A community-powered movement.
When wealthy corporate utilities like DTE and Consumers Energy try to control our legislative and regulatory processes with millions of dollars in political contributions, environmental justice communities fight back with community power!
​
Michigan residents pay some of the highest electric bills in the nation and suffer some of the worst service. These costs are disproportionately borne by Environmental Justice communities - Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor white communities that have seen the worst effects of pollution and climate change. We say - no way!
​
Quick Facts:
Michigan’s energy bills are the 12th most expensive in the entire country.
93% of legislators have taken DTE Energy money during their careers, including Gretchen Whitmer & Mayor Duggan
From January-December 2022 coal measured 54.16 % of DTE fuel mix used to supply electricity
Environmental justice communities shoulder short-term and long-term consequences...
Annual Health Costs per Person Attributable to Air Pollution from DTE Power Plants - Age Standardized | Credit: Carina Gronlund, gronlund@umich.edu
We can estimate, from decades of epidemiologic research, how smaller doses of air pollution can increase the risk of variety of health outcomes, including asthma exacerbations, emergency department visits and hospitalizations, heart attacks, chronic bronchitis, and death due to cardiovascular, respiratory, and lung cancer causes. We calculated these estimates using standard EPA methods, namely the BenMAP software, assigned dollar values to those health care costs and deaths, and added them all together. If we put a dollar value on the health care costs and mortality, the health costs from DTE power plant air pollution sum to $302 million annually across the tri-county area. Across census tracts, if every census tract had the same age distribution, health costs would range from $27 per person to $115 per person annually.
