Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Michigan Public Service Commission agreed on Friday to tap Consumers Energy customers for another $153.8 million to fund the governor’s climate goals.

Michigan’s largest energy provider will increase rates for average residential customers by about $2.78 per month beginning on April 4, just over a year after the monopoly utility imposed a $92 million rate hike for some of the least reliable service in the country.

“We plan to roll up our sleeves and accelerate building the electric grid for the next generation,” Greg Salisbury, the company’s vice president of grid design, said in a statement. “We want our neighbors to know we will be working every day to make our system more reliable and more resilient to keep the lights on, even after the worst storms.”

Consumers initially requested an increase of $325 million when it filed the rate hike request with the MPSC in May 2024, just 91 days after the commission approved a $92 million hike that was cut down from $216 million.

The 2025 rate hike is expected to cover $125 million for Consumers’ tree-trimming program, as well as “infrastructure upgrades and proactive maintenance planning to find, fix and prevent issues” and “more technology investments to detect and respond more quickly to power outages.”

Consumers provides electricity and natural gas to 6.8 million Michiganders across all 68 Lower Peninsula counties.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and other intervenors in the rate case urged the MPSC, which is comprised of three members appointed by Whitmer, to significantly reduce Consumers’ requested rate hike.

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Nessel submitted testimony that argued Consumers should receive no more than $82.9 million, and the AG blasted both of the state’s monopoly utilities – Consumers and DTE – over the “never-ending cycle” of increases following MPSC approval on Friday.

“Only 12 months since their last rate hike was approved, Consumers Energy customers are facing yet another rate hike in what has become a never-ending cycle,” Nessel said in a statement. “Consumers Energy and DTE keep coming back to the trough, and over and over again Michiganders are forced to pay higher and higher bills just to keep the lights on.”

Nessel notes the MPSC approved a $217 million rate hike for DTE’s electric customers in January, and the utility is already preparing another rate hike request for next month.

Friday’s approval for Consumers follows less than a month after the MPSC approved a plan that could require the company and DTE to pay fines of up to $10 million if the companies don’t cut down on power outages in the coming years.

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On the flip side, the utilities could pocket the same amount, if they do.

“Our goal from the beginning was to develop a framework that, above all, drives improvement in reliability, particularly in the areas that are most frustrating for customers,” MPSC Chair Dan Scripps said in a statement. “By staying focused on a relatively small number of performance metrics closely tied to the most acute pain points experienced by customers, I’m confident that this framework will help accelerate the progress we’re already seeing in distribution and reliability improvement.”

The plan had been in the works for two years, inspired by hundreds of thousands of Michiganders left shivering in the dark amid an ice storm in early 2023, MLive reports.

Roughly 934,000 customers lost power in that Feb. 23 storm, which downed roughly 11,000 power lines, according to The Detroit News.

The miserable experience is among scores of annual blackouts for Michiganders, who pay some of the highest rates for some of the least reliable service in the country.

An audit by Liberty Consulting Group released in September found both DTE and Consumers were “worse than average” in terms of power outages, restoration delays, and tree-trimming in both 2022 and 2023.

The Liberty report trailed analysis of data from the research nonprofit Climate Central last year that showed Michigan residents suffer more and longer power outages than all but two states, despite paying 11% more for their monthly bill than the U.S. average, Bridge Michigan reports.

The analysis found only Texas and California – the top two states for population – have recorded more major power outages impacting 50,000-plus customers than Michigan, putting the state ahead of all others in the Great Lakes region and states routinely impacted by hurricanes, such as Louisiana and Florida.

Those struggles continue as Consumers and DTE work to comply with Whitmer’s government-forced transition to renewable energy that requires 100% “clean sources” by 2040.

That transition is tied to a broader MI Healthy Climate Plan to push the state to carbon neutrality by 2050.

Whitmer insisted when she signed a “historic clean energy and climate action package” into law in 2023 those efforts would “lower household utility costs by an average of $145 a year, create 160,000 good-paying jobs, and bring nearly $8 billion of federal tax dollars home to Michigan for clean energy projects.”

In the months since, Whitmer’s MPSC has approved hundreds of millions in rate hikes for customers, many of the governor’s taxpayer-funded clean energy projects have stalled, and the number of unemployed Michiganders has swelled by more than 65,000.