ev – This is Not Cool

Above, Michigan Governor and rising Democratic star Gretchen Whitmer’s remarks just before signing a suite of new energy legislation.

Inside Climate News:

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.)

A do it yourself revolution in Nigeria’s largest city could create a distributed grid unique in the world.

Associated Press:

The end of the long-running fuel subsidy last month has increased interest in solar, operators say, which could accelerate progress toward mitigating climate change in Africa’s largest economy. But experts say the government needs a clear plan to make the most of this new opportunity to advance Nigeria’s climate goals, which include eliminating fossil fuel-run generators widely used to keep the lights on in homes and businesses.

Reducing fuel costs was a popular but environmentally and economically costly system.

The state petroleum company, NNPC, says Nigeria spent 4.39 trillion naira ($9.7 billion) on the subsidy last year, leaving the government struggling to finance infrastructure projects, including rail systems that could help reduce emissions from vehicles.

Gas-powered generators also contribute significantly to emissions, having proliferated under the subsidy in a country where only half the population of more than 200 million have access to grid electricity. Those who do often endure blackouts.

Solar adoption, on the other hand, has largely been hampered by relatively high upfront costs, with only 1.25% of Nigerian households installing those systems, according to a 2022 study conducted by Boston Consulting Group and All On.

If 30% of Nigerian households turned to solar by 2030, 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide would be avoided, reducing emissions from households by 30%, the study added.

The new president has acknowledged that removing the fuel subsidy “will impose an additional burden on the masses of our people,” who have seen gasoline prices triple while struggling with high inflation and unemployment.

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