For school transportation leaders, the pressure to deliver safe, reliable service—while managing staffing shortages, parent expectations, and operational complexity—has never been greater.

Van Buren Public Schools in Michigan faced all of these challenges across a geographically diverse district spanning rural roads, subdivisions and commercial areas. What followed was a rapid, full-scale transformation powered by Transfinder solutions.

“We have a very diverse type of area in a very diverse district, with a little over 4,500 students in the study body that we transport,” said Elizabeth Banks, Van Buren Public School’s director of transportation.

From Fragmented Systems to a Unified Platform with ‘Over-the-Top Customer Service’

Before Transfinder, the district relied on outdated tools that slowed operations and limited visibility. Routing changes required external support, and inefficiencies compounded during peak planning periods.

“The functionality was horrible,” Banks said. “It took a long time to get anything done.”

After evaluating nine vendors for the better part of a year, the district chose Transfinder for its comprehensive platform—integrating routing, driver navigation, maintenance, and parent communication into one ecosystem.

“It was all together,” she said. “It wasn’t like we would have to go to this company to get this piece and this company to get that piece.”

There was another reason the Van Buren Public School District chose Transfinder technology: “The ease of use,” she said.

Topping it off was the support team behind the solutions, one that returns calls swiftly. “The customer service aspect was a big draw as well.”

The other vendors the district looked at, she said, “weren’t as responsive. We’ve never had that problem with Transfinder. Matter of fact, your (Transfinder’s) customer service has been over-the-top helpful. We have a call back within a couple of hours. It’s not like we’re waiting days.”

In fact, she raved, “I love your staff. I love everybody at Transfinder that we’ve talked to, all of our trainers that we’ve dealt with. They’re just amazing, amazing people.”

Combine it all, the functionality, the all-in-one approach and customer support to back it, and the choice was clear.

“The determination was easy to make once we had our data,” Banks said.

Today, Van Buren has Transfinder’s award-winning suite of solutions, including Routefinder PLUS, parent app Stopfinder, driver app Wayfinder, fleet maintenance tool Servicefinder, and Viewfinder, which provides staff access to monitor the day-to-day operations of the transportation department.

Improving Safety with Wayfinder and Real-Time Visibility

Driver confidence and student safety improved immediately with Wayfinder, Transfinder’s in-vehicle navigation solution.

Instead of relying on paper route sheets, drivers now benefit from turn-by-turn directions and precise stop guidance.

“I’m grateful that we’re able to utilize the tablet and the turn-by-turn direction,” she said. “It makes it safer for the students. It makes it safer for our staff out on the road. It makes them more confident and comfortable doing a route that they may not know because of the turn-by-turn directions.

This is especially critical in a district with varying terrain and unfamiliar routes for substitute drivers. By guiding drivers exactly where they need to go and where to stop, Wayfinder reduces errors that can compromise student safety.

Strengthening Parent Communication with Stopfinder

A major pain point for the district was the volume of parent calls during peak hours—especially around missed buses, delays, and daily uncertainties.

“With the driver shortage, oftentimes our office staff were short as well because we’re covering routes,” Banks said. During the busiest times the office was fielding calls from parents with a reduced staff while other team members were out on the road.

Stopfinder changed that by opening up two-way messaging.

The rollout of Stopfinder transformed that dynamic. Initially piloted with special needs routes, the app quickly expanded district-wide, reaching approximately 75 percent parent adoption.

“We really pushed it in our messaging and then parents started talking to each other,” Banks explained.

Stopfinder enabled:

• Real-time bus updates and delay notifications
• Two-way communication between parents and transportation staff
• Automated alerts that put information directly in parents’ hands

“It’s saving time because we’re not having to field phone calls,” Banks said.

More importantly, it shifted the relationship with families.

“I think that they feel more in control now because they can set up that alert to tell them if the bus is running earlier, if the bus is running late,” she said. “it’s putting more control in their court.”

Driving Operational Efficiency Across the Department

Everything starts with the Routefinder PLUS platform. The safest and most efficient routes are created in PLUS, which is read by Wayfinder and then communicated out via Stopfinder.

With Routefinder PLUS, staff gained the ability to make real-time map edits and routing adjustments internally—eliminating delays that sometimes took months.

“Being able to do these ourselves, we were never able to do those ourselves in our own system,” Banks said. “We had to reach out to (the vendor) and put in a ticket for them to make an adjustment on the map and a lot of times those addresses were not put in the correct place.”

That’s all changed with PLUS.

“The biggest thing I’ve noticed with this program is that we are able to easily get in there, make the map edit because we know what it looks like and it saves time. It definitely saves time,” she said.

It’s a changing landscape, literally, this is critically important.

“Especially with new builds, new construction, it’s just amazing that we can just get in there and do it,” Banks said. “I don’t have to wait.

The impact was immediate, measurable and personal. Banks recalled talking with her router and remembering routinely putting in 12-hour days during the summer in preparation for the fall opening.

“Usually come August we’re here 12 hours a day trying to get all the kids routed,” she said. “This year, we’re done. We actually get to take Friday off before the holiday weekend. Wow, look at us go!”

Data-Driven Maintenance and Better Decision-Making

Because safety starts in the garage, by using Servicefinder, Banks and her team now track maintenance data and identifies patterns across its fleet.

This visibility supports smarter, data-driven decisions—helping prevent breakdowns and ensuring safer, more reliable vehicles for students.

A True Transformation

In just one year, Van Buren Public Schools moved from fragmented systems to a fully integrated transportation operation—improving safety, communication, and efficiency across the board.

When asked if Transfinder transformed the transportation department, Banks didn’t hesitate: “Yeah, 100 percent, unequivocally.”

And she’s not shy about sharing it with other transportation leaders. Banks said supervisors will often ask, “Is there something better? What do you use? And I always tell them Transfinder, that’s what we use. Don’t judge a book by its cover, she warned.

“I looked into several of these other companies and they may have looked good on the surface but there was nothing behind the pages in the book,” she said. “We turned the pages. It was empty.”

Key Takeaways for Transportation Leaders:

• Safety improves when drivers have real-time guidance and accurate routing tools
• Parent communication reduces operational strain and builds trust
• Integrated platforms eliminate inefficiencies and streamline workflows
• Data visibility supports better decisions across routing and maintenance
• Strong vendor support is critical to long-term success

To learn more about Transfinder’s transformational tools and service, visit transfinder.com/solutions, call 800-373-3609 or email solutions@transfinder.com.

The views expressed are those of the content sponsor and do not reflect those of School Transportation News.

The post Michigan District Transforms Transportation Safety, Efficiency, and Communication with Transfinder appeared first on School Transportation News.

A Michigan man already free on bond in a separate assault case is accused of stealing a decommissioned school bus, crashing it into a tree and ditch, and fleeing on foot, reported Mlive News.

Andre Weston, 21, of Carrollton Township, was charged May 11 with unlawfully driving a motor vehicle, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Police said Weston left the adult foster care facility where he lives around 8 p.m. May 8 without authorization. Staff at the facility in the 800 block of Piper Drive reported him missing about 90 minutes later.

As officers headed to the facility, a call came in around 9:45 p.m. from a homeowner on Lincoln Street reporting that a school bus had become stuck in his front yard.

The homeowner reportedly told police he noticed the stolen school bus driving down the residential street late at night and thought it seemed unusual. The bus later began backing down the road before veering into the yard, striking a tree and becoming lodged in a ditch.

The driver then exited through the back door and ran toward Mapleridge Road. Officers later found Weston near Carrollton High School, about a half-mile from the crash site.

Alleged Stolen Bus Taken from Contractor

After being advised of his rights, Weston admitted to stealing the bus from the high school parking lot, police said via the news report. The stolen school bus had been decommissioned and recently purchased from the school district by contractor Dean Transportation. Investigators said the vehicle had been left unsecured with the keys inside.

A tow truck was required to remove the bus from the ditch, and police are reportedly reviewing surveillance footage to determine exactly when the bus was taken. Weston was arraigned Monday in Saginaw County District Court before Judge M. Randall Jurrens.

At the time of the incident, Weston was free on bond in a separate case filed in March charging him with two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon. Prosecutors allege he assaulted two female staff members at the foster care facility where he lives. A preliminary examination on the new charge is scheduled for May 26.

