state's carbon footprint.
“With the cost getting cheaper most of the companies that relied on coal has reached the end of its useful life, the coal plants, so it’s time to take those offline and move to renewables,” said Peffley.
In 2019, renewable energy provided about eight percent of Michigan's electricity net generation.
Whitmer said these sorts of environmental actions will be "paramount within the next 10 years to reduce the harmful impacts of climate change."
“I’m hopeful that we’ll meet this commitment to de-carbonize the state economy by 2050 and I’m focused on making sure that we do," she said.
Whitmer also announced a plan to deploy solar energy on state-owned land.
“Michigan is launching an interagency team across several state departments, to identify our potential solar footprint and develop and implement a plan to deploy solar on state-owned land and buildings,” she said.
Both initiatives align with Executive Directive 2020-10, which aims to make the state fully carbon neutral by 2050. The plan aims to achieve a 28 percent reduction below 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
“For a cleaner, greener, and more efficient future," Whitmer said. "It won’t be easy, it doesn’t happen overnight, but we are absolutely up to this task.”
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