StopPATH WV
  • News
  • StopPATH WV Blog
  • FAQ
  • Events
  • Fundraisers
  • Make a Donation
  • Landowner Resources
  • About PATH
  • Get Involved
  • Commercials
  • Links
  • About Us
  • Contact

How The Media Sausage Factory Cranks Out Fake News

4/30/2022

3 Comments

 
Picture
What happens when the people who create "news" have a political or ideological bias?  The "news" they crank out no longer presents facts and allows the reader to decide.  Biased media thinks readers are too stupid to make the same biased conclusions they would when presented with actual facts, therefore the media makes up facts that are not really facts at all in order to skew the conclusion the reader would draw from the story without the made-up facts.

Here's a look inside the sausage factory of biased news creation that demonstrates how the media lies to you, dear reader.

Our case study: Price of Progress:  Grain Belt Express Pits Public Benefit and Private Property Rights in Race Against Climate Change.  Kind of a screwy headline for a piece that was supposed to tell landowner's stories.  The headline tells you a lot.  Race?  The idea that we have to hurry up and "beat" climate change by building a transmission line with with only one customer for less than 10% of the line's capacity is so much created hogwash.  In the global picture, the effect of Grain Belt Express is infinitesimal.  It won't actually "beat" climate change.  But it will beat agriculture and struggling farmers in Missouri, adding a new impediment to their production and a burden on their finances and heritage.

There's a lot screwy about this story, but let's focus on just one "fact" in the story:
For the 39 municipalities in Missouri signed up to buy power off the line, it’s an estimated $12.8 million in annual savings.
It's not a quote of someone's opinion, it's a statement of "fact".  Facts require investigation on the part of a reporter, especially "facts" that present such a specific number.  If there's an estimate with such a specific figure, then there must be data used to reach that estimate.  Show us your math, right?

The municipalities have not shown anyone their math since January 2017.  That's 5 years ago.  In 2017, the municipalities' witness at the Missouri PSC said:
As stated in the rebuttal testimony of Duncan Kincheloe, MJMEUC’s president and general manager, our current arrangement with Illinois Power Marketing Company (“IPM”) for 100 MWs of energy and capacity will expire in 2021, and that contract currently serves the needs of the Missouri Public Energy Pool (MoPEP). We have been actively considering sources to replace this energy and capacity.
What was it that Kincheloe said?
In 2021, a contract for 100 MWs of energy and capacity with Illinois Power Marketing Company (IPM) (former Ameren coal plants in Illinois, now owned by Dynegy) will expire. That energy and capacity will need to be replaced. That contract currently serves MoPEP, a group of 35 Missouri cities for which MJMEUC provides full requirements for wholesale energy, capacity and ancillary services. The TSA with Grain Belt and the power purchase agreement with Infinity Wind would allow the MoPEP to replace the current 100 MWs of purchased power in MISO with more affordable energy. John Grotzinger will explain in his rebuttal testimony that while the TSA and corresponding contract with Infinity Wind will not by themselves replace the IPM contract, these contracts will form the cornerstone of the resource mix to replace the IPM contract.
So, the municipalities' savings argument rests on replacing IPM with GBE + a contract for wind in Kansas.  A low price is supposed to replace a higher price and result in savings.  But what year is this?  It's 2022.  The IPM contract expired last year.  What did the municipalities replace that energy with?  It can't be GBE, because GBE is still limping along trying to get permitted in Illinois.  Nothing has been built.  Was the new contract as expensive as IPM?  Or was it cheaper?  Where's the math using the new contract amount?  Did the municipalities even do the math?  It was the reporter's job to ask, especially since she was tipped off that there has been nothing shown since 2017 to back up their "estimate."  They just keep spitting out the same numbers even though the underlying equation has changed drastically.

But the reporter has been unable to say whether or not she verified this "fact" in her story.  First she claimed it was an estimate, as if using that word absolved her of verifying the estimated number.  When asked if she did verify the number, she stopped responding.  I will presume that means the answer is no.  What a pity!  She was quite engaging and promised to tell the real story that others in the media were missing.  But, in the end, she ended up repeating the same old out-of-date information from the municipalities and other corporate propaganda from Invenergy.

Is the media incapable of telling a factual story?  Must all truth be ground up in the media sausage factory before it is presented to a public presumed to be too ignorant to come to its own conclusions?

Don't count on them to tell a factual story.
3 Comments

FERC Mistakes Grain Belt Express for Shinola

4/27/2022

0 Comments

 
...and that's why its shoes don't shine.
Picture
Last week, FERC issued a proposed new transmission planning and cost allocation rule.  It's a beast of more than 400 pages of FERCenese and I'm not sure anyone  has finished reading it yet since all the news stories about it are generalized and not specific, such as this story.

FERC's rule proposes that state regulatory and permitting agencies have a 90-day period to negotiate cost allocation for the transmission project among themselves before the planning agency imposes its own cost allocation rule.  FERC believes "...state siting proceedings may proceed more efficiently if states have better information about the costs and benefits of such regional transmission facilities."

The real purpose of this is for the states to indicate that they support the transmission project before it gets added to the regional plan, therefore greasing state siting and permitting approvals.  Did Pollyanna write that part?  FERC is ginning up a state vs. state battle that is going to guarantee rancor and disapproval before the project is even approved by the planning agency. 