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Related: Stolen Bus Driven from Kentucky School District to Nearby Store
Related: A Major Crash in Louisiana Involving a Stolen School Bus
Related: Alabama Stolen School Bus Found, Man Charged
Related: Teen Arrested After Stolen Vehicle Pursuit Ends with School Bus Crash

The post Stolen School Bus Crashed by Michigan Man Out on Bond appeared first on School Transportation News.

Training school bus drivers to respond to inclement weather emergencies is a crucial part of student transportation safety training, but sometimes even the best training can’t fully prepare for the harsh reality of a real-life emergency situation.

Transportation Supervisor Kelly Bennett at Three Rivers Community Schools in Michigan confirmed for School Transportation News that this is how her team of bus drivers felt when a tornado suddenly appeared the afternoon March 6.

“On the day of the tornado, there was no indication that severe weather was approaching. No watches had been issued, and it seemed like a normal, beautiful day,” said Bennett.

Bennett shared that in-house training has led to Three Rivers school bus drivers practicing a variety of responses to emergency situations including inclement weather during Beginning Bus Driver School.

A local news outlet reported that the tornado was severe enough to down trees and rip roofs off buildings. Superintendent Nikki Nash shared a letter on social media March 8 saying that the “rapid and severe” weather emergency struck at the “most challenging time possible: During afternoon dismissal.” With many school buses already on the road transporting students home, it was crucial to act quickly.

Bennett explained that when the tornado warning sirens sounded, most bus drivers did not hear them because they were on routes, but the transportation office staff were alerted on their phones and through the radio. Dispatch then contacted the drivers immediately and directed the buses to re-route to safe locations at the nearest school building.

According to the local news report, within 10 minutes all students were accounted for.

Nash thanked the drivers and staff for their heroic actions and tornado response. “While we recognize that these emergency protocols caused significant delays and inconveniences for many of you, the safety of our students and staff is our absolute top priority,” she said. “I want to thank our students for their bravery, our staff for their quickly thinking and you- our families- for your patience and cooperation as we worked to ensure every child was out of harm’s way.”

Unfortunately, the district’s new transportation building that houses the district’s 20 buses “took a direct hit,” as the tornado passed through. Nash shared in her statement that they “lost the garage roof with several damaged vehicles, including buses in the parking lot.”

Bennett said that the damage was confined to the garage and did not impact the office, so transportation staff that were onsite during the tornado were unharmed.

“Due to the extent of the damage, we are unable to operate from that facility,” said Bennett. “In the meantime, we have returned to our old building, where the mechanic is handling repairs, and the office staff is now working out of the middle school. Although the transition has been challenging, we are continuing to adapt and make it work. Once the garage is secured, we will be able to return to operating out of the office.”

Tornado Response Hinges on Adequate Training

Bennett shared that her advice to other transportation directors “is that there is never such a thing as too much training, especially when it comes to safety.”

She continued that it’s imperative to make this safety training a priority, regularly review procedures during department meetings and investing in additional training opportunities beyond in-house resources.

“Our drivers are trained to prioritize safety above all else when transporting students. In emergency situations, I expect them to remain calm and maintain control, as their response will influence how everyone on the bus reacts,” said Bennett, adding that she emphasizes another facet of school bus safety, “clear and concise communication over the radio.”

She advised “keeping messages brief and direct so others can quickly understand and respond,” which aides safety efforts for both the 16 drivers in the district and the 1,194 students they transport each day.

The local media report also shared that the community banded together for recovery and rebuilding efforts, and the bus drivers drove their normal routes on Monday following the tornado response to ensure that routes were safe for students to return to school.

“Our thoughts and prayers of support go out to everyone who was personally impacted by this event,” stated Nash. “We know that the cleanup process will take days and even weeks, but our strength remains unshaken.”

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Related: Tornado Warning Doesn’t Faze Georgia School Bus Driver During Route
Related: (STN Podcast E264) Tornado Warning: Illinois Rising Star Discusses Leadership, Operations
Related: Bitter Winter Weather Halts School Bus Operations in Parts of South, Mid-Atlantic

The post Tornado Response Result of Quick-Thinking, Training for Michigan Student Transporters appeared first on School Transportation News.

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Cannabis isn’t legal in Wisconsin, so residents are purchasing it in states where it is, generating tax money for those states. 

Wisconsin borders three states with legal recreational cannabis: Michigan, which legalized it in 2018; Illinois, which legalized it in 2019; and Minnesota, which legalized it in 2023. 

Illinois tracks cannabis sales by in-state versus out-of-state purchasers. A 2023 analysis from Wisconsin’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau found Illinois collected $36.1 million in tax revenue in 2022 from out-of-state residents who purchased cannabis in counties bordering Wisconsin.

About half of cannabis sales in 2022 at dispensaries in Illinois counties that border Wisconsin were to out-of-state residents, the analysis found. 

Michigan and Minnesota do not track nonresident cannabis purchases. 
In Michigan, marijuana tax revenue is shared with local governments and tribes, as well as the state’s School Aid and Transportation funds.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Ballotpedia Michigan Proposal 1, Marijuana Legalization Initiative (2018)
• National Public Radio Illinois Governor Signs Law Legalizing Recreational Use Of Marijuana
• Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management Cannabis law
• Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation Illinois adult use cannabis monthly sales figures
• Legislative Fiscal Bureau Illinois Marijuana Tax Collections on Sales and Estimated Wisconsin Residents
• Jim Walker email Public information officer, Minnesota Office of Cannabis Management
• David Harns Email Public relations manager, Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency
• Michigan Department of Treasury Adult-Use Marijuana Distributions Based on Marijuana Revenues Collected in Fiscal Year 2025 February 2026
• Michigan Legislature Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marihuana Act (excerpt)

Is Wisconsin losing millions in tax revenue to states where cannabis is legal? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

It’s midmorning in late February, and Bruce Smith is regaling two ice fishing buddies when a tug on his line interrupts the story.

“There we go!” he shouts as a shimmering 23-inch whitefish appears through a hole in the ice. “That’ll make a nice filet.”

No sooner has Smith tossed it into a cooler than his buddy Terry Gross reels in another one. Five minutes later came another bite, then another, until by 10:30 a.m. the trio had hauled in 15 fish — halfway to their daily limit, even after putting several back. 

Welcome to southern Green Bay. Or as Smith likes to call it, “Whitefish Town, USA.”

Once written off as too polluted to support many whitefish, the shallow, narrow bay in northwest Lake Michigan has produced an unlikely population boom in recent years, even as the iconic species vanishes from most of the lower Great Lakes. The collapse has dealt a blow to Michigan’s environment, culture, economy and dinner plates.

Oddly enough, nutrient pollution from farms and factories may help bolster the bay’s whitefish population, spawning a world-class recreational fishing scene while helping a handful of commercial fisheries in Michigan and Wisconsin stay afloat despite the collapse in the wider lake.

“This is a paradise,” Smith said. “The best fishing I can ever remember, for the species I want to catch.”

As scientists work to understand what makes Green Bay unique, their findings could aid whitefish recovery efforts throughout the Great Lakes. Michigan biologists, for example, have drawn inspiration from Green Bay’s sheltered, nutrient-rich waters as they attempt to transplant the state’s whitefish into areas with similar characteristics.

“Having places they (whitefish) are doing well … gives us context for the places that they aren’t doing well,” said Matt Herbert, a senior conservation scientist with the Nature Conservancy in Michigan. “It helps us to figure out, how can we intervene?”

But lately, sophisticated population models have shown fewer baby fish making their way into the Green Bay population, prompting worries that Lake Michigan’s last whitefish stronghold may be weakening.

A Great Lakes miracle

Not long ago, it seemed impossible that a fishery like this could ever exist in Green Bay.

Before the Clean Water Act of 1972 and subsequent cleanup efforts, paper mills along the lower Fox River — the bay’s largest tributary — dumped toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the water without restraint while silty, fertilizer-soaked runoff poured off upstream farms.

Southern Green Bay was no place for “a self-respecting whitefish,” said Scott Hansen, senior fisheries biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Lake Michigan’s much larger main basin, meanwhile, was full of them. 

