By Izzy Ross, Interlochen Public Radio
This coverage is made possible through a partnership with IPR and Grist, a nonprofit independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.
Environmental advocates have long focused on how coal harms the climate and environment. Burning coal emits a disproportionate amount of the electricity sector’s carbon dioxide, along with pollutants like mercury and sulfur dioxide.
Groups like the Sierra Club have also gone before state regulators to argue that utility customers shouldn’t have to pay for coal infrastructure, because the investment isn’t worth it in the long run.
Supporters say this has been an effective strategy to shut down coal plants.
Utilities make money by investing in infrastructure, like power plants, that produce electricity. As long as regulators approve a plan, the utility can recover that money from customers.
Gudrun Thompson, an attorney and program leader with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said those investments in energy infrastructure earn returns, which is how utilities create value for their shareholders.
“So there’s an inherent tension there between what is good for customers and the climate and the environment, and what is good for the utility shareholders,” she said.
Utilities are monopolies, so state public service commissions regulate them and are supposed to balance customer and utility interests, but customers don’t get to choose who provides electricity.
Lawyers like Chris Bzdok, who works at the firm Troposphere Legal, can intervene in rate cases — and reviews of utility planning proposals — on behalf of those customers. He said investing in cleaner energy makes sense for customers’ wallets.
“We have a right to make arguments that that’s not the best path forward, that there are better, more prudent and more reasonable — from a cost standpoint — options for customers than continuing to sink money into this old, dirty, fossil-fired technology,” he said.
This week, the Sierra Club recognized Bzdok for his work in this area, calling it precedent-setting.
“In the past decade, Chris has helped Sierra Club retire thousands of megawatts of coal-fired power generation in Michigan, Ohio and Oregon,” said Allison Chin, president of the Sierra Club Board of Directors, during a virtual awards ceremony where Bzdok received the William O. Douglas Award.
Bzdok got involved with climate and energy law in the late 2000s, when Michigan utilities were considering new coal plants even as the state began requiring more renewable energy and efficiency programs.
He has argued these cases before public utility commissions across the country as part of the Sierra Club’s long-running Beyond Coal campaign and on behalf of groups like Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
It’s not flashy work; these cases can be long, complicated and wonky. But it’s delivered results for those involved.
“From my own experience, I think it’s really difficult to drive change just solely on environmental policy. And you see the places we’re making the best progress is where we can resonate from an economics perspective,” said Daniel Abrams, an attorney with the Environmental Law and Policy Center who has worked with Bzdok. He said one concern is that when utilities spend money on coal, ratepayers will end up paying for something that won’t be used much longer.
“As we’re moving forward with broad, economy-wide decarbonization, the risk is that fossil fuel resources, beyond their climate downsides, are also going to be stranded assets in the future,” he said.
In the United States, coal-generated power has declined by more than half since 2010. A lot factors into that decline, like other energy sources becoming cheaper. But over the years, the Beyond Coal campaign has gotten attention as a key part of it. The Sierra Club claims that in that time, it’s contributed to over half of all coal plants in the country retiring or planning to retire.
Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that these efforts helped convince public utility commissions in Michigan and Louisiana to reject utility requests to recover millions of dollars in costs from customers to pay for coal plants’ losses.
According to Bzdok, it’s an important way to address climate change, influencing utilities like Consumers Energy, which plans to retire its last coal plant in 2025.
“When I started this work they were going to build a new coal plant in Essexville, near Bay City. And that was 2008, 2009,” he said. “And now they’re going to be completely off coal next year.”
In an email, a Consumers Energy spokesperson said the transition away from coal was the result of years of planning. They did not comment on rate cases.
This strategy — and its outcome — have critics; advocates for coal have said it will reduce reliability.
But when it comes to retiring coal plants, Dan Scripps, the chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission, said the rate case approach has made an impact.
“If it were just climate- or emissions-related arguments, I’m not sure that we could agree with Chris,” Scripps said. “But because he’s able to tie that to what it means for ratepayers and customers in terms of the bills that they pay at the end of the month, he is on much firmer ground, and is able to present evidence in a way that we’re able to make those decisions.”
There are still questions about what will replace coal; some utilities have transitioned to natural gas, even as environmental groups warn against doing so. (The Sierra Club also has a Beyond Gas campaign.) And on the federal level, new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency require coal plants to install carbon capture and storage or shut down in the coming years.
Meanwhile, Bzdok said they’ve seen concrete outcomes from their work with utilities, like DTE demolishing a shuttered coal plant in southeast Michigan earlier this year. He calls that satisfying.
“That’s a serious amount of pollution that is no longer going to be loaded into the atmosphere,” he said.
Catch more news at Great Lakes Now:
Michigan aims to tackle clean energy goals in Upper Peninsula
TCAPS bond could mean more energy efficiency for schools
Featured image: Attorney Chris Bzdok poses with his William O. Douglas Award from the Sierra Club during a Traverse City watch party of the club’s virtual awards ceremony. Sept. 17, 2024. (Photo: Izzy Ross/IPR News)
