Consumers Energy is the latest US utility to prove that a clean energy plan can still be built around fossil fuels. Its newly announced 20 year blueprint for Michigan pairs a big headline number for renewables and batteries with two large gas plants, allowing the company to talk about wind, solar and storage while keeping natural gas expansion at the centre of its strategy. For all the green branding, the real signal in the plan is that fossil capacity remains the default, and everything else is layered on top.
Coverage from MLive.com and the Detroit News shows how the story is being framed: more than 13 gigawatts of new renewables and storage, a pledge to meet Michigans 2040 clean energy standard, and gas plants presented as pragmatic backup for an era of data centres and electric vehicles. That language fits a broader national trend identified by analysts at groups like RMI and the Sierra Club, who have tracked utilities quietly cutting wind and solar targets while reviving or expanding gas build outs. Consumers Energys plan is not an outlier; it is a textbook example of fossil first planning dressed up as climate leadership.
What exactly is in Consumers Energys new ‘clean’ portfolio?
According to MLive.com, the centrepiece of the proposal is the construction of two new gas fired power plants in Bay and Genesee counties, with a combined capacity of about 1.5 gigawatts. One would be built at the Karn complex on Saginaw Bay, where coal units are being retired, and the other in Thetford Township near existing infrastructure. Instead of simply closing fossil stations and replacing them entirely with renewables and storage, Consumers Energy wants to swap one form of fossil generation for another.
The gas build comes packaged with a pledge to add thousands of megawatts of utility scale solar, onshore wind and battery storage by the mid 2040s. Company press releases and interviews quoted by WILX and other local outlets promise that the mix will keep the grid reliable as electric demand rises and will help meet state climate goals. The message is that this is a balanced, all of the above plan that leans on every available tool.
- The two gas plants would be fast starting units pitched as ideal for filling in when wind and solar dip.
- Consumers Energy says total renewable and storage additions will exceed 13 gigawatts over two decades.
- The utility promises compliance with Michigans requirement for 100 percent clean electricity by 2040.
- Marketing materials stress job creation and nearly nineteen billion dollars in projected tax benefits.
What those talking points downplay is that the first major decision in the plan was not how far to push storage, efficiency or demand response, but how many new gas megawatts the company wanted to anchor the portfolio around.
How does this fit into the national fossil first trend?
Consumers Energys move arrives amid a wider shift in US utility planning that analysts at RMI and the Sierra Club describe as a quiet retrenchment around gas. Recent RMI research on integrated resource plans filed in late 2025 found that utilities cut planned wind and solar capacity additions almost in half while dramatically increasing proposed gas capacity, even as demand forecasts changed only modestly. A Sierra Club map released in early 2026 tracked hundreds of new gas units proposed across the country, enough to boost national gas capacity by close to 50 percent if built.
Utilities justify this pivot with the same talking points Consumers Energy is using in Michigan: rising demand from data centres and high tech manufacturing, concerns about winter reliability, and scepticism that batteries and demand response can fully substitute for thermal plants. But those arguments sit awkwardly alongside long term climate pledges and state clean energy standards. In practice, the plans treat gas as the non negotiable core and ask renewables to work around it rather than the other way round.
Consumers Energy is far from the worst offender in these rankings, but the structure of its plan is familiar. Rather than testing what a truly renewables and storage led portfolio could look like under Michigan Public Service Commission rules, it assumes that large new gas projects are inevitable and then sprinkles clean resources around them for optics.
Why do environmental groups call this greenwashing?
Michigan environmental organisations have been sounding the alarm about Consumers Energy gas ambitions for years. A coalition including the Ecology Center and the Sierra Club gave the utility poor grades in a 2022 report card that criticised its proposed purchase of existing gas plants and insufficient investment in distributed solar and battery storage. The new plan only deepens those concerns by locking in another generation of fossil infrastructure just as the state is supposed to be accelerating its clean transition.
Advocates quoted by the Detroit News and other outlets argue that branding the plan as clean while adding major new gas capacity is a classic example of greenwashing. Charlotte Jameson of the Michigan Environmental Council has warned that residential customers will shoulder the majority of power plant costs under current ratemaking rules, even as they are told the utility is leading on climate. For communities already living next door to industrial sites in Bay and Genesee counties, the promise of cleaner branding does little to change the reality of more fossil infrastructure on the ground.