There is lots of praise in the media trumpeting that FERC's proposed rule is Shinola, but little substance.  Even FERC's Chairman can't tell the difference between Grain Belt Express and Shinola, as evidenced by this delightful little revelation:
In a press conference after Thursday’s meeting, Glick said that active state involvement could help forestall state conflicts like those that have arisen in Missouri, where state lawmakers are seeking to pass a law that would threaten the viability of the Grain Belt Express, a massive proposed transmission project that would deliver power from Kansas across Missouri to the Illinois-Indiana border. 

The NOPR is ​“aimed at bringing the states together and hopefully developing their own approach to cost allocation,” Glick said. For example, ​“it might determine that State A and State C should pay for that line, not State B.”
Why doesn't he know that Grain Belt Express is NOT a cost allocated project?  It's a merchant transmission project without captive customers.  It may only collect its costs through negotiated rates with voluntary customers.  Therefore, FERC's proposed rule would not apply because there is no cost allocation!  He also confuses the Missouri Public Service Commission (the state regulatory permitting agency) with the Missouri Legislature, which is pursuing legislation to end eminent domain for transmission projects that do not provide ample benefit to Missouri.  Even though the PSC approved Grain Belt Express to use eminent domain under existing laws that do not contemplate merchant transmission "fly over" projects, the Missouri Legislature is in the process of correcting that because it is the will of the people of Missouri.  FERC's new rule is completely useless to circumvent the will of the people of Missouri.  Even if a state utility commission agreed to a cost allocation method for a new transmission project, and subsequently approved it, the legislature has the final say because it has the power to change the laws under which the utility commission must operate.

It's not going to grease new transmission projects.  It may simply develop individual state conflicts and guarantee that nothing ever gets built.

People who oppose the transmission project will still put appropriate pressure on the state legislature, such as they have done in Missouri.  The only way to get new transmission built is to prevent the impacts that cause opposition, like burying the project on existing rights of way, such as along highways or rail.  Requiring transmission planners to select projects that have no impacts on landowners and communities crossed would have been a better rule, but FERC is all about the politics and propaganda these days, and not about sensible regulation that creates just and reasonable outcomes.  Today's FERC seems to know little about transmission in the real world outside the DC political bubble, where its unworkable ideas look like Shinola.
0 Comments

How Propaganda Works

4/19/2022

2 Comments

 
Picture
Repeat something often enough and it becomes "fact."  That's how propaganda works.  Propaganda is defined as "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view".  It's information without any factual basis.  It's just a simple phrase, repeated over and over endlessly until the public simply believes it is a fact.
The United States desperately needs new power lines.
Our grid is not inadequate to keep the lights on.  Our grid is a carefully managed machine that is upgraded and rebuilt constantly to maintain reliability.  But our grid is also a fertile money-maker for investor owned utilities and merchant electricity generators.  Utilities make money investing in electric transmission that pays a double-digit return over the project's expected 40-year life.  Our grid also enables for-profit electric generators to connect their product to far-flung customers, often at no cost to themselves.  These are the entities spreading propaganda that our grid is somehow inadequate and needs to be rebuilt and expanded.  They will make money building and upgrading, and electric consumers will pay the bill.

This guy really shouldn't be writing about energy.  He has little practical understanding, and uses fluffy pieces written by biased pontificators.  And, even then, he misquotes them to back up his ignorant theories, such as this statement:
Our transmission standstill has a number of consequences. First of all, it raises consumer prices. As this post at CanaryMedia makes clear, bad transmission hasn’t raised utility bills despite generation being cheaper than ever.
The canary in the coal mine piece shows that while the cost of generating renewables falls, the cost of building transmission to connect them rises.  There's a limit on how much the cost of generation can fall, but there is no limit on how much transmission costs can rise.  Transmission costs are rising at a higher rate than generation costs are falling.  And we really haven't even begun building the amount of transmission utilities, generators, and their governmental and big green cheerleaders are pushing for.  What is "bad transmission"?  What is "transmission standstill"?  I really don't know because neither means anything except in the dim mind of the author.  Right there I realize that this guy knows nothing about transmission.  But that's okay in a propaganda world because most of the people reading his brain farts have even less knowledge.  That's how propaganda works!

Moving onto the next piece of propaganda:
A 2018 report by the nonprofit Americans for a Clean Energy Grid identified 22 shovel-ready projects that had been in existence for a decade or more. To get such projects off the ground, the report’s authors suggested streamlining project siting and permitting, passing a tax credit for transmission projects, and direct investment by the federal government. 
First, Americans for a Clean Energy Grid is a Bill Gates-financed front group promoting new transmission that Bill and his super-rich global elite pals "need" to create a sweet investment honeypot for themselves (see section above about double-digit returns for 40 years).  Second, most of the projects on the "shovel ready" list are not actually shovel ready and have serious regulatory or financial flaws that prevent them from ever being built (hence the government handouts).  At least one of the projects on the "shovel-ready" list has been cancelled by its owner.  Not shovel-ready, no matter how much American tax money gets showered on these private-profit endeavors.

The author sort of chokes on the fact that even though taxpayer subsidies have been requested, the subsidies simply cannot shut down due process for affected landowners.
Despite recent noise from the Biden administration about speeding up the sitting process, the same problems are still knocking off and slowing down transition projects. 

The most recent and notable example is that of the Grain Belt Express. The transmission line, which would span nearly 800 miles across four midwest states, from Kansas to Indiana, connecting into the PJM Interconnection LLC grid, is at risk of being thwarted by House Bill 2005. The bill, brainchild of big ag groups across the region, would give any county in the line’s path the right to block construction. 

