Michigan House Republicans took their first formal step Tuesday toward dismantling the state’s 100% clean energy standard, opening testimony on two bills that would reshape how Michigan’s utilities plan and deliver power.
House Energy Committee Chair Pauline Wendzel (R-Watervliet) and Rep. Pat Outman (R-Six Lakes) presented House Bills 5710 and 5711 before the committee. The push targets laws passed under Democratic control that set Michigan on a path toward a fully clean energy grid.
What the Bills Actually Do
Wendzel’s HB 5710 rewrites the rules for the Michigan Public Service Commission’s integrated resource planning process, which is the mechanism that forces utilities to map out long-term plans for meeting customer demand. Her bill would require that process to treat all energy sources equally, and it strips out existing requirements for utilities to weigh environmental justice impacts and forecast long-term greenhouse gas emissions when they file those plans.
“It tells the Public Service Commission, in statute, that reliability and affordability come first,” Wendzel said. “That’s it, plain, clear, simple.”
Outman’s HB 5711 goes further. It eliminates the mandate requiring energy companies to reach a 100% clean energy portfolio. Outman framed it as a market argument.
“This bill does not ban renewable energy,” Outman said. “Wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, storage and emerging technologies will continue to be built when they make sense for the grid and when they provide the best value to the ratepayers. What this bill does eliminate is the mandate. Every resource should compete based on performance, reliability and cost of ratepayers, not political preferences written in the statute.”
That framing didn’t go unchallenged.
Democrats Push Back Hard
Reps. Julie Brixie (D-Okemos) and Joey Andrew (D-St. Joseph) zeroed in on a provision in HB 5711 that would cap distributed energy generation at 1% of total yearly energy sales within a utility’s service area. That’s not a small technical tweak. It’s a ceiling that Brixie and Andrew argued would effectively shut out homeowners and small businesses from accessing rooftop solar and other distributed generation resources, regardless of what Outman said about keeping the door open for renewables.
The 1% cap is the detail that matters most for Detroit-area residents who’ve invested in or considered rooftop solar. Under the current framework, distributed generation has room to grow. HB 5711 would put a hard wall around that growth.
Rep. Tonya Myers Phillips (D-Detroit) pushed on the affordability argument Republicans made to justify both bills. She wasn’t buying it.
“I don’t see anything in this bill, or anything in this conversation that addresses utility accountability,” Myers Phillips said. “Our bills are high because the utility companies charge us a lot and there aren’t enough guardrails to prevent that.”
That’s the core tension. Republicans say clean energy mandates drive up costs for ratepayers. Democrats say the real driver is utility pricing power and weak oversight, not renewable portfolio standards. Neither side resolved that Tuesday.
What Comes Next
Wendzel said these two bills are one piece of a broader Republican package and that more legislation is coming. The committee hasn’t voted yet. Testimony will continue, and Wendzel said the committee will vote at its next meeting.
That timeline matters. Michigan’s clean energy law, passed in 2023, set binding targets for utilities including DTE Energy and Consumers Energy. Unwinding those targets through HB 5711 would give both companies an off-ramp from commitments that locked in specific clean energy investment schedules.
Residents in Detroit and surrounding communities don’t just feel this in their electricity bills. Environmental justice provisions stripped by HB 5710 were written specifically to force utilities to account for the disproportionate pollution burden carried by lower-income neighborhoods near power infrastructure. Take those provisions out of the integrated resource planning process and there’s no statutory hook left to demand utilities consider who lives downwind.
Wendzel’s committee controls the vote schedule. Democrats hold enough voices to make the debate loud, but Republicans have the committee majority to move the bills forward regardless.
Myers Phillips asked where the utility accountability measures are. So far, nobody on the Republican side has answered that question with a bill number.
