LANSING, Mich. - If lower electricity bills sound good to you, two new reports find that the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan is the way to get there.

The plan is expected to be finalized this summer.

Opponents claim it will lead to higher bills, but a new analysis from Synapse Energy Economics finds the average U.S. household will save $35 per month by 2030, taking into account investments in renewables and energy efficiency.

Report co-author and principal economist Elizabeth Stanton says if the state's leaders make wise choices in implementing the plan, good things will follow for consumers.

"Michigan households, taking advantage of energy efficiency programs under the proposed Clean Power Plan, would save $33 a month on average, and their bills would be $80 a month in 2030," says Stanton.

A second model developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology, also shows a reduction in both emissions and electricity costs by implementing renewable and energy efficiency policies, coupled with a modest price on carbon.

In contrast, the report predicts that not implementing the Clean Power Plan, the average electric bill would rise nine percent over the next 15 years.

Critics claim the standards will cost Michigan and the nation jobs, but a public policy professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, Marilyn Brown, says the findings also reveal a clean power pathway would be good for both the economy and for job creation.

"You spend a lot more on labor when it comes to energy efficiency and renewable systems than you do in the generation of electricity for large power plants, whether it's nuclear, coal or natural gas," says Brown.

Michigan is currently in the process of updating its energy policy. Current law states that 10 percent of the state's energy must come from renewable sources by the end of this year, which the state is on track to meet.


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The mayor of Dearborn has adopted a "health-in-all-policies" approach, a pledge to prioritize health, environmental justice and climate action in city decisions.

Abdullah Hammoud, mayor of Dearborn, announced the initiative with other city officials at an event hosted by the group Elected Officials to Protect America. With funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Dearborn is updating ordinances, zoning and permits to make the "greenest" choices easier for all.

Hammoud noted severe weather left nearly two-thirds of Dearborn homes underwater just a few years ago.

"Over the last 10 years, the City of Dearborn has had several flooding events; three," Hammoud pointed out. "We are taking all the proactive steps that we must to help prevent flooding from happening in the future."

Hammoud earned national recognition with a Mayors Climate Protection Award at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, making Dearborn one of six large cities honored.

Ashley Flintoff, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of the Rouge, a group working to clean up the Rouge River, said choices made about chemical use, stormwater runoff and natural habitat loss mainly affect communities of color.

"Causing flooding and sewage backups in residential basements," Flintoff observed. "This creates direct mental and physical health consequences for residents, particularly those in the hardest-hit neighborhoods, like the South End."

David Mustonen, communications director for Dearborn Public Schools, said after concerns about kids' exposure to diesel fumes at bus stops, the school district is replacing diesel buses, using more than $7 million in federal funding.

"With the purchase of 18 electric school buses, we look forward for these buses arriving and being delivered to the district soon, so that we can put them into service and remove 18 diesel buses," Mustonen explained.

The Inflation Reduction Act offers communities incentives and grants to cover upfront costs for other "green" projects, including solar power.


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The Biden Administration is investing $50 million from the Inflation Reduction Act in Colorado to produce more batteries to power electric vehicles.

Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, said the state is bullish on EVs, in part because gas-powered vehicle tailpipes are a major contributor to harmful ground-level ozone and climate pollution.

"When you look at both our climate goals and just the pollution problems that we have in Denver and the Front Range, switching to electric vehicles just has huge benefits for our air quality and for our climate," Toor asserted.

The new funding will allow Thornton-based manufacturer Solid Power to add at least 40 new jobs, paying production operators, chemists and engineers nearly $78,000 a year on average. Solid Power is also partnering with area high schools and community colleges for job training programs.

After he purchased his own EV, Toor noted he started tracking his electric bills and found significant fuel-cost savings compared with gas-powered vehicles.

"It's the equivalent of me paying about 90 cents per gallon for gasoline," Toor explained. "They are incredibly convenient, I basically don't have to go to the gas station, I just plug in the vehicle when I get home and let it charge overnight."