Commercial fisherman Todd Stuth’s business got 80% of its catch from the open waters of Lake Michigan before the turn of the millenium. Now, 90% comes from Green Bay.

How did things change so dramatically?

First, invasive filter-feeding zebra and quagga mussels arrived in the Great Lakes from Eastern Europe and multiplied over decades, eventually monopolizing the nutrients and plankton that fish need to survive. Whitefish populations in lakes Michigan and Huron have tanked as a result.

Fortunately for Wisconsin and a sliver of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Hansen said, “Southern Green Bay kept building.”

In the late 1990s, scientists began spotting the fish in Green Bay area rivers where they hadn’t been seen in a century. Soon the species started showing up during surveys of lower Green Bay. By the early 2010s, models show the bay was teeming with tens of millions of them.

It’s not entirely clear what caused the whitefish revival, but most see cleaner water as part of the equation.

A decades-long restoration project has cleared away more than 6 million yards of sediment laced with PCBs and nutrient-laced farm runoff from the Fox River and lower Green Bay. Phosphorus concentrations near the river mouth have declined by a third over 40 years — though they’re still considered too high.

“Pelicans are back, and the bird population seems to be thriving,” said Sarah Bartlett, a water resources specialist with the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District, which monitors the bay’s water quality. “And now we have this world-class fishery.”

Hansen’s theory is that back when whitefish were still abundant in Lake Michigan, some wanderers strayed into the newly hospitable bay and decided to stay. Or maybe they were here all along, waiting for the right conditions to multiply.

Either way, the bay has become a lifeline for whitefish and the humans that eat them.

“I feel very fortunate that the bay is doing as well as it is,” said Stuth, who chairs the state commercial fishing board. 

As commercial harvests in the Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan plummeted from more than 1.6 million pounds in 2000 to less than 200,000 pounds in 2024, harvests in Green Bay skyrocketed from less than 100,000 pounds to more than 800,000.

The bay has also become more important to fishers in Michigan, which has jurisdiction over a portion of its waters.

While the state’s total commercial harvests from Lake Michigan have plummeted 70% since 2009 to just 1.2 million pounds annually, the decline would be steeper were it not for stable stocks in the bay. Once accounting for just a sliver of the catch, the bay now makes up more than half.

A recreational ice fishing scene has sprung up too, with thousands of anglers taking to the ice each winter, contributing tens of millions to the local economy.

Ironically, the bay’s lingering nutrient pollution may be helping to some extent – a dynamic also seen in Michigan’s Saginaw Bay. 

Nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen are the building blocks of life, fueling the growth of aquatic plants and algae at the base of the food web. Plankton eat the algae, small fish eat the plankton, and big fish eat the small fish.

Unlike the main basins, where mussels have hogged nutrients and starved out whitefish, polluted runoff leaves the shallow bays with more than enough for the mussels and everything else. 

Some have even suggested Michigan and its neighbors should start fertilizing the big lakes in hopes of giving whitefish a boost, Herbert said, but “there’s the question of feasibility.” 

First, because the lakes are far deeper and wider than the bays, it would take vast quantities to make an impact. And while excess nutrients may help feed fish, they could also cause oxygen-deprived dead zones, harmful algae blooms and other serious problems.

Green Bay is already offering other lessons for Michigan, though. 

Inspired by whitefish’s return to the bay’s rivers, biologists including Herbert are trying to coax Michigan whitefish to spawn in rivers that connect to nutrient-rich river mouths like Lake Charlevoix. 

The hope is that if hatchlings can spend a few months fattening up before migrating into the mussel-infested big lake, they’ll stand a better chance of surviving.

Scientists in Green Bay are also tracking whitefish movements, hoping to figure out where they spawn and what makes those habitats special. That kind of information could prove useful to recovery efforts throughout the Great Lakes, said Dan Isermann, a fish biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Living in ‘the good old days’

“We’re really lucky to have what we have here,” said JJ Malvitz, a commercial fishing guide who owes his career to Green Bay’s whitefish resurgence. 

But he lives with fear that “the good old days are now.”

Stocks have shrunk by half since the mid-2010s, according to population models fed with data from DNR surveys and commercial and recreational harvests. The adult whitefish seem to be fat and healthy. But for reasons unknown, fewer of their offspring have been making it to adulthood.  

It’s possible the bay’s population is just leveling off after a period of strong recruitment, Hansen said, “but we want to be vigilant.”

A recent string of lackluster winters adds to the concern. Whitefish lay their eggs on ice-covered reefs. When that protective layer fails to form or melts off early, the eggs can be battered by waves or enticed to hatch early, out of sync with the spring plankton bloom that serves as their main food source.

While this winter was icier than most, climate change is making low-ice winters more frequent.

“Whitefish are a cold-water species, and we know that’s not where the trends are going,” Hansen said.

Time to cut back?

So far, Wisconsin officials haven’t lowered Green Bay’s annual whitefish quota of 2.28 million pounds, evenly split between the commercial and sport fisheries. Commercial boats are limited to fish bigger than 17 inches, while recreational anglers are limited to 10 fish a day of any size.

But during a recent presentation to the state’s Natural Resources Board, Hansen said it’s time to start keeping closer tabs on the population. 

“If these trends continue,” he said, “we need to have some more serious discussions amongst ourselves about lowering the exploitation rates.”

Malvitz, the guide, believes it’s time for commercial and recreational anglers to collectively agree to harvest fewer fish. He would be satisfied with a five-fish limit for recreational anglers along with smaller quotas for the commercial fishery, which harvests far more fish. 

The bay’s whitefish reappeared quickly and unexpectedly, he said. Who’s to say they couldn’t disappear just as fast?

“I don’t want to be standing on the shore in five years saying ‘remember when,’” he said. 

Stuth, the commercial fishing board chair, isn’t ready to accept tighter quotas in the bay, but said population models should be closely watched. If the declines continue, he said, cuts may be on the table.

“A very conservative approach is going to be necessary,” he said. “Because it’s our last stronghold. If that goes away, what do we have?”

This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A Wisconsin whitefish refuge offers lessons for Michigan. But will it last? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A Detroit bus driver is facing community backlash after live-streaming himself offering free rides to students walking to school during frigid weather, a gesture he said came from concern, but that school officials warn could pose serious safety risks, reported New York Post.

Darrell Beaver, owner of Ellamin’Op Transportation, advertised the impromptu free rides on his Facebook page Jan. 28, encouraging parents on Detroit’s Eastside to alert their children if they saw his yellow bus.

Beaver wrote, “Hey I’ll be on the Eastside this morning finding kids that walk to school and giving them a free ride. Let your kids know if a yellow bus with Ellamin’Op Transportation on it, Its safe to get on please share and drop some location.”

The post quickly raised alarms among parents and Detroit Public Schools Community District officials. After receiving multiple reports, the district issued a mass text alert warning families that an unauthorized bus was operating in the area.

“An unauthorized bus was reported. Students should only ride official Detroit Public Schools buses on assigned routes,” the alert read, according to local news reports.

Beaver is not affiliated with Detroit Public Schools and is only contracted to operate a planned route with the Braniacs Clubhouse Child Development Center. However, officials reportedly confirmed he allegedly dropped off at least one student at Fisher Magnet Upper Academy with parental permission.

An investigation reportedly found no evidence of malicious intent but emphasized concerns about safety, liability and the precedent such actions could set.

“Removing this gentleman from the equation, we don’t have any information or evidence to suggest he had any nefarious intention,” said Detroit Public Schools Safety Police Chief Labrit Jackson via the article. “But we’re really focusing on sending the message to our young people: do not get into vehicles with strangers.” Jackson warned that publicizing such actions could inspire bad actors to exploit relaxed guidelines.

“The next person who’s watching this now, we’ve given him an idea… a vehicle to have access to our children,” he continued.

The incident occurred as Detroit experienced extreme cold, with morning wind chills between 10 and 15 degrees below zero. Beaver said the harsh conditions motivated him to act.

“I just jumped into help mode. Like, it was freezing,” Beaver told local media. “I was in a bus for over an hour, and my feet were froze[n], so I felt bad to see these kids walking.”

