Viewing Grant Proposal: Consumers Energy_Spring Creek Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) Project

I strongly oppose this proposal and urge the MPSC not to award it a RE-EIED grant. This project would lock in carbon, methane, and other emissions for decades to come. So called “Renewable Natural Gas” projects like this would exacerbate our dependence on gas infrastructure when we should be fully pursuing renewable energy, efficiency, storage, and electrification solutions instead. This project fails to address the negative environmental and public health impacts on fence-line communities and the broader threat of water pollution from increasing production/demand for RNG-generating waste streams.

These funds should be awarded to projects that are seeking to make significant decreases in GHG emissions through renewable energy, efficiency, battery storage, and electric technologies.

Oxfam is a global organization that fights poverty and inequality. On behalf of our over 18,000 supporters in Michigan, we strongly oppose this proposal and urge the MPSC not to award it a RE-EIED grant. This project would lock in carbon dioxide, methane, and other emissions for decades to come. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Michigan residents have observed unsettling climate changes — unusual warmth in winter, severe asthma conditions linked to air quality, and erratic weather patterns threatening local agriculture. Since we are a part of a global federation we see firsthand the impacts of heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, floods, and famines from climate change all over the world. This project fails to meet the standard to further “environmental justice.” The EPA defines environmental justice as “...the just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of income, race, color, national origin, Tribal affiliation, or disability, in agency decision-making and other Federal activities that affect human health and the environment so that people: • are fully protected from disproportionate and adverse human health and environmental effects (including risks) and hazards, including those related to climate change, the cumulative impacts of environmental and other burdens, and the legacy of racism or other structural or systemic barriers; and • have equitable access to a healthy, sustainable, and resilient environment in which to live, play, work, learn, grow, worship, and engage in cultural and subsistence practices.” This project does not meet the EPA’s standards for environmental justice. It would not decrease the human impacts of gas use including indoor and outdoor air quality especially for those who face the legacy of racism or other structural or systemic barriers. As an organization that is dedicated to gender and racial justice, we want to acknowledge the care burden that families, especially those of people of color, face when supporting a family member who has a respiratory illness. This includes taking time off work to take care of the family member, bringing them to the doctor, and sometimes to the ER for care.

SRAP submits comments and exhibits in OPPOSITION to the proposal via the links below (and which were emailed to LARA on April 12, 2024) Comments - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TN2XAakgryIVU8Og02aB0TU5T3tE16FB/view?usp=drive_link Exhibits 1, 2 and 3 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/10IEjQpgEjWzDB0kG3NgshUClRZvePYHp/view?usp=drive_link