This coverage is made possible through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
It’s NPR’s 2025 Climate Solutions Week. This year’s topic is “Rethinking Home."
Along with stories from around the country, we're bringing you some of our conversation with Sarah Mills, the director of the University of Michigan’s Center for EmPowering Communities who works with communities to tackle energy policy.
We hosted a public event in late May where Mills took your questions about how communities are adapting to climate change.
And we couldn’t go through this week without talking about the ice storm that hit the region this spring.
The storm
At its peak, the storm knocked out power to about 145,000 people. In some places that power didn’t come back for weeks. And it’s still top of mind for many people.
IPR was at a listening session last month held by the Michigan Public Service Commission, a three-member board in charge of regulating some of the utility companies whose customers lost power.
Those affected by the storm talked about their experiences and what they wanted to see happen next.
A big topic was burying power lines in order to be better prepared in the event of another storm. That’s an expensive fix, but some people at the meeting said it would be worth the cost to avoid another mass power outage.
“It's the classic: 'It's not cost effective,'" said Julie Marlette, who lives in Chester Township and was at that meeting. "We got to get rid of that. We just do. There's more in life than being cost effective. There's the right thing to do. When you face something like this that’s so catastrophic… We have to think differently and learn new things from this.”
Public Service Commission Chair Dan Scripps told IPR regulators were looking into where burying power lines would make the most sense.
Burying wires and trimming trees
Following the storm, utilities like Consumers Energy said they needed to work on hardening the grid, which included burying more lines.
But doing so is expensive and complicated.
“Undergrounding wires is, like, four or five times the cost of building it above ground," Mills said. (That figure varies; DTE has said it costs up to six times as much, depending on conditions.)
Then there's tree trimming.
Have a question about energy, climate or other issues?
Reach out on our website or email iprnews@interlochen.org.
Falling trees and branches are a significant cause of power outages. "At least some utilities in the state don't trim enough trees, and so that's why the grid is susceptible," Mills said.
A 2024 audit from the Michigan Public Service Commission found that DTE and Consumers Energy, the state's two biggest utilities, lagged in tree trimming.
State regulators and utilities are focused on cutting back trees from power lines to reduce the risk of power outages. Recent rate hikes included money for tree trimming: $125 million for Consumers Energy and $87 million more for DTE. (Those rate hikes will hit consumers differently — the Consumers increase will show up on bills; the DTE one will not due to some other adjustments.)
And cutting back trees isn't always popular, Mills said.
"People don't like their trees trimmed," she said, but "something's got to give.”
Community centers and home insulation
There are short-term steps to prepare and respond better to future disasters, such as community hubs with basic necessities.
Some places in northern Michigan set up warming stations during the ice storm where people could stay while the power was out. And as different places try to figure out how to move forward, Mills said local governments have focused on those efforts.
“Thinking about infrastructure in their community, usually kind of at the community center level, where you can have solar and battery energy storage, backup, freezer space, place where people can come in if they're out of power at home, to heat up or cool down, to charge their cell phones," she said. "That's a key thing that lots of communities have been thinking about.”
Mills said people can also make changes at home.
“That can take the form of solar panels and energy storage," she said. "Insulation is really important so that your home can be prepared, like, can hold the heat in if the power goes out in the winter, or hold the cold in if the power goes out in the summer.”
Taking a step back, she said utilities have to play a major role in making changes to the grid to better avoid and respond to power outages.
