Garrick Rochow stepped into the figurative corner office at Consumers Energy Co. in December 2020 when the utility company's downtown Jackson headquarters was still largely deserted and COVID-19 vaccines were just becoming available.

Nearly 18 months later, Rochow has settled in as president and CEO of Consumers — and started going back to the office — to lead amid a new reality that running a business with both extensive operations in the field and the office isn't going to be the same.

Rochow will speak at this week's Mackinac Policy Conference about how the COVID-19 pandemic and social change over the past two years has altered the role of chief executive officers.

Ahead of the Detroit Regional Chamber's annual confab on Mackinac Island, Rochow talked to Crain's about his experiences and where the utility company is headed in its bid to rid itself of coal and build tens of thousands of acres of solar installations. This partial transcript has been edited for clarity.

Rochow: I don't think anyone knew that this pandemic was going to play out over multiple years. ... Certainly I didn't envision this long-term type pandemic, and I would suggest even today we're still working through it with different variants (of the virus) across the world, across the country and certainly here in Michigan. One of the things that sticks in my mind is we were preparing the organization ... with men and women who are out in all kinds of elements. They work with invisible hazards every day. They work with natural gas — you can't see it, you can smell it. Electricity, you can't see it. These are rugged individuals — men and women out restoring power or digging ditches in some of the best and worst conditions.

And I was up in Alma at the service there talking about the potential of this pandemic — and again this was when we were still face-to-face — and I had a big group ... around me and we were talking about precautionary measures and the like. After the conversation was over, I had two or three individuals come over and say, 'I'm worried. I have a mom I'm taking care of at home. Or I have a disabled child. I'm not worried about myself, but I'm worried about I'm going bring it home to them.' These individuals, these rugged men and women, deal with hazards every day that are invisible. But this virus really caught their attention. And I knew at that point this was going to be something different than we've ever experienced as a company.

That's how it led up into the pandemic, and it's been a bit of a roller coaster at times over the last couple of years.

Great question. What we found with any hazard is communication. We spend a lot of time on communication and ensuring we got the personal protective equipment out. ... For our field people, we still needed to respond to our customers, we still needed to put in electric infrastructure. ... Typically in a bucket truck, there's two people riding around in a bucket truck. We had to separate them. We had to take two vehicles to the job site. ... We had to think through every piece of the work to make sure they had separation but also that they were equipped with the right PPE. A lot conversations, a lot of face-to-face work, great relationships with our union to be able to navigate through some of those times early on in the pandemic to keep people safe, but also ensure delivery of electricity and natural gas.

We're returning back to the office. Depending on your role, depending on the amount of interface you have with your other co-workers, leaders have to define what that looks like. We don't have any kind of mandate across the company that says, 'Thou shall be in three days a week.' It's really a conversation with the leaders of your individual group and the groups that you support. In engineering, typically they're supporting the field people, they're in (the office) more days a week, typically three to five days a week. Our accounting team is different; they might be in one to two days a week, depending on the nature of their work.

Let me draw a bridge between the economic development and renewables. We are seeing more and more customers want green energy as part of their sustainability. A company like General Motors, not only did they make a big announcement (in January about electric vehicle investments in Michigan), what probably went under the radar during that big announcement is they also made a commitment to five plants within the state going to 100 percent renewable energy. We are providing that renewable energy. We're doing some work with Spectrum Health to provide renewable energy. ... We see more and more communities and companies make the choice for renewable energy. And when they are looking to locate here in Michigan, they're asking about what is that renewable energy makeup. That can be an important part of economic development in the state.

Either their customers are pressing on them, their shareholders are pressing on them or it's just broader sustainability targets they've taken on as a company. But here's the short story on our clean energy plan that provides affordable energy for Michigan: We're going to be retiring coal by 2025. That's a 60 percent carbon reduction, aligns us with the Paris Accord. We're going to have cleaner air in Michigan, and that is great for residents. And we can do that by building out 8,000 megawatts of solar. That's a lot of solar ... which gets to the other part of your question. That's going to be on commercial and industrial rooftops, it's going to be in some cases brownfields and there's going to be green fields that will have to built out as well. That's the land need that we have.

There are some logistics issues. It really helps if you're thinking about it from a new construction standpoint and you're designing it from the beginning. It gets into things like loading on the building and weight on the roof. You've got to figure it into the snow load of the building. For older construction, it still can be done but you still have to worry about roof penetrations and leaks within the membranes. ... We find greenfield construction (of solar arrays) is about one-third of the cost of putting (panels) on a roofing system. Roofs will be part of the solution. I won't discount that. But we do have to look at the cost piece and how we build it in.

Readers are invited to submit a letter to the editor or connect with us on social media (we're on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram)

Staying current is easy with Crain's news delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge. Click below to see everything we have to offer.

With a Crain’s Detroit Subscription you get exclusive access, insights and experiences to help you succeed in business.

Helping you succeed in business since 1985.

1155 Gratiot Avenue Detroit MI  48207-2997