The Michigan utility filed its 20-year integrated resource plan on Tuesday, arguing that vastly expanding its fossil fuel infrastructure is the only way to successfully deploy the sequestration technology it hopes to invent.
DETROIT — DTE Electric formally submitted its 20-year integrated resource plan to state regulators on Tuesday, outlining an aggressive roadmap to achieve net-zero emissions by vastly expanding its natural gas infrastructure.
In a 4,000-page filing with the Michigan Public Service Commission, the utility detailed its strategy to fully decarbonize the regional grid by constructing three massive new gas-fired power plants over the next decade. The company warned the commission that failing to approve the natural gas expansion would critically undermine its long-term corporate sustainability goals.
If we do not break ground on these high-capacity fossil facilities immediately, we simply will not have the baseload emissions required to utilize the revolutionary carbon-trapping infrastructure we plan to shop for in twenty years.
The proposal successfully zeroes out the new facilities' projected scope-one emissions by strictly assuming that flawless, highly economical carbon capture technology will be readily available to install sometime around 2043. The utility’s modeling relies heavily on direct-source carbon sequestration, a process that currently captures a fraction of target emissions at prohibitive costs. However, DTE’s forecast confidently projects that the technology will become perfectly efficient shortly after the new plants have reliably burned natural gas for a decade and a half.
The filing extensively cites the EPA’s recently finalized Section 111 rules, interpreting the agency’s mandate for eventual emissions reductions as a legal obligation to construct as many gas-burning facilities as possible before the compliance window closes. To finance the rapid decarbonization effort, DTE has requested an immediate 9 percent rate increase to cover the raw steel and turbine construction of the fossil fuel plants. A separate, subsequent rate case to fund the theoretical underground storage of the resulting carbon dioxide is tentatively scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2038.
The state commission is expected to approve the finalized plan following a brief public comment period, comfortably ahead of the utility’s deadline to lock in the fossil infrastructure before the start of the summer ozone season.