Oh, right... "big ag."  It's "big ag" (aka small family farm and ranch interest groups) vs. Chicago billionaire Michael Polsky, who has spent millions lobbying and influencing the Missouri legislature so that he may use eminent domain to take farm property for whatever price he wants to pay, instead of fairly negotiating for the use of other people's land in an open market.  Acquiring land "cheaply" through the use of eminent domain does not save any money on transmission bills -- it just increases the project's profit that flows into Polsky's pockets.

Next they propagandize about the "savings" from GBE:
The project represents a special economic opportunity for the region’s rural communities which have struggled in recent times. The cheap wind power would provide significant savings to the small municipalities. What’s more, emissions would be brought down as well. 
It represents additional agricultural production costs in rural communities as land is removed from production, or impeded in such a way that production becomes more expensive or impossible.  It also spoils future land use.  It is especially hard on small family farms, which constitute the majority of impacted properties.

So where's the opportunity?  A handful of municipalities are relying on a back of the envelope calculation that was done more than 5 years ago based on energy contracts that have since expired.  None of these supposed "savings" are anywhere close to real.  Do the math, based on today's costs and contracts, and then tell me all about it.  However, they refuse to update the calculations.  That can only mean one thing:  the "savings" have fallen or evaporated entirely.  Propaganda not based on fact.

And here's the part that is most egregious:

Cumbersome regulations and NIMBYISM are mostly to blame for the nation’s stagnant transmission system.

The same article includes quotes from advocates of bill 2005: ‘“Grain Belt is currently working towards condemning our land,” Henke said in written testimony. “They have told us they will not negotiate with us and the price they tell us is what we get. This line will take out our shade trees in our pastures and cut through several fences. They are not willing to move the line at all to avoid some of these things that will greatly impact our farm.”’

I don’t want to completely disregard people like Henke’s misgivings, but no decision comes without a cost. At some point, we’re going to have to accept some of the costs associated with big transmission projects to reap the important benefits: Cheaper, cleaner electricity.

Excuse me there, Henry, but WE?  WE???  What are you sacrificing here?  You're not giving up anything at all.  How dare you speak for "we" when you're not part of the "we"?  If Henry was required to sacrifice his shade trees and his fences and the sanctity of his property and his ability to earn a living, along with a big chunk of his investments made to plan for retirement, like he expects the Henckes to sacrifice, I can guarantee you that Henry wouldn't think GBE was such a great idea after all.  Henry only likes GBE because it's not in his back yard. 

This makes Henry the biggest NIMBY of them all.
2 Comments

Game Changer!

4/15/2022

2 Comments

 
Picture
Several years ago, I wondered if a transmission line completely buried on existing linear rights of way would draw the kind of landowner and community opposition that delays and cancels new transmission projects.  Since then, my theory has proven correct.  SOO Green Renewable Rail has not drawn crippling opposition.  The only objections to the project come from a handful of adjacent landowners who claim the rail easement does not allow the construction of a transmission line in the easement.  This has not been tested because the project is stalled in the interconnection process.  But what didn't happen was widespread opposition from landowners.  The vast majority of landowners simply didn't care enough to protest because the project would not permanently impact them and would not use eminent domain to take new rights of way. 

The idea of siting new transmission on existing rail and highway rights of way has been a transmission opposition group favorite ever since.  However, transmission developers and their enabling regulators have tried to shut the idea down with all sorts of crazy excuses that are not based in reality.

Perhaps that is over now, thanks to a new study and report recently published by The Ray, an independent non-profit advocating for technology to create a better highway system for all.  The report concludes
Coordinating with utilities to deploy buried HVDC transmission in the highway ROW offers several benefits, including increased resilience and significant carbon emissions reductions without changing the viewscape. Expanded transmission will be vital for electrifying transportation in the most cost-effective manner.
The traditional thorny issue of building linear infrastructure on private property can be mitigated with
undergrounding the transmission along existing highway and rail corridors. Burying HVDC transmission can be done at a similar cost to conventional overhead AC transmission while providing critical reliability and resilience benefits. Furthermore, the potential for accelerated permitting timelines for buried transmission projects would be worth billions of dollars in avoided carbon emissions.
The findings from this study demonstrate that buried HVDC transmission is cost-effective and can
be feasibly sited in interstate and highway ROW after making appropriate consideration of existing and future transportation system needs. While the study identified challenges, none appear to pose insurmountable barriers.
That's right, Doubting Thomases and Thomasinas, all your excuses are put to rest in this game changing report!  The report is very thorough, effectively slaying all the excuses and myths currently used to shut down discussion of buried transmission on existing linear rights of way.

One small point made in the report opens up a world of new thinking.  Our existing highway and rail systems already go between the places transmission developers think they need to connect - rural and urban areas.  If building new transmission is like our interstate highway system, why create a whole new interstate when the existing one can be used?  Simply put... it makes perfect sense!
The development of transmission and fiber lines often requires the ability to acquire or lease significant lengths of ROW – this is especially true for interregional transmission. Utilities often prefer to use a ROW they have developed and own. However, obtaining new ROW is challenging and the optimal route is not always possible. (Footnote:  A number of overhead interregional transmission projects have been successfully blocked by public opposition in recent years.)  Access to a portion of existing ROW in interstate or highway could offer significant benefits in the development of new transmission and fiber lines. Existing ROW along interstate highways would be especially valuable for the interregional transmission lines needed to cost-effectively decarbonize the grid while improving its reliability and resilience.
If interstate and highway ROW were made available for transmission development, a typical transmission project would likely use a portion of the highway ROW while also using existing utility and rail ROWs. The transmission line would not be fully sited within the highway ROW alone. In these circumstances, siting of the transmission line within the ROW would be done in close collaboration with the existing ROW owner (e.g., the DOT) and would take into account current and future transportation needs.
While not all highway ROW is suitable or available for electric transmission (siting within urban corridors can be particularly challenging), ROW in rural areas can be suitable (see figure 7). In rural areas, the ROW is often 300 feet wide, and other utilities and land uses are not as competitive.
We don't need to junk up rural areas with objectionable, new overhead electric transmission infrastructure.  Proposing new electric transmission corridors using eminent domain is ALWAYS a non-starter with affected communities.  Not engaging in this battle with affected landowners and communities actually saves money and speeds up the construction of new transmission.
By building a buried HVDC transmission system alongside our interstate network of roads and rail lines, the country can overhaul and expand the transmission network more quickly, cost-efficiently, and easily than developing a new ROW through private land. Benefits of this approach accrue to landowners, electric customers, and the grid itself.
Siting, permitting, and building a traditional overhead HVAC transmission line typically takes at least
10 years and often much longer because of challenges related to cost, environmental permitting, and siting on private land. Using highway and rail ROW means working with fewer property owners – potentially just a handful instead of many hundreds. It also largely removes the threat of eminent domain to take land from private owners.

