Opinion | Ice storm should serve as ‘canary in the coal mine’ for Michigan utilities

On March 28th, 2025, Northern Lower Michigan was hit by a historic ice storm and Cori Fitzpatrick, Groundwork Center’s Farm to Institution Specialist, and her family were in the middle of it. “Every hardwood tree across two counties is completely topped or stripped of its branches. The eerie sound of snapping trees and falling branches — some piercing rooftops and vehicles — forced families to stay indoors or wear protective gear when outside.” Cori shared during a check in. 

With no electric grid access for nearly a week, communities near her in Cheboygan and across northern Michigan faced severe shortages. “Fuel and groceries became scarce, leading to hours-long lines at distant gas stations that often ran dry. Communication was crippled by downed towers, leaving families isolated. Many, like mine, relied on generators for limited heat, hauled water from wells, melted snow for basic needs, and cooked on camp stoves while preserving food in snow banks. For safety, we slept together, fearing trees might crash into our homes, while the constant hum of generators filled the frozen silence for nearly two weeks.” 

Cori’s family is among the more than 319,000 electricity customers who lost power as a result of the historic ice storm. Some people were without power for a month, and relief efforts are expected to cost over $200 million. While historic, the storm damage is a harbinger, not a one-off. For our utilities and state leaders, the catastrophe is a warning of what’s to come if we don’t adapt our grids to an increase in both frequency and intensity of severe weather. That means we need our utilities to support the build-out of community solar. We need local zoning boards to remove illegal ordinances that block clean energy siting. We need utility leaders to prioritize a transition to a cleaner, cheaper, more reliable grid. 

This storm wasn’t an “act of God” nor completely unpredictable. Extreme weather is exactly what scientists have said we’d face if we failed to curb our carbon emissions to combat the climate crisis. While climate change doesn't directly cause individual storms, climate experts say that “the warming atmosphere resulting from climate change can retain more moisture, which could fuel severe freezing rain and ice storms under the correct conditions." Recent decades of lived experience have backed up that prediction too. 

According to NOAA’s National Centers for Environment Information, from 1980 to 2009, Michigan experienced 21 natural disasters that caused more than $1 billion each in damages. Since 2010, the state has experienced 32 disasters causing more than $1 billion each in damages (for accurate comparison, numbers are adjusted for inflation). That’s a 50% increase in billion-dollar natural disasters occurring in half the time. From what we can see, this trend isn’t slowing down anytime soon. 

While we are faced with this historic challenge, we also have a historic opportunity to transition our energy grid to become more resilient while keeping prices affordable and addressing climate change. The solution requires our state leaders and utilities to work together to transition our grids to rely on local, clean energy. According to the Center for American Progress, “there is a robust field of study and evidence that renewable energy can maintain reliable resource adequacy to balance supply and demand of energy, as well as provide essential reliability services of the grid.” 

Michigan has set strong clean energy goals with the MI Healthy Climate Plan, which requires the grid to be powered with 80% clean energy by 2035 and 100% by 2040. While our utilities have been expanding renewable energy, they have also been a significant hindrance in achieving Michigan’s clean energy goal by obstructing community solar. 

Currently, community solar, which would allow the entire community—including renters and low-income homeowners who are typically shut out of residential solar—to benefit from clean energy, isn’t an option in Michigan because DTE and Consumers Energy have been successful in blocking community solar in the state for years. In response, we need to: 

● Pass Senate Bills 152 and 153 and House Bills 4464 and 4465 to allow community solar. 

● Convince local zoning boards and county administrators to support local choice and remove the exclusionary ordinances that some Michigan counties have, prohibiting farmers and local landowners from reaping the benefits of having solar and wind energy on their land. 

● Insist that leaders of our utilities — Boards of Directors for our rural Electric Co-ops (RECs), Municipal Utility Board of Commissioners, and CEOs of Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) — prioritize the transition of their grids to cleaner, cheaper, more reliable clean energy. 

Our utilities need to accept our climate reality and start planning yesterday for a future of more of these storms because for families like Cori’s, that future is now.