When Big Energy was figuring out how to distribute power from Holland to Hancock — or Detroit to Denver for that matter — there was a roadmap of sorts. Transmission lines would stretch out from coal plants, generally follow established rail and highway rights of way, cut through land acquired generations ago and provide you with a hot shower on demand.
If only the path to provide infrastructure for sustainable energy in Michigan were that linear.
In Zeeland, 10 minutes as the crow flies just outside of Holland, we are seeing this play out in real time.
German-based energy producer RWE wants to build the Silver Maple Solar Project, a roughly a $300 million, 200-megawatt solar development covering about 1,900 acres in Zeeland and Jamestown townships. RWE says it could power 34,000 homes, create 250 jobs and generate more than $30 million in tax revenue over the life of the plant.
The state has embraced the need for clean energy, and we must respect the rights of those who have agreed to lease their land to RWE for the plant. But balancing the plans, rights and desires of government, citizens, property owners and Big Energy seems as complex as building original grid infrastructure must have been.
This is why this isn’t an easy good-guys-versus-bad-guys story.
Take the 20,000-foot view in the part of Ottawa County eyed for Silver Maple, and another number matters: 1,900 acres. Much of it is agricultural land, and for those who live here and have farmed here it is not an abstract argument about the state’s renewable energy  goals. It is about what happens to locals and what their community will look like years from now.
Michigan’s Public Act 233 shifted authority over renewable energy projects to the Michigan Public Service Commission. Zeeland Township has filed a lawsuit which is requiring RWE to hold public hearings before it moves forward with the plan. The Legislature’s reasoning is understandable. Michigan cannot set clean energy goals and then make them impossible because communities can block virtually every major project.
Nevertheless, local government is where democracy is closest to the people. It is the township meeting where your neighbor sits three rows over. It is the planning commission where someone who farmed the same land for 40 years can tell you what a solar plant would mean for her family. Hundreds of citizens have made their voices heard at public hearings, most recently on Sept. 11.
The dissonance is turning ordinary people into activists. I’ve seen this play out in Marshall, where residents raised questions about the massive Ford battery plant. I watched recently in Augusta Township, where Wendy Alvers and a team of accidental activists gathered more than 1,500 signatures in a fight over a proposed data center.
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Albers and others fighting against the zoning of land for a data center in Augusta Township weren’t necessarily against technology. The people of Marshall weren’t against jobs.
And Zeeland residents opposing Silver Maple don’t have to be against renewable energy to ask whether 1,900 acres of their community is the right place to put it. The harder question is whether the people who live where change is happening believe they had a meaningful role in shaping it. There is an important distinction between being anti-development and demanding responsible development.
This much is true. We need solar farms, transmission lines, battery plants and data centers. New technologies such as AI will require more electricity.
Just as it did more than 100 years ago, Michigan’s economic and energy transition is going to happen near someone’s road, beside somebody’s farm and behind somebody’s house.
In order for this transition to succeed, as it always does, there are going to be growing pains.
Big Energy should have a voice. Landowners should have a voice. And the state has a legitimate interest in Michigan’s energy future.
Byron McCauley is a regional columnist at USA Today Co. Email bmccauley@usatodayco.com. Call 517-267-1307. Follow him @byronmccauley on X (formerly Twitter).

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