Colorado supported Solid Power's early growth with an Advanced Industries Accelerator grant in 2014, which supports the development of early-stage technologies. Their new sulfide-based batteries are expected to provide more power and range for drivers and are safer and less costly than conventional lithium-ion technology. Toor emphasized battery-powered vehicles can also help lower electric bills for everyone.

"People primarily charge their electric vehicles overnight, when there is a lot of excess capacity on the grid," Toor pointed out. "It helps to keep everybody's electric rates affordable over time as we get more and more EVs on the grid."


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By Yessenia Funes for Atmos.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Jessica Celi has lived in the Bay Area for almost her entire life. She spent most of her 20s jumping from industry to industry, trying to find her place in the professional world. She returned to school to specialize in human resources and graduated last year. Then, she was laid off from her first job. That’s when she entered the clean energy job market.

Celi, 30, is just finishing up her 11-month program as a SolarCorps fellow in the Bay Area with GRID Alternatives, a national nonprofit that provides no-cost residential solar installations for eligible low-income households in various regions and also trains locals to provide the service. This year, the organization is expanding its yearslong partnership with the U.S.-run public service agency AmeriCorps to help launch the American Climate Corps, President Joe Biden’s initiative to train and deploy a diverse workforce to, among other things, work in sectors contributing to the clean energy transition. It’s an alternative to the promised Civilian Climate Corps that Democrats axed from his landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law two years ago, and Celi is part of the inaugural class. 

“I am part of something bigger, and I do look forward to moving into a career throughout the long term in the renewable industry,” she said.

Two years after the Civilian Climate Corps died in Congress, groups like GRID Alternatives and the AmeriCorps are picking up the mantle to make the president’s vision of a new green workforce a reality. Corps members do all kinds of work—from restoring wetlands to managing forests—but the SolarCorps focuses on deploying solar panel technology in California, Colorado, and Washington D.C. to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions driving the planet’s warming. This year’s SolarCorps cohort at GRID Alternatives has installed solar for over 1,170 families. Since October 2023, the organization has orchestrated some 130 job placements. As the Inflation Reduction Act injects $370 billion toward the clean energy sector through tax credits, grants, and loans, the sector sees a rare opportunity for growth. 

The American Climate Corps includes private and public partners from across the country, from the U.S. Forest Service to Operation Fresh Start, a Wisconsin-based organization that helps young people find career pathways. While the Biden administration didn’t provide the American Climate Corps with its own budget to build this new workforce, the White House is directing agency dollars and grants to invest in AmeriCorps programs already molding the green jobs of tomorrow. 

Some organizations—like GRID Alternatives—are bringing renewable energy to communities of color, low-income communities, and other communities that have historically been excluded or disinvested. President Biden committed to distributing at least 40% of his federal investment benefits to these neighborhoods that need them the most. Programs like the SolarCorps are attempting to realize that goal.

SolarCorps has been working with AmeriCorps since 2006 long before climate became a national priority. Now, the program plans to expand to more states thanks to an infusion of new grant dollars GRID Alternatives secured from the Inflation Reduction Act. The organization has provided paid fellowships to over 300 individuals like Celi to learn how to install solar panels, as well as how to engage with the community.

Celi, for instance, was an outreach fellow. Her fellowship is now ending, but her role involved building a relationship with her Bay Area community by door-knocking, calling, or emailing families that already had their solar panels installed to help them monitor their systems and ensure they know how to use the panels. On Earth Day this year, when Biden kicked off the American Climate Corps, Celi was at Richmond, California’s Unity Park with the rest of GRID’s outreach team, as well as other local community partners, to attract the public to their programs. As Celi saw local families engage with the event’s free bike repairs and free bicycle-powered smoothies, she realized the scope of her work—and how impactful that was. 

“It really felt meaningful to see that we are directly connecting with the community and sharing these resources with one another,” she said. 

After all, Richmond is home to a refinery from fossil fuel polluter Chevron. The industrial facility has been a source of air pollution for the predominantly Hispanic, Black, and Asian community. This is, in part, why GRID has been focused on communities of color, explained Adewale OgunBadejo, vice president of workforce development at the organization. 