- Environmental justice groups point out that gas plants still emit nitrogen oxides and other pollutants that affect local health even when carbon intensity is lower than coal.
- Energy economists warn that building long lived gas units in the 2020s is risky in a state that has legally committed to a carbon free power sector by 2040.
- Clean energy advocates say money earmarked for new gas could instead scale storage, efficiency and transmission upgrades that cut emissions faster.
- Critics argue that the plan lets Consumers Energy claim climate credibility without giving up the security of fossil driven profits.
The gap between what the company highlights in its public messaging and what the investment mix actually does is why many experts frame this as a fossil first plan with a clean energy veneer.
How do Michigan’s climate laws sit alongside more gas?
Michigan’s 2023 clean electricity standard sets a binding requirement for utilities to deliver 80 percent clean power in the second half of the 2030s and 100 percent clean electricity by 2040. It also mandates 2,500 megawatts of energy storage by 2030 and pushes higher energy efficiency savings. In theory, these rules should be steering utilities away from building new long lived fossil assets that will be expensive to run in a carbon constrained grid.
Consumers Energy insists there is no contradiction. Company executives say the new gas plants will run less and less over time as renewables and storage expand, serving mainly as backup during extreme weather or rare peaks. They argue that having this gas capacity available is compatible with meeting the clean standard because the law focuses on annual energy shares, not instantaneous capacity.
Critics counter that this is precisely the problem with a fossil first mindset. If gas is built on the assumption that it will mostly sit idle after 2040, it is hard to justify why customers should spend billions of dollars to construct and maintain it. If it runs heavily instead, the state risks missing its climate goals or relying on accounting tricks to label partially decarbonised portfolios as clean.
What does a truly clean first plan look like?
Independent analysts and some consumer advocates sketch a different starting point: design around renewables, storage, demand response and efficiency first, and then ask how much gas is still genuinely needed once those options are fully utilised. Michigan Public Service Commission studies on long duration storage and demand response potential suggest there is far more room to cut peak demand and shift load than current plans assume.
A clean first plan would likely double down on aggressive weatherisation and appliance efficiency programmes, expand time of use tariffs that reward customers for shifting usage, and build out both utility scale and distributed storage well beyond the bare minimum required by law. It would also examine regional transmission upgrades that allow Michigan to share resources with neighbours rather than duplicating capacity in every territory.
In that world, gas might still play a role, but as a genuinely last resort rather than a multi gigawatt anchor. The fact that Consumers Energy has chosen the opposite sequence reveals where its priorities really lie.
What should viewers make of the clean energy messaging?
For ordinary Michiganders skimming headlines or watching local TV, the takeaway from this plan may simply be that their utility is investing in clean energy and batteries while keeping the lights on. The details of integrated resource plans, stranded asset risk and capacity markets are not going to feature in most living room conversations.
That asymmetry is what makes fossil first planning so durable. By the time customers feel the full impact in their bills or see the cumulative emissions tallies a decade from now, the decisions that locked in those outcomes will be years in the past. Regulators and journalists have a limited window to interrogate what is really being proposed behind the soothing language of balance and reliability.
In the meantime, the safest assumption is that when a utility talks at length about its clean energy leadership while quietly adding major new gas plants, the latter is still doing most of the heavy lifting. Consumers Energys new plan fits that pattern uncomfortably well.
What is Consumers Energy and how did it get here?
Consumers Energy is a century old utility that serves millions of customers across Michigans Lower Peninsula, providing both electricity and natural gas. As a regulated monopoly and the principal subsidiary of CMS Energy, it earns its profits by investing in infrastructure and recovering those costs, plus a commission approved return, through customer bills. That basic business model has not changed even as the language around climate and clean energy has.
- The company grew from early hydro and coal generation into a diversified portfolio that now includes gas plants, wind farms and solar arrays.
- Its clean energy plan documents describe a pathway to 90 percent lower carbon emissions by 2040 compared with 2005 levels.
- Investors view CMS Energy as a relatively low risk, dividend paying stock precisely because regulators have historically approved large capital programmes.
- The new gas plants slot neatly into that history, expanding the asset base under the banner of managing a complex transition.
Understanding that context helps explain why the companys idea of a clean energy transition still keeps fossil fuels at the core. Until regulators and legislators redesign the incentives that reward capital intensive fossil projects, plans like this will keep reappearing with different branding.