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After running into a buzzsaw in federal court, the DOE and their investor owned utility pets are trying again to "fix" what they call "the stalled transmission policy process created in the 2005 Energy Policy Act."

What they really mean is that they haven't been successful in subverting state authority so that they can site money-making new transmission projects.  Last fall, DOE & FERC, assisted by industry lobbyists, cooked up a scheme to federalize transmission siting.  They got caught and slapped by the states and members of Congress, and supposedly dropped their plan to give authority to designate NIETCs to FERC.  However, the plan lives on.

The 2012 "congestion study" now underway can best be summed up by this quote:

"The effect of the new plan would be to allow transmission developers or other industry participants to propose transmission congestion responses that would be incorporated into DOE-designated corridors."

In other words... allowing greedy corporations to tell them where they wish to site a transmission line, and then DOE will designate a "congestion corridor" to go along with the corporation's proposal.

Cart.  Horse.

DOE - not the brightest bulb in the string...

"It was euphoric for me to be with the regulators and see the light bulbs go off when they realized some of the information they hadn't been getting," she said. "This process helped to give them that data."
 


Comments

bh link
01/20/2012 4:32pm

I was struck last fall by how quickly all pretense of these "congestion studies" being some kind of objective analysis has slipped away. In the 2005 EPAct, there was at least the claim that having DoE, in consultation with the states (that was what got DoE nailed in the Ninth Circuit), do the congestion studies would provide this objectivity smokescreen.

Last fall, when we got to see Wellinghoff's FERC proposal on congestion studies, we saw the plan to let power companies do the congestion studies as they were developing their power line projects. I got the impression this would be some kind of PATH bat guy "study." Well, that bozo plan didn't fly, as Keryn pointed out.

So now we have DoE telling us that they are going the let the power companies do the studies all over again.

The fact is, the feds want to turn it all over to the corporate guys. They can't do it quickly enough.

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Keryn
01/20/2012 7:43pm

Looks like the E&E News link died :-(

I guess dim bulb Lauren Azar got pissed that so many people were making fun of her faux pas. :-)

I guess now you'll all just have to take my word for it!

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