Michigan’s Healthy Climate Plan is an official document that seeks to assist Michigan policymakers in its goal of 100% economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2050. This document also includes a goal to do so equitably.
One new study from Michigan Technological University and the University of Madison-Wisconsin examines how policies surrounding electric vehicles have considered low-income and disadvantaged communities.
The study said Michigan EV adoption is low, with only 3.2% of new car purchases being electric vehicles. The national average is 9% and the increase is not on par with Michigan’s goal to have two million electric vehicles on the road by 2030.
Vincent Idoko, the main author of this study, said Michigan’s policies have something to do with the slow increase.
“Other places like California that have been kind of successful with the whole transition, we see their heavy emphasis on incorporating energy justice principles and consideration for low-income households,” Idoko said.
Idoko said California also has rebate policies where buyers will get a partial refund which may be helping lower-income households acquire the cars themselves.
In Michigan, the ownership gap is undeniable, with residents in Washtenaw County owning 17 times more than all residents in the Upper Peninsula, according to the study.
Idoko said he was researching virtual power plants in vulnerable communities in Michigan when his federal funding was cut, leading him to switch his research focus to electric vehicle policies.
“It’s less about arguing that low-income communities must have EVs,” he said. “We wanted to look at the policies and see to what extent they actually incorporate justice for low-income communities.”
Idoko said even if consumers are not prepared to buy an electric vehicle, having the correct infrastructure in place is important if they ever decide to do so. Otherwise they will be structurally and systematically left out of the equation.
As charging stations are being added all over the State, he says they are disproportionately built in affluent areas. This contributes to energy inequality as charging stations also open the door for other infrastructure improvements on a larger scale, like electrical upgrades for housing and grid upgrades for the community which are necessary to support at-home vehicle charging.
“Even though the number of electric chargers is increasing, there is a lack of the broader affordability measures to ensure that low-income households can actually benefit from the assets these chargers are supposed to provide,” he said.
While coding the policies, meaning they were looking for specific terms, infrastructure came up several times.
“Positively, they are kind of aggressive in funding chargers here and there,” he said. “That’s a good sign. There is also recognition of disadvantaged communities. Tribal groups appear around 15 times in the policies but low-income and disadvantaged appear only about once each.”
Chelsea Schelly, a co-author on the paper said having this term separation is actually very important to climate justice in policies because tribal nations are completely separate entities.
“When there’s a state-to-state relationship like the state of Michigan to a tribal nation, the language needs to be explicit in the policy,” she said.
Schelly said developing climate policies that consider equity is an important first step but there are flaws in the system. The state’s programs rely heavily on federal funding which has been unreliable in the past when it comes to environmental policies.
“That has just created an enormous vulnerability in the state's ability to meet its goals when meeting its goals is predicated on access to federal dollars,” she said. “That is not unique to Michigan, that would be true of any state reliant on assumptions of stability in federal policies.”
The policies also do not use any terms commonly associated with energy justice, she said. Terms like ‘energy burden,’ ‘energy poverty,’ ‘energy insecurity,’ and ‘energy justice’ were nowhere to be found. The word justice itself came up twice.
Idoko said energy justice is a term that means all benefits and burdens are equally distributed among the population. Currently in Michigan, lower-income communities bear most of the burdens while affluent communities reap most of the benefits, he said.
Many of the policies focus on grants which are available to lower-income communities but also take time, money, and resources to receive. This means competing with affluent communities that may have all of these things in abundance. Idoko said.
Schelly said the point of this paper was not to say lower-income communities should want or need eclectic vehicles, but rather that they should be available if the state wants to pursue 100% economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2050 equitably.
