DTE: Helping our communities or hurting them?
How many times have you turned the TV on and been bombarded with that one DTE ad? You know, the one telling you about how it’s investing in clean energy, working to help your community, and becoming even more renewable than ever.
Well, that ad is a complete lie.
DTE, for those of you not familiar, is a Detroit-based corporation that provides electricity to 2.3 million customers in Southeast Michigan and natural gas to 1.3 million customers throughout the state. DTE, however, is a for-profit monopoly that often shuts off electricity to customers who cannot afford their increasingly high energy bills. What’s worse, though, is that while they do this, they put out advertisements claiming to invest in your community because they personally care about it. Although they do community outreach and volunteer work, it doesn’t compare to their sheer scale of disregard for low-income communities, especially in the city of Detroit.
From 2013 to 2019, DTE disconnected electricity from customers who could not afford their bills 1.2 million times, 47% more than Consumers Electric, which has a similar proportion of low-income customers. In 2021 alone, DTE disconnected service 178,200 times for nonpayment, more than double their 80,600 shutoffs in 2020. There is a massive racial disparity here as well as research shows that 43% of Black and 38% of Latino residents are considered overburdened by energy costs. Moreover, there’s a Detroit-only tax that disproportionately impacts Black customers. Residents of the city have been paying a monthly utility tax since the 1970s, and it is the only city where the state approved tax also applies. In 2020, $33 million of these taxes went to the Detroit police department, known for its brutal enforcement of cycles of violence against Black Detroiters.
Many of the people subjected to these shut-offs are caught in repeated cycles of disconnection, having to choose between a paid electricity bill or other necessities like rent, food, and water. Although Michigan prohibits shut-offs during extreme weather conditions and requires notices before disconnection, corporations like DTE get to decide how much leniency is granted. Part of the reason for their excessive shut-offs is their high cost. DTE’s price per kilowatt-hour is higher than that of the largest utilities in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. Even worse, DTE is currently asking for a rate increase — its seventh in the last decade — worth $388 million more in yearly revenue.
Beyond their extreme rate of shut-offs and absurd pricing, they’re also notorious for their greenwashing. On their website, they claim that climate change is a defining issue of our era and that DTE Energy is taking steps to increase investment in renewable energy and cut carbon emissions to reach net zero by 2050. DTE claims it will achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 6 million metric tons per year through an innovative plan, though they don’t specify exactly what that plan entails. They do an excellent job of portraying themselves as climate-conscious, yet their energy consists of nearly 60% coal, 7% gas, 24% nuclear, and only 8% renewable. It emits over 25 million tons of CO2, 40,000 tons of SO2, and 100 lbs of mercury per year. It also emits 1,496 lbs of CO2/MWh and is the third dirtiest major utility in the country by CO2 emission rate because of it. Plus, DTE plans to operate coal plants until 2040 and they are currently building an 1100 megawatt gas-fired power plant with an estimated life of 40 years. Given the threat climate change poses to everyone, especially marginalized communities, this is extremely unsustainable and, quite frankly, dangerous to us all.
And the University of Michigan is complicit in this greenwashing. Although it claims to support renewable energy and touts its commitment to buying about 200,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of renewable energy annually beginning in 2021, the purchase will be through DTE Energy. Just a few weeks ago, former DTE chairman and CEO Gerryy Anderson spoke at an event at Ross School of Business titled “Forging a Career at the Heart of the Climate Challenge: Perspectives from the Front Lines”, sponsored by Net Impact, the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Business+Impact at Ross, Vertex Coffee Roasters, and the BBA Council. This event was protested by climate justice advocates and heavily criticized for both its portrayal of Anderson as a climate champion and for his discussion of hydrogen and carbon capture, both of which have been denounced as false, costly solutions not grounded in science.
It is clear to see the harm DTE wrecks on all of us. They ravage our communities, charging an excessive amount of money for energy from nonrenewable sources. They shut down the electricity of the most vulnerable communities. And as students of the University of Michigan, we are tied to their greenwashing agenda. But I, for one, am fed up. If you are too, join me. There are countless organizations on campus advocating for the environment, and against DTE, including Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), Sunrise Movement, and, notably, Ann Arbor for Public Power. We don’t have to be complicit in DTE’s greenwashing, but we have to do something.