Thus, the five-year
reduction in the transmission development timeline that the NextGen Highways Team believes is possible (for a typical interregional transmission project) would translate into $1 billion of societal value.
It is worth noting that a 2GW, 300 miles-long, buried HVDC transmission line would cost roughly $2.5
billion. As such, $1 billion of societal value would equate to 40 percent of the transmission line’s cost.
Scaling the societal benefits from a single interregional transmission line to meet estimated interregional transmission needs yields about $150 billion of societal benefits from coupling buried HVDC transmission with our existing transportation ROW.
That's billions of dollars of savings and benefit from reducing the current 10-year plus permitting time that comes with engaging in battles with opposition.  It's just not true that opposition can be ameliorated with more "education" or earlier "engagement."  The only thing that avoids opposition is not creating something to oppose in the first place.

Buried HVDC is cost effective.  This report slays the myth that burying transmission is 10 times more expensive than running it overhead.  Let's hope that stupid myth stays dead now.
Buried HVDC transmission costs have declined and become competitive with traditional overhead AC transmission. The technology for buried HVDC transmission has matured, and the industry has gained experience designing and building projects across the world. Figure 8 compares transmission coston a capacity-normalized basis (dollars per gigawatt-mile of transmission capacity) for a few representative transmission projects in the United States. The figure shows that buried HVDC projects are cost-competitive with overhead AC transmission projects. 

Historically, utilities have discounted the use of underground transmission because buried AC line costs
were often 7 to 10 times more costly than overhead lines. Today, some utilities will still cite those cost comparison numbers without considering the technological advances of HVDC cables and converter stations over the past decade.
Here's the bottom line:
Buried HVDC transmission is cost-competitive with traditional overhead AC transmission projects.

Buried HVDC transmission is roughly 2-4 times the cost of overhead HVDC transmission. (Footnote:  This assumes that the overhead HVDC transmission can be permitted and built. Over the last decade, a number of
overhead HVDC transmission projects across the US were unable to be successfully built, including Northern Pass, New England Energy Connect (still active), Plains and Eastern, Grain Belt Express (still active).
That's right!  These projects have been delayed or cancelled solely because of grassroots opposition.  If they had been sited on existing linear rights of way, perhaps they would already be in operation today.  What a gigantic waste of time and money!

But The Ray isn't done with this game changing new idea for electric transmission.  It plans to continue to push its idea forward.
Given the positive findings from this Feasibility Study, the NextGen Highways Team is planning to launch a NextGen Highways Coalition to support the co-location of buried fiber and transmission in highway and interstate ROW.
Game changer!  It's something transmission opposition can support by furthering this idea with stubborn transmission profiteers, cluless regulators, and prevaricating policy wonks who continue to try to ignore or shut down discussion of this idea.

Like these folks.  Government employees, a Congressman, a lobbyist, and a tone-deaf propaganda spreader, who recently held a webinar to "educate" rural communities about the "benefits" of new high voltage transmission forced upon them.  They were asked repeatedly about burying new transmission on existing rights of way but completely ignored the topic.  The last 15 minutes or so of the webinar devoted to "questions" are an absolute scream.  They didn't actually answer any questions, but got really defensive and tried to push back against the questions they were asked, all to no avail.  They just looked angry and defensive... and ineffective.

It seems to be a theme.  Recent government webinars about transmission were also posed the same question of burying transmission on existing rights of way.  Here and here.  For the most part, these government functionaries simply ignored the question.  Only one person attempted to make an excuse for not burying transmission (see section about safety on page 41 of the report, Kimberly).

The Ray has its work cut out for it getting bureaucrats and self-interested utilities to adopt their better idea.  But, time-wise, it's still probably more effective to adopt new ideas than to continue to waste time and money trying to site new transmission on new rights of way across private land.  We can make transmission a win-win by burying it on existing linear rights of way.

