Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk

Market Price Risk

The Electric and Gas businesses have commodity price risk, primarily related to the purchases of coal, natural gas, uranium, and electricity. However, the Registrants do not bear significant exposure to earnings risk, as such changes are included in the PSCR and GCR regulatory rate-recovery mechanisms. In addition, changes in the price of natural gas can impact the valuation of lost and stolen gas, storage sales, and transportation services revenue at the Gas segment. The Gas segment manages its market price risk related to storage sales revenue primarily through the sale of long-term storage contracts. The Registrants are exposed to short-term cash flow or liquidity risk as a result of the time differential between actual cash settlements and regulatory rate recovery.

DTE Energy's Gas Storage and Pipelines segment is dependent on the continued availability of natural gas production and reserves in its areas of operation. Low prices for natural gas, including those resulting from regional basis differentials, could adversely affect development of additional reserves and production that is accessible to our pipeline and storage

assets. DTE Energy manages its exposure through the use of short, medium, and long-term storage, gathering, and transportation contracts.

DTE Energy's Power and Industrial Projects business segment is subject to electricity, natural gas, and coal product price risk. DTE Energy manages its exposure to commodity price risk through the use of long-term contracts.

DTE Energy's Energy Trading business segment has exposure to electricity, natural gas, environmental, crude oil, heating oil, and foreign currency exchange price fluctuations. These risks are managed by the energy marketing and trading operations through the use of forward energy, capacity, storage, options, and futures contracts, within predetermined risk parameters.

Credit Risk

Bankruptcies

DTE Energy's Power and Industrial Projects segment holds ownership interests in, and operates, five generating plants that sell electric output from renewable sources under long-term power purchase agreements with PG&E. PG&E filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on January 29, 2019. PG&E emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy effective July 1, 2020. DTE's renewable power purchase agreements were assumed under PG&E's Reorganization Plan and payment has been received for all past due receivables related to these agreements.

Allowance for Doubtful Accounts

The Registrants regularly review contingent matters, existing and future economic conditions, customer trends and other factors relating to customers and their contracts and record provisions for amounts considered at risk of probable loss in the allowance for doubtful accounts. The Registrants believe their accrued amounts are adequate for probable loss.

Trading Activities

DTE Energy is exposed to credit risk through trading activities. Credit risk is the potential loss that may result if the trading counterparties fail to meet their contractual obligations. DTE Energy utilizes both external and internal credit assessments when determining the credit quality of trading counterparties.

The following table displays the credit quality of DTE Energy's trading counterparties as of December 31, 2020:

(a)This category includes counterparties with minimum credit ratings of Baa3 assigned by Moody’s Investors Service (Moody’s) or BBB- assigned by Standard & Poor’s Rating Group, a division of McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (Standard & Poor’s). The five largest counterparty exposures, combined, for this category represented 13% of the total gross credit exposure.

(b)This category includes counterparties with credit ratings that are below investment grade. The five largest counterparty exposures, combined, for this category represented 1% of the total gross credit exposure.

(c)This category includes counterparties that have not been rated by Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s but are considered investment grade based on DTE Energy’s evaluation of the counterparty’s creditworthiness. The five largest counterparty exposures, combined, for this category represented 14% of the total gross credit exposure.

(d)This category includes counterparties that have not been rated by Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s and are considered non-investment grade based on DTE Energy’s evaluation of the counterparty’s creditworthiness. The five largest counterparty exposures, combined, for this category represented 4% of the total gross credit exposure.

Other

The Registrants engage in business with customers that are non-investment grade. The Registrants closely monitor the credit ratings of these customers and, when deemed necessary and permitted under the tariffs, request collateral or guarantees from such customers to secure their obligations.

Interest Rate Risk

DTE Energy is subject to interest rate risk in connection with the issuance of debt. In order to manage interest costs, DTE Energy may use treasury locks and interest rate swap agreements. DTE Energy's exposure to interest rate risk arises primarily from changes in U.S. Treasury rates, commercial paper rates, and LIBOR. As of December 31, 2020, DTE Energy had floating rate debt of $38 million and a floating rate debt-to-total debt ratio of 0.2%.

Foreign Currency Exchange Risk

DTE Energy has foreign currency exchange risk arising from market price fluctuations associated with fixed priced contracts. These contracts are denominated in Canadian dollars and are primarily for the purchase and sale of natural gas and power, as well as for long-term transportation capacity. To limit DTE Energy's exposure to foreign currency exchange fluctuations, DTE Energy has entered into a series of foreign currency exchange forward contracts through June 2030.

Summary of Sensitivity Analyses

Sensitivity analyses were performed on the fair values of commodity contracts for DTE Energy and long-term debt obligations for the Registrants. The commodity contracts listed below principally relate to energy marketing and trading activities. The sensitivity analyses involved increasing and decreasing forward prices and rates at December 31, 2020 and 2019 by a hypothetical 10% and calculating the resulting change in the fair values. The hypothetical losses related to long-term debt would be realized only if DTE Energy transferred all of its fixed-rate long-term debt to other creditors.

The results of the sensitivity analyses:

For further discussion of market risk, see Management's Discussion and Analysis in Item 7 of this Report and Note 14 to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of this Report, "Financial and Other Derivative Instruments."