He added that offering rides to random students is not something he typically does and said he did not make money from the additional passengers.

Reaction from parents has been divided. Some defended Beaver, saying his actions helped families who could not afford ride-share services. “I wasn’t mad, but I was just hurt because we were really trying to get to work and school,” parent Jimerson said via the news report. “Lyft is $50. I don’t have $50 to get them to school at six-something in the morning.”

Others, however, expressed serious concerns about student safety.

“Who knows in this day and age what you want to do with someone else’s children,” parent Alana Jackson told local news reporters. “With insurance liability issues, safety issues, stranger danger issues, it’s totally inappropriate.”

No charges are reportedly being pursued against Beaver. He has agreed to stop offering rides to students who are not on his authorized route.

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Related: Michigan Student Left on School Bus for Hours
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The post Michigan School Bus Contractor Offers Controversial Free Student Rides appeared first on School Transportation News.

DETROIT, Mich. – Questar Auto Technologies’ predictive Total Fleet Health Management solution is now available on the Geotab Marketplace,a network of fleet-focused solutions for companies looking to increase productivity and compliance while lowering operating costs.

Questar’s AI-driven Total Fleet Health Management solution helps fleet operators to detect vehicle issues earlier, plan repairs proactively, and reduce unplanned downtime through predictive and prescriptive health insights.

Questar is one of the only fleet health solutions that shows the estimated cost of early intervention along with the estimated downstream cost of inaction; thereby helping fleets make confident, economics-driven maintenance decisions.

From easy implementation to higher revenues

Through a cloud-to-cloud integration with Geotab – which means there is no additional hardware to contend with — Questar analyzes vehicle telemetry, engine fault data, maintenance history, and environmental context to identify emerging issues before they become failures.

The Questar platform provides early-warning alerts (up to 30 days in advance), repair recommendations, and actionable insights tailored to each vehicle.

By combining Geotab high-quality data with Questar’s advanced analytics and industry-specific, patented AI Foundation models, fleet operators gain a proactive, data-driven approach to maintenance that drives measurable operational and financial impact. Vehicles stay on the road longer, generating more revenue.

“Fleets are looking for solutions that fit naturally into their existing technology environments,” says Aaron Howell, Vice President of Sales for Questar North America. “Through the Geotab Marketplace, fleets across North America can now access Questar’s advanced features.”

About Questar Auto Technologies:
Questar is a pioneer in vehicle health management, offering a comprehensive solution that includes both predictive and prescriptive VHM. Questar enables Tier 1 suppliers, OEMs, leasing companies, service providers and enterprise fleets to cut downtime, reduce maintenance costs, and maximize revenue through advanced AI-driven analytics. https://questarauto.com

The post Questar Predictive Total Fleet Health Management Now Available in the Geotab Marketplace appeared first on School Transportation News.

A new contract between Kalamazoo, Michigan, and utility Consumers Energy signals a change in direction for the city’s clean energy strategy as it seeks to become carbon neutral by 2040. 

Solar was seen as a pillar of the city’s plans when it declared a climate emergency in 2019 and set a goal of zeroing out carbon emissions by 2040. After spending years exploring its options, though, the Michigan city is tempering a vision for rooftop solar in favor of large, more distant solar projects built and owned by the utility. It’s not alone either, with Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Muskegon and other cities taking a similar approach.

“Folks want to see solar panels on parking lots and buildings, but there’s no way as a city we can accomplish our net-zero buildings just putting solar panels on a roof,” said Justin Gish, Kalamazoo’s sustainability planner. “Working with the utility seemed to make the most sense.” 

Initially there was skepticism, Gish said — “environmentalists tend to not trust utilities and large corporate entities” — but the math just didn’t work out for going it alone with rooftop solar.

The city’s largest power user, the wastewater treatment station, has a pumping house with a roof of only 225 square feet. Kalamazoo’s largest city-owned roof, at the public service station, is 26,000 square feet. Spending an estimated $750,000 to cover that with solar would only provide 14% of the power that building uses annually — a financial “non-starter,” he said.

So the city decided to partner with Consumers Energy, joining a solar subscription program wherein Kalamazoo will tell Consumers how much solar energy it wants, starting in 2028, and the utility will use funds from its subscription fee to construct new solar farms, like a 250 MW project Consumers is building in Muskegon. 

Under the 20-year contract, Kalamazoo will pay a set rate of 15.8 cents per kWh — 6.4 cents more than what it currently pays — for 43 million kWh of solar power per year. If electricity market rates rise, the city will save money, and Kalamazoo receives Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to help meet its energy goals. 

The subscription is expected to eliminate about 80% of Kalamazoo’s emissions from electricity, Gish said. The electricity used to power streetlights and traffic signals couldn’t be covered since it is not metered. As the city acquires more electric vehicles — it currently has two — electricity demand may increase, but city leaders hope to offset any increases by improving energy efficiency of city buildings.  

Consumers Energy spokesperson Matt Johnson said the company relies “in part” on funds from customers specifically to build solar, and considers it a better deal for cities than building it themselves, “which would be more costly for them, and they have to do their own maintenance.”  

“We can do it in a more cost-effective way, we maintain it, they’re helping us fund it and do it in the right way, and those benefits get passed on to arguably everybody,” Johnson said. 

Grand Rapids, Michigan, joined the subscription program at the same time as Kalamazoo. Corporate customers including 7-Eleven, Walmart and General Motors are part of the same Consumers Energy solar subscription program, as is the state of Michigan.

Costs and benefits

“There’s a growing movement of cities trying to figure out solar — ‘Yes we want to do this, it could save us money over time, but the cost is prohibitive,’” said John Farrell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. 

Until the Inflation Reduction Act, cities couldn’t directly access federal tax credits. The direct-pay incentives under the IRA have simplified financing, Farrell said, but cities still face other financial and logistical barriers, such as whether they have sufficient rooftop space.  

Advocates acknowledge deals with utilities may be the most practical way for budget-strapped cities to move the needle on clean energy, but they emphasize that cities should also strive to develop their own solar, and question whether utilities should charge more for clean power that is increasingly a cheaper option than fossil fuels.

“Our position is rooftop and distributed generation is best — it’s best for the customers, in this case the cities; it’s best for the grid, because you’re putting those resources directly on the grid where it’s needed most; and it’s best for the planet because it can deploy a lot faster,” said John Delurey, Midwest deputy director of the advocacy group Vote Solar. “I believe customers in general and perhaps cities in particular should exhaust all resources and opportunities for distributed generation before they start to explore utility-scale resources. It’s the lowest hanging fruit and very likely to provide the most bang for their buck.”

Utility-scale solar is more cost-effective per kilowatt, but Delurey notes that when a public building is large enough for solar, “you are putting that generation directly on load, you’re consuming onsite. Anything that is concurrent consumption or paired with a battery, you are getting the full retail value of that energy. That is a feature you can’t really beat no matter how good the contract is with some utility-scale projects that are farther away.”

Delurey also noted that Michigan law mandates all energy be from clean sources by 2040; and 50% by 2030. That means Consumers needs to be building or buying renewable power, whether or not customers pay extra for it. 

“So there are diminishing returns [to a subscription deal] at that point,” Delurey said. “You better be getting a price benefit, because the power on their grid would be clean anyways.” 

“Some folks are asking ‘Why do anything now? Just wait until Consumers cleans up the grid,’” Gish acknowledged. “But our purchase shows we have skin in the game.” 

A complement to rooftop

In 2009, Milwaukee adopted a goal of powering 25% of city operations — excluding waterworks — with solar by 2025. The city’s Climate and Equity Plan adopted in 2023 also enshrined that goal. 

For a decade, Milwaukee has been battling We Energies over the city’s plan to install rooftop solar on City Hall and other buildings through a third-party owner, Eagle Point Solar. The city sought the arrangement — common in many states — to tap federal tax incentives that a nonprofit public entity couldn’t reap. But We Energies argued that third party ownership would mean Eagle Point would be acting as a utility and infringing on We Energies’ territory. A lawsuit over Milwaukee’s plans with Eagle Point is still pending.