“How can we reduce the carbon footprint in the communities that we serve? How can we have less urban oil wells because they’re causing higher incidences and rates of cancer and asthma in these communities that we serve?” he said. “We’re helping our fellows make that environmental connection in a very real way so that as you’re installing and you’re looking at an urban drilling well across the street, you understand that the more solar we can install, the more of those we can remove and create more healthy communities.”

Black, Indigenous, and other people of color bear the brunt of air pollution health impacts from dirty energy sources. In 2023, a group of researchers even coined the term “fossil fuel racism” to highlight the insidious ways the industry harms Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor populations. Communities of color are also less likely than their white peers to have installed solar panels onto their roofs. That’s where GRID comes in: The program’s solar panel installations from this year’s fellows alone have cut carbon dioxide emissions by over 78,000 tons—or nearly 15,000 cars taken off the road. 

The SolarCorps program doesn’t only focus on bringing solar panels to people of color—it also prioritizes hiring this demographic as fellows, too. Among the past year’s 51 fellows, for instance, 80% identified as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color. Over half were women or nonbinary, 27% identified as LGBTQIA+, and some 26% have been affected by the justice system (mostly through incarceration). At the national level, the solar industry is dominated by white dudes: In 2022, 73% of the workforce was white and 69% male, according to an independent report. Celi, who is Filipino, experienced that diversity disparity firsthand when in January she attended her first industry conference, where, for the first time in her solar work, she was the minority. 

“I’m very proud to have been able to attend and to create that change,” said Celi, who is also a member of Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy, or WRISE, which is dedicated to cultivating women leaders in the industry.

The SolarCorps fellowship is just a tiny piece of the U.S. government’s wider American Climate Corps. Sociologist Dana Fisher, who is also the author of the book Saving Ourselves, has been researching the existing Corps programs that have been expanding and shifting to include climate change. Many of these adjustments were already in the works before the Biden administration’s formalization of the American Climate Corps. 

Despite the existence of the Climate Corps, there’s no central agency or database tracking the integration of climate change into programs across the U.S. or following the fellows themselves after they complete their service. How many wind up in clean energy jobs? Do they leave these programs with a deeper understanding of how the planet’s rapid warming disrupts society? Fisher’s research on AmeriCorps has so far illuminated the reality that “there is no consensus about how the agency is doing its climate work,” she wrote in a paper published last month. There’s no consistent language used across AmeriCorps programs and, thus, no unified understanding of the climate crisis among program participants and leadership.

Now, Fisher is following the rollout of a handful of programs in Vermont, Maryland, Michigan, and California where she has developed a climate-centric curriculum all of their American Climate Corps members will be required to take when their fellowships begin in September. She will be adding more states to the list later this year. 

Fisher emphasized the need for more federal dollars to go toward analyzing all the varied American Climate Corps programs to assess whether the funding is doing what it’s supposed to do: educating young people (especially young people of color) about the climate crisis and placing them in jobs dedicated to building a cleaner, healthier, more equitable world.

“The infusion of money is absolutely valuable, but it’s impossible for me not to think about this without putting on my social sciences hat,” Fisher said. “The problem is that we don’t know how they’re helping because nobody is actually measuring that, and nobody is there evaluating it.”

GRID’s SolarCorps doesn’t have its own evaluation system, either. The group is working to build that out now that it’s hired a data analyst, OgunBadejo said. They’re hoping to track fellows three to 12 months after they graduate. As the program looks to expand into tribal nations and nearly 30 states like Texas and Michigan over the next few years, OgunBadejo recognizes the need to partner with local groups that know those communities best and can cater the programs to their needs.

With the hundreds of millions of dollars in grants the group has collaboratively received from the Inflation Reduction Act, they plan to work with others and bring their SolarCorps model to even more communities across the country that need access to affordable solar energy and the training to find jobs in the industry, too.

“Our approach as an organization is very holistic,” OgunBadejo said. “We really look at clean energy as a way to address environmental and economic justice.”

For too long, Black and Brown folks have been left out of the clean energy boom. SolarCorps is building an ecosystem where community members have the skills they need to transform their communities for the better—and get paid to do it.


Yessenia Funes wrote this article for Atmos.


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