Michigan House votes to repeal law that removed local control over solar, wind permits
Credit: Beth LeBlanc · The Detroit News · April 30, 2025 · detroitnews.com ~~
The Michigan House on Wednesday passed a repeal of a 2023 law that removed local control over large-scale solar and wind farm permitting and gave that authority to state utility regulators.
The bill, which is likely to hit a brick wall of opposition in the Democratic-led Senate, passed along party lines, 58-48, in the Republican-led House.
“When this legislation was passed in 2023, it took away the voice of our local elected officials and handed it over to three unelected bureaucrats who may never have even set foot in the communities they now have the power to overrule,” State Rep. Greg Alexander, R-Carsonville.
But Democrats argued the repeal would help the “fossil fuel industry” and trample on the rights of individual property owners who want to lease their land for solar or wind farms but are being blocked by local zoning ordinances.
“These bills repeal a law that launched Michigan’s future forward,” said state Rep. Sharon MacDonell, D-Troy.
The Democratic-led Michigan Legislature passed legislation last year that removed local control over large-scale wind and solar projects, shifting decision-making to the state through the Michigan Public Service Commission, the agency that regulates investor-owned gas and electric utilities.
The legislation was intended to circumvent long-debated local ordinances that, in some cases, had barred large-scale renewable energy farms and made it challenging for utilities to meet state-imposed renewable energy goals.
But the Public Service Commission, spokesman Matt Helms said, has received no permit applications since companies were first allowed to begin submitting applications on Nov. 29, 2024.
The Public Service Commission, whose three members are appointees of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, is opposed to repealing the law.
When the Legislature was considering the siting law in 2023, commission Chairman Dan Scripps argued utilities needed state intervention to meet their renewable energy goals and that local solar and wind siting processes were “the single largest threat” to meeting those goals.
“There is an absolute role of local units in informing the projects,” Scripps said in 2023. But it’s also important, he said, “that state interests aren’t subject to a veto of the people.”
“They get a voice in the process, but they don’t get a veto,” Scripps added.
Environment groups criticized the House’s vote Wednesday, arguing the law passed in 2023 was beneficial to cutting “local red tape” and “years of dysfunction.”
“These bills would return us to a broken system where landowners’ rights were trumped by over-burdensome local regulations that prevented families from making their own decisions,” said Carlee Knott, energy and climate policy manager at Michigan Environmental Council. “The current law respects community input at the local level while ensuring there is a state process to fall back on if negotiations fall apart because of local politics.”
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