Many thanks to The Ray for undertaking this study and report, and for continuing to advance the idea.  As Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  We believe!
2 Comments

The Cost of Questioning Absolute Authority

4/14/2022

1 Comment

 
Stunning story out of Wisconsin.  Former PSC Commissioner Mike Huebsch has racked up over $800K in legal bills defending himself against accusations of bias in his approval of the Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission project.  The story tells us that the PSC has paid Huebsch's outside counsel to defend him, even after state attorneys bowed out of the case when it was revealed that Huebsch was trading encrypted messages with employees of the utilities proposing the project.  The PSC says it could have a conflict of interest and therefore cannot defend Huebsch in-house.
PSC spokesperson Matthew Sweeney said the commission “has unique obligations and could have different interests and duties relating to transparency than former Commissioner Huebsch would have in his capacity as a private citizen,” which could have created a conflict of interest for PSC attorneys.
It would be logical, then, that Huebsch is on his own to defend his actions as a private citizen.  But yet the PSC thinks it should cover his expenses under state law.  The state law covers the actions of state employees "acting within the scope of employment."  Is trading personal messages with utility employees a required or recommended job function of a PSC Commissioner?  Regardless of whether communicating with utilities is a job function, Huebsch says the messages were of a personal nature.
Huebsch, a former state legislator who served in Gov. Scott Walker’s cabinet before joining the PSC in 2015, says the messages were purely personal exchanges with old friends and that he never discussed PSC business outside of official proceedings.
Therefore the messages were not within Huebsch's scope of employment and defending him should not be the state's financial responsibility.  The law is clear.
Regardless of the results of the litigation the governmental unit, if it does not provide legal counsel to the defendant officer or employee, shall pay reasonable attorney fees and costs of defending the action, unless it is found by the court or jury that the defendant officer or employee did not act within the scope of employment.
But what does the PSC care?  It thinks that it can simply shift the costs of Huebsch's legal bills onto the utilities it regulates under a different state law. 
The public service commission is authorized by s. 196.85, Stats., to charge any public utility, power district, or sewerage system the expenses attributable to the performance of the commission's duties.
If the messages were personal and not part of Huebsch's job function, then the cost of defending them may not be passed to the utilities.

Huebsch makes a giant leap in logic to presume that these costs wrongly paid by the PSC and wrongly charged to the utilities would be passed through to electric ratepayers in their electric bills.
Through his attorney, Huebsch blamed the plaintiffs for running up the tab on utility customers who will ultimately absorb the costs of defending the PSC’s decisions.
The news article says, "Under state law, legal expenses are assessed to the utilities involved, in this case American Transmission Company, ITC Midwest and Dairyland Power Cooperative, which don’t serve retail customers but charge transmission rates that ultimately affect electricity costs."

And who has jurisdiction over transmission rates?  It's not the Wisconsin PSC, it's the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  Wisconsin has no authority to determine that these legal fees should be a ratepayer responsibility.  Indeed, the case could be made that Huebsch's legal expenses to defend his personal actions while serving as PSC Commissioner do not belong in an account that is passed through to ratepayers through the utilities' formula rates.  FERC administrates an accounting classification system known as the Uniform System of Accounts, which sorts utility expenditures into categories, or accounts, based on their nature and purpose.  Where does Huebsch think his legal expenses belong under the USoA?  Do they belong under Regulatory Commission Expenses (Account 928) or do they more properly belong in the 426 account series as a non-operating expense?  An argument could be made that they are a non-operating expense.  Do the utilities involved bear any responsibility for communicating with Huebsch in a secretive manner while he was considering their permit application?  If the messages were not entirely personal, then they could be seen as "for the purpose of influencing the decisions of public officials", which belongs in Account 426.4.  If the messages cannot be produced for judicial review, how could anyone ever know what they said?  The utility could never PROVE that the messages were harmless, routine operating expenses that should be recovered from ratepayers, and the utilities have the burden of proof.  They won't have enough proof to recover these expenses from electric ratepayers.

Unbelievably, Huebsch whines that nobody should be allowed to question whether his decision was biased because it's just too expensive for ratepayers.

“The best outcome for ratepayers in Wisconsin and across the country would be for this unfounded ‘bias’ claim to be dismissed as soon as possible,” Huebsch said. “Every dime they have had to pay until now — including for the co-owners’ numerous law firms and PSC legal staff — is because of the plaintiffs and their choices.”

Huebsch said if the Supreme Court doesn’t throw out the bias claim, ratepayers will end up paying to litigate an “untold number of copycat ‘bias’ lawsuits.”
Can we talk about "choices" here?  Huebsch CHOSE to carry on personal conversations with employees of utilities that he regulates.  That's the "choice" that has caused these costs, not the filing of lawsuits that resulted from Huebsch's "choice." 

The idea that anyone affected by regulatory decisions should be prohibited from challenging those decisions in court is a non-starter, no matter who is paying. 

If Huebsch was really worried about electric rates, perhaps he should have considered the cost of the project itself?  It's out of his hands now, of course, but the utilities behind it continue to spend money knowing that they can apply at FERC to collect their sunk investment, plus generous double digit return, even if the project is never built (which looks like a real possibility lately).

Is this really about the ratepayers?  Or is that just an excuse to shift attention away from Huebsch's personal choices?
1 Comment

We Can't Eat Solar Panels

4/11/2022

1 Comment

 
Quote from California farmer who persists in growing food although surrounded by industrial solar farms.
“Food is going to be more valuable than ever in the world we live in now,” Tagg said. “We can’t eat solar panels.”   
Don't miss this article about how even California is struggling to meet its impossible clean energy goals.  San Diego wants to run on 100% clean power, except it doesn't want the economic burden of constructing the infrastructure necessary to support its goal.
Specifically, the researchers analyzed whether rooftop solar, along with small solar parks on urban, potentially polluted land called Brownfields, could meet San Diego’s energy demands. It could, Leslie said, but it might not be economically feasible. 
So they push into the rural areas and gobble up all the productive farmland because it's "cheaper" and "faster."
“We’ve got millions of acres of perfectly suitable land in the desert,” Hamby said, referring to the area east of Imperial’s fertile plain, much of which is federally controlled land. 