In 2018, We Energies launched a pilot solar program in Milwaukee known by critics as “rent a roof,” in which the utility leased rooftop space for its own solar arrays. Advocates and Milwaukee officials opposed the program, arguing that it encouraged the utility to suppress the private market or publicly-owned solar. In 2023, the state Public Service Commission denied the utility’s request to expand the program.

Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board opposed the rent-a-roof arrangement since it passed costs they viewed as unfair on to ratepayers. But Wisconsin CUB executive director Tom Content said the city’s current partnership with We Energies is different, since it is just the city, not ratepayers, footing the cost for solar that helps the city meet its goals.

Milwaukee is paying about $84,000 extra per year for We Energies to build solar farms on a city landfill near the airport and outside the city limits in the town of Caledonia. The deal includes a requirement that We Energies hire underemployed or unemployed Milwaukee residents.

The Caledonia project is nearly complete, and will provide over 11 million kWh of energy annually, “enough to make 57 municipal police stations, fire stations, and health clinics 100% renewable electricity,” said Milwaukee Environmental Collaboration Office director Erick Shambarger. 

The landfill project is slated to break ground in 2025. The two arrays will total 11 MW and provide enough power for 83 city buildings, including City Hall – where Milwaukee had hoped to do the rooftop array with Eagle Point. 

Meanwhile Milwaukee is building its own rooftop solar on the Martin Luther King Jr. library and later other public buildings, and Shambarger said they will apply for direct pay tax credits made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act — basically eliminating the need for a third-party agreement.

“Utility-scale is the complement to rooftop,” said Shambarger. “They own it and maintain it, we get the RECs. It worked out pretty well. If you think about it from a big picture standpoint, to now have the utility offer a big customer like the city an option to source their power from renewable energy — that didn’t exist five years ago. If you were a big customer in Wisconsin five years ago, you really had no option except for buying RECs from who knows where. We worked hard with them to make sure we could see our renewable energy being built.”

We Energies already owns a smaller 2.25 MW solar farm on the same landfill, under a similar arrangement. Building solar on the landfill is less efficient than other types of land, since special mounting is needed to avoid puncturing the landfill’s clay cap, and the panels can’t turn to follow the sun. But Shambarger said the sacrifice is worth it to have solar within the city limits, on land useful for little else.

“We do think it’s important to have some of this where people can see it and understand it,” he said. “We also have the workforce requirements, it’s nice to have it close to home for our local workers.”

Madison is also pursuing a mix of city-owned distributed solar and utility-scale partnerships. 

On Earth Day 2024, Madison announced it has installed 2 MW of solar on 38 city rooftops. But a utility-scale solar partnership with utility MGE is also crucial to the goal of 100% clean energy for city operations by 2030. Through MGE’s Renewable Energy Rider program, Madison helped pay for the 8 MW Hermsdorf Solar Fields on a city landfill, with 5 MW devoted to city operations and 3 MW devoted to the school district. The 53-acre project went online in 2022.

Farrell said such “all of the above” approaches are ideal.

“The lesson we’ve seen generally is the more any entity can directly own the solar project, the more financial benefit you’ll get,” he said. “Ownership comes with privileges, and with risks. 

“Energy is in addition to a lot of other challenging issues that cities have to work on. The gold standard is solar on a couple public buildings with battery storage, so these are resiliency places if the grid goes down.”

Correction: Covering Kalamazoo’s public service station roof with solar panels would provide an estimated 14% of power used by that building. An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the number.

In Michigan and Wisconsin, cities are finding rooftops alone may not achieve solar energy goals  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Election Day yielded few bright spots for the transition to clean energy, but there was one in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The city of nearly 120,000 voted 79 percent in favor of a measure to create a ​“sustainable energy utility” (SEU) that will supplement the existing grid and help residents shift to cleaner, more reliable energy.

With that overwhelming approval, city officials will now figure out the governance, staffing, and leadership of the new local utility. They have already begun outreach to residents interested in participating; 600 customers had registered by Tuesday afternoon. The plan is to assemble an initial tranche of 20 megawatts worth of demand, at which point Ann Arbor will finance the purchase and installation of solar panels, batteries, and energy-efficiency upgrades to serve those customers.

Installations — on homes, sheds, schools, libraries — could happen in the next 18 to 24 months, Mayor Christopher Taylor told Canary Media. Longer term, the utility hopes to construct a district-level geothermal network to heat and cool buildings without fossil fuels.

“I’m incredibly gratified by the support that voters of Ann Arbor have given to the SEU,” Taylor said. ​“The SEU is going to be both great for our carbon future and great for the pocketbook.”

The effort to fast-track local clean energy installations serves Ann Arbor’s ambitious climate goals. But it’s also a response to an uptick in power outages as extreme weather collides with for-profit utility DTE’s aging distribution-grid infrastructure. Monopoly utilities, for the most part, have shown little interest in seizing the opportunities of decentralized energy, but that’s core to the new Ann Arbor utility’s mission.

The measure’s success marks the latest episode in a sporadic national trend of communities trying to break free from the century-old model of for-profit, monopoly utilities controlling local energy systems.

Such efforts typically provoke a scorched-earth response from the incumbent utility. Utilities elsewhere have waged lengthy legal battles and spent millions of dollars on political campaigns to stop these escape attempts. When localities win their energy autonomy, they often have to pay hefty exit fees as a reimbursement for grid infrastructure built on their behalf. Communities that make it through that ringer then have to shoulder the laborious task of operating and maintaining decades-old infrastructure while trying to push ahead with new technologies.

In a bracing and punchily worded 2021 report, Ann Arbor’s sustainability office made clear that it would take a different route.

“Every dollar we don’t spend in litigation or to buy the [investor owned utility]’s old, failing infrastructure is money we can spend on new infrastructure here in Ann Arbor to generate power, distribute power, and store power — dollars we can use to immediately provide reliable, clean, and affordable public power to everyone,” the city wrote.

In short, it’s a distributed energy wish list coming to life. Ann Arbor has created a clear pathway to building more clean, local, resilient, and publicly owned infrastructure. If the city can make electricity cheaper on top of that, it will demonstrate that a better electricity system is possible even without completely overhauling the existing utility industry.

Local action for local needs

In 2019, Ann Arbor set a 2030 deadline to deliver equitable, community-wide carbon neutrality. Meeting that target requires sourcing clean electricity, driving out fossil-fuel combustion in buildings, and cleaning up transportation.

But the city’s built environment poses some challenges. Ann Arbor spans about 49,000 households, 52 percent of which are rentals. Overall housing stock averages 48 years old. That necessitates a lot of retrofits to turn these buildings into efficient systems running on clean electricity.

The SEU thus prioritizes energy-efficiency upgrades for customers. Unlike a for-profit utility, the municipally owned nonprofit has no incentive to let customers keep wasting energy. Ann Arbor aims to make efficiency more accessible with tools like on-bill financing, ​“structured to match or be lower than the monthly utility bill savings, resulting in a positive cash-flow for the customer immediately,” per the 2021 report.

The utility can buy equipment like solar panels and batteries in bulk and finance these upgrades with its AAA municipal credit rating, accessing far cheaper capital than a bunch of lone homeowners negotiating separately with private lenders. And the on-bill charge stays with the house — if someone moves out, the new resident takes over paying for the improvements that will lower their bill.

Climate goals weren’t the only factor motivating the change. The area’s aging grid has suffered a number of outages lately.

“Ann Arbor is currently served by an investor-owned utility that has a history of reliability challenges in our area,” Taylor noted. ​“We expect the SEU to provide far more reliable service.”

The SEU plans to install and own solar panels on customers’ rooftops and batteries in their sheds and garages, selling those customers the power at cost, without a markup. That lets residents access solar power and backup power without dropping a load of cash up front for it or taking on debt. This kind of subscription is available from companies like Sunrun, but they do it to make money, not to sell at cost.

The most radical dimension of the plan is to use the city’s utility franchise rights to build wires between properties, so that they can share excess solar power locally. Most everywhere in the country, customer-led upgrades have to stay on the customer side of the utility meter; crossing that boundary to sell power to a neighbor violates the utility’s legally enforced monopoly. This stands in the way of visions for interconnected neighborhoods generating and selling power with each other based on who needs it at a given moment.

