Consumers Energy seeks thousands of acres to add 8,000 MW of solar for Michigan

A new drive to add 8,000 MW of utility-scale solar energy by 2040 is leading Consumers Energy to reach out to Michigan landowners in search of thousands of acres of usable land.

This utility-scale focus will be on projects capable of generating at least 100 MW. These will require significant land acquisitions: between five to 10 acres of flat, open land per megawatt of electricity. These areas will also need to be near existing transmission infrastructure. The company is already working on adding 1,100 MW of this solar capacity by 2024. Consumers intends to own 50 percent of this capacity and purchase the remainder from solar developers.

“We need support throughout Michigan, especially in rural and agricultural areas, and we want to work with landowners and local leaders interested in siting solar power plants to deliver environmental and economic benefits for their communities,” Dennis Dobbs, vice president of Enterprise Project Management and Environmental Services, said. “Harnessing the sun is Michigan’s moonshot — and we won’t achieve this historic goal without help.”

With regulatory approval, Consumers noted that ideal project sites for new power plants would be between 500 and 900 acres, likely composed of multiple neighboring landowners, including farms, brownfield sites, and publicly owned properties. Landowners could sell that property to Consumers or enter into a long-term easement agreement with the company, effectively creating an ongoing revenue source. Additionally, local communities could gain temporary benefits from hundreds of new construction jobs at these facilities.

Consumers has set up a website for interested parties to provide details on their properties and begin discussions with the company’s solar experts.

The project is an extension of Consumers’ Clean Energy Plan, which seeks to eliminate coal usage over the next 20 years and bring the company to net zero carbon emissions. To achieve this, it seeks reductions of more than 53 million tons of CO2 emissions and the addition of solar production to evade the need for a new fossil fuel power plant.