“If you’re a developer … there’s all kinds of federal red tape you could go through, but it’s easier to go and buy out a farmer,” Hamby said. 

Still, procuring renewables from Imperial Valley is one of the few ways San Diego could reach its projected energy demand by 2050, the researchers say. The cost of generating energy there is relatively cheap, from $31 to about $42 per megawatt hour, according to the county’s study. And there’s existing infrastructure built by San Diego Gas and Electric to get it to San Diego.  Joe Bettles, who teamed up with Leslie on the study, said though the cost of rooftop technology – the solar panels themselves – has dropped significantly over the years, labor costs are higher as well as the cost of permitting each project.
  
“You need a really big sales machine to go door to door and convince building owners one at a time,” Leslie said. 
 
It’s cheaper, they say, for a utility to build a large solar project on flat rural land.
The icing on the cake is San Diego "Community" Power, a government run public power agency, that doesn't want to build clean energy in its own "community."  Instead...
There are big new sales machines entering the marketplace. San Diego Community Power and Clean Energy Alliance are government-run public power companies with the sole purpose of providing 100 percent renewable energy at a cheaper rate than SDG&E. It’s San Diego Community Power that secured the contract for JVR Energy park, and a 150 megawatt solar project in Imperial near Holtville called the Viking Energy Farm.
 
“Our philosophy is that it’s going to take all of the above. It’ll take rooftop solar, smaller scale and distributive energy systems and utility scales to reach renewable energy goals,” said Cody Hooven, San Diego Community Power’s chief operations officer.
 
Right now, San Diego Community Power doesn’t decide where renewables should be built. The governing documents of San Diego Community Power show there’s a preference for local power, but its boundaries aren’t explicitly defined. In the case of the Viking and JVR project in Jacumba, the public utility basically told the marketplace how much renewable energy it wanted to build, and it’s up to private developers to pitch a project. 

“Down the line we could eventually build our own projects,” Hooven said. 
The "clean energy" goal is being pursued without care towards how it affects land use and interferes with other goals, such as food security.  It's often left up to the local communities to create and enforce sensible restrictions on local land use.  And many do, leading to cancellation of planned projects.

However, our federal government thinks that it can designate "renewable energy zones" wherever it likes and invest hundreds of billions of dollars building transmission roads to nowhere to tap them ahead of building the actual generators.  This is going to lead to an enormous waste of money and huge pile of debt that electric consumers are going to be stuck paying for without receiving any benefits.

If you want renewable power, make it yourself, in your own community.  Keep your fantasies in your own back yard!
1 Comment

Should Kansans Pay to Export Power to Other States?

4/11/2022

0 Comments

 
The Kansas Industrial Consumers Group is concerned about new electric transmission for the purpose of exporting electric power generated in Kansas to other states.  And rightly so... why should Kansans pay the freight so that other states that don't want to build their own renewable energy generators can assuage their climate guilt by pretending to use renewable energy?

Today's NIMBY is the climate guilt ridden urban warrior who wants to use renewable energy, but doesn't want the infrastructure that produces it in his own back yard.  All reward, no sacrifice.  They champion building industrial scale wind and solar generators in someone else's back yard and they say silly things like "where the wind blows harder or the sun shines brighter."  What they really mean is that they think that rural areas should junk up their communities with industrial scale energy generators and new transmission lines.  They pretend all this new "infrastructure" provides some benefit to the rural area, like payments to "struggling" farmers and new taxes to "struggling" local governments.  The struggle is real... but it a struggle to maintain their way of life without being turned into a sacrifice for urban NIMBYs.

The funny part is that the Kansas Industrial Consumers Group is fanning the flames of land use conflicts.
Imagine this: A 150-foot (half a football field wide) right of way that extends continuously for 89 miles through five counties in Kansas, for a 345-kV electric transmission line. The physical structure — poles and wire — for a 345 kV transmission line, is much larger than most Kansans have ever seen.

The transmission line construction and operation would affect the private property of many homeowners, but the primary physical impact of this transmission project would be on hundreds of farms and ranches in Allen, Anderson, Bourbon, Coffey and Crawford counties Kansas.

NextEra, however, must acquire 89 miles of right of way in Kansas to construct and operate the transmission line. This is likely impossible without a KCC order to permit NextEra the power to condemn the private property of those landowners who do not want a large transmission line on their property.

The private property rights of Kansans may be condemned for the benefit of consumers in other states. This is a big step.
Can't argue with that logic, but I have to ask... where were these guys when the KCC was considering the Grain Belt Express merchant transmission line?  The answer is that they were nowhere because a merchant transmission line must contract with voluntary customers.  There's no way for GBE to pass its costs onto involuntary Kansas customers.  If it's truly about burden on Kansans, why were the land use arguments not just as valid when GBE was proposed.  After all, the project was not even found needed by a regional transmission organization.  There was no need, it was purely an profit-seeking proposal for its owner, who thought if it built a transmission line for export across Kansas that voluntary customers in other states would want to use it to import electricity from western Kansas.

And where were these guys a couple years ago when Kansas Governor Laura Kelly "partnered" with GBE because it was going to create thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in "economic development" in Kansas by building a giant one-way highway across the state to export electricity?   Again, I don't remember them caring one way or the other.

And where have these folks been during KCC Commissioner Andrew French's interaction with federal energy regulators during its state-federal task force on transmission?  Have they been listening to French drone on at FERC about how Kansas "needs" new transmission to export electricity?  Sherlock Holmes told me that French was vice president of the consumers group before he was appointed to the KCC.