But Ann Arbor officials tracked down a century-old precedent that makes sharing power possible: ​“The Michigan Constitution preserves the rights of cities and villages to form their own utility or to supplement an existing utility,” Missy Stults, the city’s sustainability and innovation director, told me.

Thus, the SEU will link up different properties if the people living there want it. If a home generates more solar than it can use, it could run a line to a neighboring house that’s shaded by trees, allowing it to buy surplus power.

“We’ll be able to connect homes with each other, schools with homes, schools with each other,” Taylor said. ​“We’re going to do this in a way that is cost-effective and fully opt-in.”

This plan assumes people will be happy to offer up their roof space for panels that the SEU will own and use for broader community benefit. But doing so will let that household buy cheaper, cleaner power for itself. The battery controls present some additional complications: Will the host customer get first dibs on backup power, or will that be split among the locally connected homes as well? This is new territory for distributed energy in the U.S.

That said, the strong show of support at the ballot box demonstrates the local community is fully on board with the general direction of the SEU. It’s no accident that this idea is coming to fruition in a college town like Ann Arbor, said Liesl Clark, a former state climate leader who now serves as director of climate action engagement at the University of Michigan.

“There are a lot of people who are innovative and also are interested in having agency,” she said. ​“It is a community that was ripe for a solution like this.”

Furthermore, the city structured the plan in a way to minimize any downside for residents who don’t want to jump on the decentralized power opportunity.

“You haven’t asked me how much it’s going to cost the taxpayer,” Taylor told me as I was about to wrap up our phone call. He answered the rhetorical question: ​“Nothing!”

That pledge veers into too-good-to-be-true territory, but the SEU structure makes it possible. The city won’t levy any new taxes because it’s not buying out DTE’s assets. Instead, it’s installing new equipment based on voluntary customer commitments, and those customers pay their way, while saving themselves money.

Breaking free from utilities without all the hassle

The outcome of this effort remains far from certain. But so far, Ann Arbor has managed to pursue a low-drama, low-conflict way to break up with a monopoly utility, in contrast to high-profile recent attempts elsewhere.

The city of Boulder, Colorado, famously fought for a decade to peel off from Xcel Energy, and ultimately gave up. In 2010, California mega-utility PG&E spent $46 million to make it harder for communities to source their own electricity, though even that gargantuan sum failed to stop the rise of community choice aggregators.

Maine has grappled for years with its deeply unpopular monopoly utilities. Last year, voters nonetheless soundly rejected a ballot referendum to seize utility assets under a new public power entity. The utilities spent $40 million to fight it, and independent experts raised concerns about how the public entity would deliver on promises of a cheaper, more efficient grid after saddling itself with billions of dollars of debt.

Activists in Ann Arbor have also pushed for full municipalization — a city-level version of what Maine considered and rejected. The city is working on a second study to dig into the details of what purchasing the grid infrastructure would entail. That conversation will continue as the SEU implementation moves forward, Taylor noted.

For its part, Michigan utility DTE hasn’t declared war on Ann Arbor. Following the vote, the company stated that it will continue to invest in making the city’s grid more resilient and clean — a recent Michigan climate law requires ramping to 60 percent renewable power by 2035 and 100 percent clean electricity by 2040.

The public interest in full municipalization may explain the muted response from the utility: The SEU allows DTE to go on with business as usual, and its distribution grid will continue to play a crucial role even if kilowatt-hour sales decline from the new local solar generation.

Instead of fighting the utility colossus head on, Ann Arbor is taking a live-and-let-live approach. It’s a case where avoiding head-on conflict could make it possible to deliver the benefits of clean, local energy far more quickly.

Voters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, create a local clean energy utility is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Dearborn, Michigan, was at the heart of auto industry innovation during the days of the Model T Ford. 

Now clean energy and environmental justice advocates are proposing that the city play a lead role in greening the auto industry, through a transformation of the Dearborn Works steel mill to “green steel” — a steelmaking process powered by hydrogen and renewable energy with drastically lower emissions than a traditional blast furnace. 

The blast furnace at Dearborn Works is due for relining in 2027, at an estimated cost of $470 million. Advocates argue that instead of prolonging the blast furnace’s life, its owner, Cleveland Cliffs, should invest another $2 billion dollars and convert the mill to Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) technology powered by green hydrogen (hydrogen produced with renewable energy).

An October report by Dr. Elizabeth Boatman of the firm 5 Lakes Energy examines the economics and logistics of such a conversion, and argues that demand for cleaner steel is likely to grow as auto companies and other global industries seek to lower their greenhouse gas footprints. Starting in 2026, steel importers to the European Union will need to make payments to offset emissions associated with steel production.

Worldwide, the auto industry is the second largest consumer of steel after construction, and “being able to pass on the price of a ‘green steel premium’ to its end consumers, the automotive industry is uniquely positioned to create demand for green steel without having to rely on public subsidies,” the European Union think tank CEPS said in a recent publication.

“This is a great chance for the state to step in now and ensure this conversion happens, instead of waiting another 20 years,” said Boatman. “All the economic indicators suggest clean steel is the steel product of the future, and the best way to future-proof jobs especially in the steel sector and especially for unions.” 

Cutting pollution, creating jobs 

Cleveland Cliffs is planning to convert its Middletown, Ohio, steel mill to DRI, tapping a $500 million federal grant for industrial decarbonization under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. 

A DRI furnace does not need to use coke or heat iron ore to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit to produce pure “pig iron”; the same result is achieved with a different chemical process at much lower temperatures. DRI furnaces can be powered by natural gas or clean hydrogen. Initially, Cleveland Cliffs says, its Middletown mill will run on natural gas, releasing about half the carbon emissions of its current blast furnace. Eventually, the company announced, it could switch to hydrogen. 

Along with slashing greenhouse gas emissions, a similar green steel conversion at Dearborn Works would greatly reduce the local air pollution burden facing local residents in the heavily industrial area, which is also home to a Marathon oil refinery, a major rail yard and other polluters.    

But it wouldn’t be cheap. Boatman’s report estimated the cost of converting a blast furnace to a DRI furnace and associated electric arc furnaces at $1.57 billion, plus $2.6 billion to build a green hydrogen plant. Utility DTE Energy would need to work with grid operator MISO to add about 2 GW of solar and 2 GW of wind power, plus battery storage, to the grid to power the green hydrogen production. 

The conversion would mean closure of the EES Coke plant, which turns coal into coke for the steel mill, on heavily polluted Zug Island in the River Rouge just outside Detroit, five miles from Dearborn. In 2022, the EPA sued the coke plant, a subsidiary of DTE Energy, over Clean Air Act violations. 

A recent study by the nonprofit Industrious Labs found that the EES Coke plant could be responsible for up to 57 premature deaths and more than 15,000 asthma attacks. The report also found that more than half the people living within a three-mile radius of both the steel mill and coke plant are low-income, and three-quarters of those living around the coke plant are people of color, as are half those living around the steel mill. 

“The total health costs are quite significant,” said Nick Leonard, executive director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, which is representing local residents as intervenors in the EPA lawsuit against the coke plant. “We allow companies to externalize those costs and not account for them. If they were required by some sort of change in policy or regulation to be responsible for those costs, it would certainly make the case they could make this expensive switch” to green steel. 

The law center also represented residents in legal proceedings around Dearborn Works’ Clean Air Act violations, including a 2015 consent decree and a 2023 mandate to install a new electrostatic precipitator at a cost of $100 million. 

Leonard said local residents “know Cleveland Cliffs poses a risk to their health, and they want solutions. They know there’s a problem, they are frustrated by the lack of will or attention from state and local government.”

Cleveland Cliffs did not respond to a request for comment. 

Why Michigan? 

The country’s active steel mills are concentrated in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. Advocates and residents are asking Nippon Steel to consider a green steel conversion at the Gary Works mill in Northwest Indiana, if the global corporation succeeds in acquiring Gary Works owner U.S. Steel. Advocates have also proposed green steel conversions for Pennsylvania mills. 

There are factors that make a green steel conversion both more promising and more challenging at Dearborn Works, compared to other locations, Boatman explained. 

