Let’s Find and Fund Our Own Michigan Climate Action Projects

Community Energy Solutions, LLC, is a supporter of the 2025 Michigan Climate Action Summit, held at the Lansing Center on September 9. Principal Researcher Tom Stanton gave this five-minute "Flash Talk" presentation at the conference. The handout and text of the presentation are included here. Links to more details about many topics are included.

Cover slide for presentation.

Thank you all for being here today. I am going to talk with you now for just 5 minutes about how we can find and fund  our own Climate Action projects, starting now, using relatively unknown but perfectly legal and quite safe and low-risk financial instruments that make it easy, fun, affordable, and doable. Please see me later with your questions or comments.

I have a single sheet handout here for those of you who want one. My associate Sean Monroe is pasting them out now, until they are gone. And, all this content and more is in a blog on my website:  communityenergysolutions.info.  

My premise today is simple, with just three main ideas for you.

Number 1: Almost none of our politicians, our governments at any level, our hundreds and thousands of institutions, and our businesses – whether global, statewide, or local – are acting in everyone’s best interest, and/or they are not acting fast enough or comprehensively enough to address our climate emergency. Therefore,

Number 2: We should pick up the readily  available and proven but as yet little known tools, and we should lead the way by investing our own dollars, and inviting our families, friends, neighbors, and colleagues to join us in building and maintaining proven solutions that will grow community-centered wealth for all. And,

Number 3:  These ideas are already being pilot tested starting right now in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Petoskey, in the multi-millions-of-dollars.

I am talking primarily, though not necessary exclusively, about project financing, which means we can and will identify projects that have high likelihood of success. Financing projects means careful and thorough engineering analysis will identify both the risks and likely rewards ahead of time, to ensure the projects are not pie in the sky, and not imaginary. Rather, they will be combinations of already proven and readily provable projects that we can be quite sure of ahead of time, because they are well thought out and their designs will be as close to failsafe and fool-proof as they can be.

When we group together into investment pools multiple, non-identical projects, the total pooled risks decline rapidly – quite literally approaching zero – as the risks are spread across multiple projects, by the tens and eventually by the hundreds or even thousands of projects. 

Great project opportunities exist by the hundreds already, and you are undoubtedly already thinking of others that are ready to deploy at the neighborhood, village, township, and community levels. 

I have already been dedicating some of my own retirement funds to proving these ideas for myself, over the past few years, by investing in great triple-bottom-line projects both in Michigan and elsewhere, while I am earning an average now of just about eight percent, using my tax-deferred IRA funds. 

I think of six major project categories or types already, and I’m confident that together we can think of many more. We are looking for any and all project types that will offer combinations of what Governor Rick Snyder called “relentless positive action” combined with multiple tangible and even legally binding community benefits. I also suggest we are looking for projects that will easily attract like-minded people who have an affinity for particular people, places, and things.   

My six are in the handout already. Starting now we can, as one of my mentors says, “move our investment dollars away from Wall Street and onto our local Main Streets.”  We can invest in Michigan climate action projects; Michigan farming and food systems projects; Michigan community-energy projects; Michigan clean-water and water conservation projects; and Michigan utility bill cost-saving programs. 

I believe my ideas are especially relevant for the large numbers of low- and moderate-income Michiganders who are already struggling to pay for their essential needs for energy, water, transportation, communications, and health care. As many as one-quarter to one-third of all Michigan utility customers are living not more than one missed paycheck or one equipment breakdown from utility service shut-offs and possible homelessness. They are in desperate need of projects that can help them to greatly reduce their monthly expenses, while also offering them meaningful opportunities for improved health and well being, well-paying jobs, and opportunities to actually grow out of and escape from poverty. The best programs in the country are already achieving fifty percent or more monthly utility bill cost savings, across the board, with no-money down and monthly repayments much less than the previous utility bills. We know that this can work using our investment dollars and we know that our existing programs have been tried for fifty years without actually solving the problems. We can and must do better.   

I leave you with the idea that you should not take my word about any of this, but you should look for yourselves at the many available resources and case studies that demonstrate how and why these projects can work and already are working to address our climate emergency and what is now being understood as our multi-dimensional, interlinked, catastrophic emergencies.  My handout includes at least a dozen major references and information sources to help explain further. 

Like you might hear at any other “multi-level marketing” meeting, I am inviting you to come in on the ground floor, and help us to build together our own achievable and affordable paradise.  THANK YOU!