Is this some sort of public plea for French to remember where he came from?  He seems to have done a 180 since being appointed to the KCC.  There's definitely something in the water there... or maybe it's the vanilla pannacotta served up by utilities that makes commissioners lose all common sense?  The KCC has never taken the side of Kansans against out of state energy interests with fat wallets.  Why does the Kansas Industrial Consumers Group think they're going to start now?
0 Comments

When are Environmental Groups Going to Start Caring About the Environment?

4/9/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Did you manage to catch this story this week? Wind energy company kills 150 eagles in US, pleads guilty kind of made the rounds this week, but some people simply didn't care.  Now if a famous politician had killed 150 eagles on a hunting trip, it would have been 24/7 news.  But it was just one of America's biggest energy conglomerates killing eagles while it "saved the planet" by generating electricity from wind, so it wasn't big news.

The story tells us
A subsidiary of one of the largest U.S. providers of renewable energy pleaded guilty to criminal charges and was ordered to pay over $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed at its wind farms in eight states, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy was also sentenced to five years probation after being charged with three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act during a court appearance in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The charges arose from the deaths of nine eagles at three wind farms in Wyoming and New Mexico.
But what does NextEra care?  It's raking in billions of dollars every year in the form of production tax credits for generating electricity from wind.  What's $8M between friends?  NextEra is simply giving the government its own money back... a drop in the ocean of riches NextEra has stuffed into its own pocket over the years.  I think NextEra has absolutely no remorse and will continue to kill as many birds as it wants.  If it shuts the turbines down to save the eagles, then it doesn't earn as much money from the federal government, who pays for energy actually generated.

You should be outraged by this.  But, more importantly, the "Big Green" organizations, like Sierra Club, should be outraged.  But I don't see any of the big organizations quoted in the article coming to the defense of eagles.

Why?  Remember this?  When the Sierra Club was taking money from the gas industry and calling natural gas a "bridge fuel" to a cleaner environment?  Are these big organizations now taking money from energy companies promoting big wind?  Where do these organizations get the cash that makes up their oversized budgets?  They get a lot of it from private "foundations", but where do the "foundations" get their cash?  Nobody seems to care.  Advocacy groups for big wind and solar get their money from electric utilities.  NextEra has a position on ACORE's board of directors.  ACORE doesn't even mention eagles.  None of the entities making money hand over fist building and operating renewable energy facilities seem to care about the eagles.

Sierra Club got in a bind because its national policies conflicted with its individual members who saw gas destroying their local environment.  The propaganda about "clean energy" we're all fed absolutely refuses to recognize that "clean energy" is also destroying our environment while purporting to save it.  It's only a matter of time until the big environmental organizations are pushed by local members to stand against massive, industrial scale big wind and solar plants. 

Perhaps it's coming sooner than they think...
0 Comments

Powerful Farmers Harm Poor, Downtrodden Michael Polsky

4/8/2022

3 Comments

 
Picture
That's what this article in biased environmental rag Energy Wire wants you to believe.
They came to Missouri’s capital from small cities and towns such as Marshall and Lebanon, Odessa and Shelbina.

They’re not activists or lobbyists but city administrators and public works directors from deep red Missouri counties. They drove hours this week to push back against big agriculture and urge the majority Republican Legislature not to spike the largest energy infrastructure project in the state — the $2.5 billion Grain Belt Express transmission line.
Rrrrrright-o.  Small town city bureaucrats on the clock (whether paid by the town or by Invenergy?) came like David to throw stones at "Big Agriculture" Goliath at the Missouri legislature this week.  This story gets spun to make Invenergy the "victim".

The real victims are the family farmers whose properties will be burdened by the taking of new rights of way through productive fields for the express purpose of producing a profit for Invenergy's super-rich CEO Michael Polsky, who has a place on Forbe's list of billionaires.  Polsky holds the power here... the power of greenbacks to buy political power and the power of eminent domain granted under antiquated Missouri laws to simply take property from family farms on a whim.

Because Grain Belt Express is a whim.  It's not needed for any reliability, economic, or public policy purpose.  If it was, it would have been ordered by one of the regional grid operators who are tasked with operating the transmission system.  Instead, GBE is a voluntary merchant project.  A merchant project is a business proposal.  A businessman (Michael Polsky) proposes to build an electric transmission line between two points on the premise that power producers and power distributors will find value in shipping electricity between those two points.  If the project doesn't find enough customers to make it profitable, there's no obligation to build and the businessman simply cancels the project before it is built.

Eminent domain should only be used for projects of public necessity, such as to keep the lights on.  Economic desires are not a reason to take real property from private individuals.

This article wastes too much time on the supposed "savings" by these small towns. 
The capacity will provide access to wind power that will cumulatively save the cities $12.8 million annually over 25 years.
That $12.8 million annual savings is complete and total fiction.  Ask them to SHOW YOU THE MATH!  They can't because it was calculated more than 5 years ago based on some very expensive power contracts that have since expired.  Ask the cities to show you the math based on their current power contracts.  Or, better yet, ask MJMEUC, who is the one actually making these deals.  The small towns just go along with whatever MJMEUC negotiates for them, and MJMEUC just goes along with whatever is politically expedient and purportedly cheap, such as GBE's pie-in-the sky below cost capacity prices.  You might also want to ask the towns (MJMEUC) if they are absolutely committed to the contract because, of course, they are not.  MJMEUC can back out of the contract at any time, and so can GBE, if it decides not to build its project.

Invenergy must be feeling pretty scared if it is now resorting to threatening Missouri legislators.
If the promise of helping small cities save money doesn’t appeal to Missouri legislators, the threat of litigation might.