Dearborn Works has only one blast furnace in operation, meaning a potentially smaller investment than at mills with more furnaces. Michigan has also set aggressive renewable energy goals, which could be furthered by the ambitious renewable energy buildout that would be required to produce enough green hydrogen for the steel mill.

“That’s why we’re asking the state of Michigan and the governor to get all the interested parties to the table to actually talk about this, hopefully commit to it, and do the detailed planning that needs to be done to figure out how much wind, how much solar, how much battery storage does there need to be to get this off the ground,” said Boatman. 

Michigan has legal limits on behind-the-meter generation that could make it more difficult to build renewables specifically to power green hydrogen production for a steel mill. Utilities would instead need to produce or procure the renewable energy, and sell it to the steel mill, Boatman explained.

A green steel conversion at Dearborn Works could create a total of about 500 new jobs, Boatman estimates, considering that about 500 jobs would be lost at the closing coke plant but 410 jobs would be created at the hydrogen plant, 550 in new renewables and 170 at the mill itself. The DRI conversion at the Middletown steel mill is expected to create 170 new permanent jobs and 1,200 construction jobs, according to Cleveland Cliffs. 

A 2023 analysis by the Ohio River Valley Institute found that at the Mon Valley Works steel mill in Pennsylvania, a DRI conversion would likely preserve more iron- and steel-making jobs than “business as usual,” with 87% of the current jobs expected to exist in 2031, compared to 69% without a change — as U.S. steel production continues to shrink and automate. 

“We are seeing a general trend for both iron and [secondary] steel production to move toward the South, to states that aren’t friendly to unions and can produce products at cheaper prices by bypassing unions,” said Boatman. “Michigan obviously has a proud history of being a strong union state, it matters to keep those good union jobs there.” 

Labor unions have largely been silent on the concept of green steel conversion. The United Auto Workers union — which represents Dearborn Works employees — and the United Steelworkers did not respond to requests for comment. 

Hydrogen wild cards 

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to spend $8 billion on hydrogen hubs, and a potentially lucrative tax credit known as 45V is being finalized for clean hydrogen. Experts and advocates agree that energy-intensive, hard-to-decarbonize industries like steel are where hydrogen could have the most impact. But large-scale production of pure hydrogen for industrial use is still in nascent stages, and little infrastructure has been built or tested for transporting and storing hydrogen. 

That is among the reasons, Boatman said, that there’s been reluctance among residents and union leaders to embrace the concept of green steel. Boatman’s report emphasizes that community benefits agreements and community engagement processes are crucial to make sure residents are informed about, benefit from, and have a meaningful voice in any green steel plans. 

“Union workers and fence-line community members all want better air quality, lower emissions, who wouldn’t want to go to work knowing you’re safer being there?” she said. “There’s a lot of interest in cleaning up the air. It’s more a question over how that happens. When hydrogen becomes part of the equation, there’s always some concern.” 

She noted that hydrogen could potentially be stored in salt caverns in the Detroit area, though extensive study on the feasibility and environmental impacts would be needed. In Mississippi, a startup company Hy Stor Energy is planning to store green hydrogen in salt caverns, ready to generate electricity during times of high demand. 

Tax incentives for clean hydrogen could provide major incentives for steel mills. But clean hydrogen proposed projects have been in flux nationwide as the rules for qualifying for 45V tax credits are being hashed out in a lengthy, controversial process; and the change in presidential administration adds even more uncertainty. 

“These industries have to be incentivized,” said Roxana Bekemohammadi, founder and executive director of the U.S. Hydrogen Alliance, which advocates for pro-hydrogen policies on the state level. “Europe is creating a mandate — that’s one incentive. We’d love to support any incentives that would allow hydrogen to be leveraged in the steel industry. With state legislation we certainly can incentivize it. It’s a question of how competitive we want to be.”

Advocates make economic case for green steel production at Dearborn, Michigan plant is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to finalize more than $200 million in grant funding in the coming weeks to accelerate the clean energy transition at three Great Lakes shipping ports.

The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority, and the Illinois International Port District were each selected for grants last month under the Biden administration’s Clean Ports Program.

The U.S. EPA said it intends to finalize grant agreements by December or January. That action will obligate the federal government to pay roughly $3 billion in grants under the program, even if President-elect Donald Trump or the next Congress tries to repeal or block further action under the Inflation Reduction Act.

The $94 million grant announced for the Cleveland port is the largest it has ever received and will help it build on work that’s already underway to electrify and decarbonize its infrastructure. 

“It puts us at the forefront of decarbonization,” said William Friedman, president and chief executive officer of Cleveland’s port authority. “Now we’ll be able to start figuring out what’s the phase-in and then how do we move forward with the next round.”

The Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority will get approximately $25 million for solar panels, charging infrastructure and electric cargo handling equipment, and another $95 million will go to the Illinois EPA for solar, battery storage and hydrogen-related investments at the Illinois International Port District serving greater Chicago.

The largest share of grants will go to ports along the East and West coasts. “But the program is also intended to set the foundation for transitioning the entire port industry to zero emissions,” said Jennifer Macedonia, a deputy assistant administrator for U.S. EPA. “And there are important communities around many of our inland ports as well.”

The shipping industry accounts for roughly 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. While the bulk of that is from ships themselves, port operations typically rely on diesel power for most of their energy. And ships often burn fuel to power equipment even while they’re in port.

The EPA’s review process included ensuring that selected projects can achieve or exceed goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as other pollution that can affect nearby communities, said U.S. EPA Administrator Michael Regan. Those criteria air pollutants are ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

The work is especially important for Ohio, which has lagged other Midwest states and regions in deploying strategies to reduce greenhouse gases, said Valerie Katz, deputy director for Cuyahoga Green Energy. “Our regional decarbonization efforts will reduce environmental exposure to toxic air pollutants for downstream Ohio communities.”

Funding for the Port of Cleveland will encompass work for electric cargo-handling equipment and vessels that serve the port, along with solar generation and battery storage, charging infrastructure and shore power for vessels. Project partners include Logistec USA, the commercial operator for day-to-day operations, as well as the Great Lakes Towing Company, which will build two electric tug boats.

Decarbonization is a “competitive advantage that will attract more shipping volume to our port,” said Baiju Shah, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. “Companies are striving to reduce their environmental footprints through their operations and value chains,” including Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions. “In addition, electrifying the port operations supports our region’s clean air efforts.”

That’s especially important given the port’s location near the downtown lakefront and riverfront areas, Shah said. Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River are the focus for several waterfront development projects aimed at drawing more business and visitors to Cleveland.  

Funding for the Port of Detroit will go toward electric cargo-handling equipment, some vessels and railcar movers, along with charging infrastructure and solar generation. Part of the money also will be used to develop a roadmap for adding EV and hydrogen fueling infrastructure. The Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority is part of the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen, or MachH2, which was selected last year for $1 billion in Department of Energy funding for a hydrogen hub.

Funding for the Illinois International Port District will cover a variety of projects for its three ports, including hydrogen fueling infrastructure, solar energy and battery storage, and hydrogen and electric cargo handling equipment. Hydrogen and electric locomotives also are on EPA’s program selections list. The Illinois EPA is the lead partner for the grant work.

Like its counterpart in Cleveland, the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority had already begun working on plans to move to cleaner energy sources for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. But zero-emissions equipment to move cargo is new in the U.S. shipping industry and is still generally more expensive than fossil-fueled counterparts.

“What’s great about the EPA grant is that it helps these businesses make the decision to choose this cleaner technology,” said Mark Schrupp, executive director for the Detroit port authority. Over time, costs for such equipment should come down, but the grants will help launch market growth.

Various projects among the 55 selected for grants last month have planning components and provisions for community engagement or workforce development. Planning work on emissions inventories can position other ports to move ahead with clean energy in the future, Macedonia said.

The U.S. EPA plans to move ahead swiftly to finalize grant agreements, which will have the effect of protecting the funds from a possible clawback under Trump or the next Congress.

“We will be awarding the grants in December of 2024 and January of 2025… so that money will be obligated on or before the end of this administration,” Regan said. Depending on the projects, implementation will occur over the next three to four years.

In Cleveland, that means a big chunk of work under the new grant will be taking place even as renovation of the Port of Cleveland’s Warehouse A and electrical work take place under its current projects.

