DTE will close last coal plant in 2032 under revised long-range plan - Crain's Detroit Business

DTE will close last coal plant in 2032 under revised plan | Crain's Detroit Business

DTE Energy Co., Michigan's largest power utility, will close one of the country's biggest coal-fired electric plants in 2032, three years sooner than it proposed when initially filing an updated long-range plan last fall.

The agreement announced Wednesday morning calls for retiring the Monroe Power Plant, which will be the Detroit-based company's last coal-burning facility when it is shut down. Two of the four units would be closed in 2028; the remaining two would be retired in 2032 instead of 2035.

The quicker timeline is included in a proposed settlement between the Detroit-based utility and roughly two-dozen organizations that intervened in the case. The deal will be filed with state regulators later Wednesday.

"That's a really big move in carbon reduction," said Trevor Lauer, DTE vice chairman and group president. "This will get us to an 85% reduction in carbon emissions nine years earlier, or by 2032. And it largely surpasses our previous goal of 80% by 2040. That's a big deal, and it really keeps us on our path to get net zero by 2050."

The company voluntarily agreed to raise its cap on distributed generation, typically rooftop solar, to 6%. Current law lets utilities limit to 1% of their average in-state peak load for the preceding five years.

DTE will build a 220-megawatt battery storage facility on the site of the coal-fired Trenton Channel Power Plant, which was closed in 2022.

Lauer said customer costs of the clean-energy transition will be cut by $2.5 billion, and the plan will drive $11 billion of investments over the next 10 years.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.