MARQUETTE, Mich. (WZMQ) – In November of 2024 Michigan lawmakers passed public act 233, allowing developers of renewable energy projects to obtain a permit though the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) if they could not obtain one locally. “The state option, that is only on the table if a community’s zoning ordinance isn’t really up to snuff,” said Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) Analyst Ian O’Leary. “It’s not updated, and it’s not ‘workable’ and it doesn’t have really realistic parameters for renewable energy.”
At today’s renewable energy workshop at NMU presenters from EGLE and from the University of Michigan explained to local lawmakers their zoning options in light of the new laws. “It’s kind of a contingent duty of ours to read this law, try to understand it, and just simply give information to communities so that this doesn’t come as a blind side or seem like something that they didn’t have the time or capacity to respond to,” said O’Leary.
One particular area of interest for the UP is in lithium ion battery energy storage sites, “Battery storage is smaller and doesn’t require really strong sun for example, it can kind of get popped anywhere,” said O’Leary. “Especially in an area like the UP that’s kind of connected to a different part of the grid, battery storage may be a pretty eminent technology up here. Having batteries, you can fill those with renewable energy to then provide the electricity that that renewable energy says it would provide say during the night when all of your solar production winds down. So it is a particular compliment to the highs and lows of renewable energy.”
O’Leary said he hopes local lawmakers will be empowered by the workshop to update their own zoning laws with the new legislation in mind, “You just got to have the conversation. You have to bake the idea of that conversation into a zoning ordinance,” said O’Leary. “So what we hope communities leave with is going home and saying ‘yeah lets go try to make a solar zoning ordinance so it doesn’t come out of nowhere. Our belief in our reading of the law is that communities, even though there is this state signing option, communities can still write their own zoning ordinances and assume that those will be built into the project.”
More information about Act 233 and other recent renewable energy laws can be found on the MPSC website.
