Electrify everything. Produce electricity without emissions. Use energy efficiently. Transition as quickly as possible.

Those were the key messages presented to Traverse City commissioners this week in a discussion about energy trends and the city’s future power usage. City Manager Marty Colburn walked commissioners through a presentation from 5 Lakes Energy – also provided to Traverse City Light & Power (TCLP) board members in January – on the direction U.S. utilities are headed. The most fundamental takeaway is that the need for a climate mitigation strategy is clear, with companies continuing to shift investment away from fossil fuels toward clean energy. This applies to both transportation – through stricter emissions standards and hybrid and electric vehicle (EV) production – as well as the “built environment,” Colburn said, including the use of more sustainable building materials and heating/cooling systems.

“It will take time, and there’s a need for that time,” Colburn said. “As you ramp down (fossil fuels), you’ve got to ramp up the other side. It’s not intended to happen overnight, but it is happening.”

Colburn acknowledged that cost has long been a hurdle for companies and communities seeking to go green, with coal and gas prices often undercutting renewable energy sources. But as technology has improved, more government subsidies have been dedicated to green energy, and user adoption has increased, “the efficiencies are getting better and better,” Colburn said. “It’s getting more cost-effective to be able to go with some of these renewables.”

Colburn cited several examples of how that transition is already unfolding. He pointed to plans announced by Ford this month to invest more than $3.5 billion to construct a new EV battery manufacturing facility in Marshall. The City of Traverse City is pursuing grant funding for solar panels and battery storage at the city’s wastewater treatment plant, which if installed could produce approximately 10 percent of the plant’s annual electrical power. Lear Corporation announced a $28 million expansion of its Traverse City plant in December to manufacture components related to an EV battery pack. Colburn said Woda Cooper Companies, the group behind numerous workforce housing developments in Traverse City, is also exploring heat pump technology to make its buildings more energy-efficient in the coming years.

Within the next generation, Colburn said, the “electrification of almost all activities” is anticipated as the predominant industry trend. “You are seeing the investment of billions and billions of dollars…as they’re transferring their technology over to electrification,” he said.

So what will that look like in Traverse City? The city has purchased “a few” EV vehicles for its own fleet, Colburn said, though that will likely increase going forward as EV availability increases. TCLP has also ramped up efforts in recent years to install EV charging stations in public parking lots and locations around the downtown Traverse City area. On a larger scale, Traverse City became the first city in the state of Michigan in 2018 to commit to using 100 percent renewable energy community-wide by 2040.

City commissioners this spring are set to revisit a building electrification policy proposed by Commissioner Tim Werner – which would require all new buildings built on city-owned property to be fully electrified, among other tenets – and recommendations from the city’s Green Team on meeting the city’s renewable energy goals. TCLP board members are expected to vote on March 14 on a communication to the city commission encouraging support of a building electrification policy, which the utility says it can support with “reliable and resilient energy” as its “energy portfolio mix continues to get cleaner,” according to TCLP Executive Director Brandie Ekren.

Colburn said part of the energy industry shift is toward managing peak usage and bringing down demand. “We tend to build all of our infrastructure as to the peak of what’s being used,” he said, adding that policy focus now is on “how to bring down those peaks.” 5 Lakes Energy also highlighted that approach, noting that “demand response provides an opportunity for consumers to play a significant role in the operation of the electric grid by reducing or shifting their electricity usage during peak periods in response to time-based rates or other forms of financial incentives.” TCLP has switched to an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system that allows customers to monitor and adjust their usage, which Colburn anticipating different rate structures being used more heavily to incentivize energy usage in non-peak hours.

Customers helping to produce power and paying a lower utility bill for doing so will be another approach, Colburn said. “It's soon going to be cheaper to produce on-site,” he said. “For those who are producing, they won't have to pay as much.” 5 Lakes Energy said TCLP was “rare” among utilities in pursuing an “integrated utility offering” that would allow customers to participate in energy efficiency, vehicle electrification, building electrification, behind-the-meter generation and storage, and demand response programs. Commissioner Tim Werner, who sits on the TCLP board, agreed. “Our intention is to move forward with it all these things together,” he said. “We as a community have a unique municipal utility, and we should be proud of it.”

Colburn said that while there are a “a lot of moving parts” involved in transitioning to electrification – which will take years if not decades for the city to fully implement – progress is “inching forward faster than you might realize.”

Mayor Pro Tem Amy Shamroe, who sits on the TCLP board, said the shift was “really exciting,” but cautioned that Traverse City won’t be able to do it alone. The electric grid is still “very dirty,” she said, and will require significant public and private cooperation to overhaul.

“How do we set our goals, how do we work towards them, and how do we help bring everybody else along with us so we're not that electrifying a totally dirty grid with nobody else changing?” she said. “As long as we're all doing this together and having these conversations, we're going to keep moving the mark.”