“We’ll have to throw a lot here at the engineers and construction project management people to figure this out,” Friedman said. Yet the timing means it will be that much sooner for the port to move to zero emissions for its own operations.

Great Lakes ports will get a share of U.S. EPA funding to move shipping off fossil fuels is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by Mel Mackinm, director of state policy at Ceres, a nonprofit that works with investors and companies to advance clean energy policy. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

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Look out across Michigan and you’ll see groundbreakings for major solar panel manufacturing sites, huge investments to build battery cells, and sparkling new facilities to ensure the state stays in the driver’s seat as the auto industry moves into the future.

It seems Michigan manufacturing is having a moment.

It’s little wonder why. Michigan has always had the legacy, the workforce, the supply chains, and the know-how to serve as the epicenter of an American manufacturing renaissance. That’s exactly what’s happened since Congress finalized the nation’s largest-ever clean energy investment in the summer of 2022.

Powered by incentives for companies to manufacture and deploy clean energy infrastructure and technology here in the U.S., the Inflation Reduction Act has unlocked more than $360 billion in private-sector investment in less than two years, according to research from Climate Power. Its impact has been felt in every corner of the country with hundreds of new projects taking shape to build innovative technologies, employ hundreds of thousands of workers, and power the economy – all while cutting costs and pollution. But no other state has seen as much activity as Michigan, the site of 58 new clean energy projects.

Michigan policymakers deserve some credit for moving quickly to take full advantage of this opportunity. In 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made clear in her MI Healthy Climate Plan that she wanted to make Michigan one of the best places in the world to build and deploy clean energy. Lawmakers since followed her lead with legislation that will move the state to 100% clean electricity by 2040 and ensure clean power infrastructure can be built both quickly and responsibly – a pair of laws that boasted ample support from Michigan companies that recognize confronting climate change is also an economic opportunity.

These policies were designed to fully harness the Inflation Reduction Act, making clear that the state is ready to support the growing number of businesses that supply or rely on innovative clean technology. In response, businesses that include classic Michigan manufacturers like GM, global brands like Corning, and upstarts like Lucid Motors have flooded the state with more than $21.5 billion in new clean energy innovation and manufacturing investment, creating some 20,100 new jobs.

With projects located from Detroit to Holland to Traverse City, so much of the state is already benefitting. That includes communities that have so far been left behind in the 21st century economy. About half of the state’s recent clean energy investment is located in rural or low-income areas, such as Norm Fasteners’ $77 million facility that will create 200 electric vehicle supply chain jobs in Bath Charter Township.

Now is not the time to slow down. We are now in the throes of the 2024 election, and we all know Michigan has been getting a lot of attention. No matter what happens in November, Michigan and the U.S. must continue investing in this revamped manufacturing base. Policymakers on both sides of the aisle have prioritized rebuilding American industry to provide good jobs and bolster U.S. leadership

Michigan’s clean energy manufacturing boom provides clear evidence that this shared goal is coming to fruition. Policymakers at both the federal and state levels, along with leaders in the private sector, must maintain this momentum and the strong policy environment that will allow the U.S. and its workforce to lead the global economy in the emerging industries of the future – with Michigan, as it so often has, standing strong as the foundation.

Commentary: Michigan is the epicenter of America’s clean energy manufacturing renaissance is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by Laura Sherman, president of the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

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Last year, Michigan got attention as the first Midwestern state to adopt an energy storage standard. Energy storage is essential for the clean energy transition because it allows clean electricity initially generated by sources like wind and solar to be available at all times.

The standard calls for 2,500 MW of energy storage to be deployed by 2030. This storage will be fulfilled by a range of technologies, with lithium-ion batteries, the type of the storage that has grown rapidly across the U.S. and the world in recent years, chief among them. But it’s not too early to start thinking about how this standard (and future standards) will also involve new technologies that serve different needs, including shifting low-cost energy over longer periods of time to support electric reliability and affordability. A U.S. Department of Energy report found that to achieve a net-zero economy, the U.S. grid may need 225 GW to 460 GW of long-duration energy storage by 2050. By comparison, the U.S. currently has over 500 GW of gas power plants, and battery storage capacity is expected to double to about 30 GW by the end of this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Fortunately, Michigan’s energy legislation anticipated this need. The legislation that created the 2030 storage target also ordered Michigan regulators to report to lawmakers on the potential for long-duration and multi-day energy storage. The Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) is in the midst of this study right now.

But how is “long-duration” energy storage different from the battery storage that is growing quickly in Michigan and across the country right now? It’s all about the concept of duration, which refers to how long a storage resource like a battery can discharge stored energy until it is out of capacity. Most of the batteries being built at utility scale right now have a duration of around four hours. But long-duration storage refers to resources that have a duration of over 8 hours and up to well over 100 hours.

This longer duration unlocks capabilities that will make 100% clean electricity a reality. Short-duration storage right now can cover shortfalls in wind and solar on an hour-by-hour basis. But what about if there is a shortfall in energy supply expected not for just a few hours, but from one day to the next? Or from one month to the next? Those situations arise especially in seasons like winter, where cloud cover can linger and hamper solar energy production for extended periods of time. That is where the need for long-duration storage comes in. Long-duration storage could become a capacity resource that grid operators can tap to reliably deal with long-term fluctuations in energy supply, like those caused by changes in the season from summer to winter.

What would this type of energy storage actually look like in practice? Two companies that are members of the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council are potential examples.

• Energy Dome’s above ground compressed gas technology, the “CO2 Battery,” is a closed-loop system that holds carbon dioxide gas in a large dome structure. Using electricity from solar panels and wind turbines, this gas is heated and compressed into a liquid, which can be easily stored at room temperature. When discharging, the liquid is evaporated, and the resulting gas spins a turbine, generating electricity when needed, often with one full cycle per day (8+ hours of discharging). The company is currently constructing its first full-scale plant in Sardinia, Italy, with the project nearing completion. In the U.S., another plant is soon to follow, with project proponent Alliant Energy recently filing for regulatory approval of the Columbia Energy Storage Project in Wisconsin.
• Form Energy is commercializing a multi-day energy storage technology, a 100-hour duration iron-air battery for utility-scale applications. Essentially, the battery rusts and un-rusts iron to store and release electricity. Form Energy has constructed a new factory to manufacture these batteries domestically, and is working to deploy the first large-scale demonstrations of its technology with utilities like Great River Energy, Xcel Energy, Dominion and Georgia Power in 2025 and 2026.

A tremendous amount of innovative work will need to happen between now and the realization of the full potential for long-duration storage. There are a few things Michigan regulators should do with their study to best set up the state to reap the benefits from these emerging technologies:

First, the Commission should set clear targets for how much long-duration and multi-day storage utilities need to procure in coming years. Utilities are generally conservative and hesitant to pursue new technologies unless pushed or clearly allowed. But this problem is particularly heightened when it comes to long-duration storage. That’s because utilities, if given a megawatt target for storage they must deploy, will likely acquire storage without considering the benefits of having a diverse portfolio of technologies that can deliver energy over different durations. As a result, Michigan may lose out on the operational benefits that come from having a diversified storage portfolio. These benefits include the ability of long-duration storage to make firing up high-emitting, fossil-fuel-burning peaker plants unnecessary because the storage can provide more reliable, cleaner and cheaper alternatives. They also include overall cost and land-use savings, by storing renewable energy when it would otherwise be wasted and shifting it over long time periods when it is most needed.

Second, speaking of substitutes for fossil fuel plants, the Commission should identify which power plant sites around the state could be good candidates for being replaced with long-duration storage projects. Michigan’s coal-fired power plants are almost all retired, with Consumers Energy this year set to retire its final coal plant in Ottawa County. Long-duration storage could be fitting replacements for not only those plants, but also gas plants that will be reaching the end of their life cycles in coming years.

With its storage targets, Michigan has already become one of the national leaders in energy storage. Let’s further cement that reputation by taking steps now for smart planning for long-duration storage. All Michiganders stand to benefit from the potential for long-duration storage to enable an electric grid that is cleaner, lower-cost and more reliable.

Commentary: How Michigan regulators can help advance energy storage is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.