Peggy Whipple, an attorney representing Invenergy, said the retroactive nature of H.B. 2005 would put the state at risk of paying the company millions of dollars in legal damages for expenses it has already incurred.
The bill violates state and federal law on at least four grounds, Whipple said. Invenergy has already invested $52 million in the project and voluntarily obtained easements for the line across 1,200 of 1,700 parcels in Missouri and Kansas, she said. In addition, the company has executed $76 million in contracts with landowners and paid out $10 million upfront.

H.B. 2005 would require 50 percent of transmission capacity from a project to be dedicated to Missouri and it would give any county in the line’s path the power to block the project for any reason.
The provision violates the U.S. Constitution’s dormant commerce clause that prohibits states from interfering with interstate commerce, Whipple said.

Honestly, Peggy, your legal theories are full of crap.  You're not a judge -- you're counsel for one side of the issue.  Your opinion means nothing unless and until validated by a judge.  Nobody required Invenergy to spend any money on this project.  Eminent domain is not necessary to the Commerce Clause.  Not granting eminent domain does not violate it.  Invenergy's acquisition and spending have all been voluntary.  But are we reaching the tipping point?  Would passing this legislation be the pinnacle where Invenergy quits throwing good money after bad and decides not to engage in an expensive and time consuming court battle where victory is quite iffy?  Only a judge can decide whether or not this legislation is constitutional.  It is the legislature's job to make laws.  It is the court's job to decide if the laws the legislature makes are constitutional.

And it is the legislature's job to SERVE THE PEOPLE, not the financial interests of out-of-state billionaires.

Money is power in politics.  However, honest legislators will do the work of the people that elected them without being influenced by politics and corporate donations.

And let's end with this...

They came to Missouri’s capital from small cities and towns.  They came despite the farm chores waiting for them at home.  They came to protect their livelihoods and their heritage. 

They’re not activists or lobbyists but farmers and ranchers who care little about politics but a lot about their future. They drove hours this week, and have done so too many times to count over the past 10 years, in order to push back against big energy and eminent domain for private gain and urge their elected representatives not to spike their right to own and use farm land to grow the food that provides for our nation's security and Missouri's economic prosperity.


Invenergy is the one with the power and it has shamelessly tossed money and influence around at the legislature every year in order to prevent modernizing Missouri's eminent domain laws to benefit the modern people of Missouri.  Missouri's position under an out-of-state billionaire's thumb needs to end this year.
3 Comments

Invenergy and Special Interest Groups Mischaracterize Legislation to Prevent Passage

4/5/2022

1 Comment

 
Picture
Another year, another attempt by privately-owned Chicago company Invenergy to completely mischaracterize Missouri legislation to prevent passage into law.  Who controls Missouri elected representatives?  Is it the citizens of Missouri?  Or is it the profits of a super-rich out-of-state utility conglomerate?

HB 2005 was approved by the Missouri House and passed to the Senate, where a committee hearing will be held today.  Right on cue, Invenergy, its special interest groups and biased media step right up to spin a web of lies about the legislation designed to prevent its passage.

What is HB 2005?  In the interest of truth, perhaps you should actually READ it to find out what it does and what it does not do.  You cannot rely on the media, who replaces actual quotes from the bill's language with alarmist rhetoric.

The actual bill does these things:
  1. Defines "public service" to mean providing at least 50% of its capacity to serve Missourians.
  2. Requires county commission approval of certificates to construct.
  3. Requires transmission to provide at least 50% of its load to Missourians in order to use eminent domain.
  4. Must compensate agricultural landowner at 150% of fair market value when using eminent domain.
  5. Requires condemning commission to include at least one person who has been farming in the same county for at least 10 years.
  6. If amount awarded in condemnation is greater than offer, court may award attorney's fees to property owner.
What does Invenergy and an alarmist media think this bill does?
  1. "Pull the plug" or place "roadblocks" on GBE.
  2. Hamper Invenergy from pursuing condemnation.
  3. Unconstitutionally and retroactively kill GBE.
  4. Legislation is "short-sighted."
  5. Gives unfair advantage to fossil fuels.
Of course, the actual language of the bill does none of that.  This is just generalized rhetoric trying to prevent any real reading or consideration of the legislation by Missouri senators.  Kill the messenger and you don't have to read the message!  What does the bill do?  What the bill does, and no more. 

And speaking of screechy rhetoric, let's look at some of the over-the-top claims and objections by Invenergy and its special interest supporters.
Invenergy spokesman Patrick Whitty slammed the House bill, calling it “an astonishing move in the wrong direction” at a time when global energy is in a security crisis.

“Among its many other impacts, the bill would unconstitutionally and retroactively kill Missouri’s largest energy infrastructure project, the Grain Belt Express, a project essential to American energy security that will connect millions of consumers to domestically produced, affordable, and reliable clean energy,” Whitty said. “The energy from the Grain Belt Express is the equivalent of 15 million barrels of oil annually, produced and delivered right here in the Midwest.”
My, my, what timely nonsense!  Now GBE is about the war in Ukraine and Russian oil?  If you ever thought that Invenergy's public relations spinners are just making crap up to fit the politics du jour, here's your proof.

And look... there's the predictable "unconstitutional" claim.  This is so completely dog eared and worn that it actually dates back to Clean Line Energy Partners.  Constitutionality can only be determined by a court.  Invenergy, its supporters, the media, and even the Missouri legislature are not a court.  Their claims of unconstitutionality are nothing more than one-sided opinion.  It is the legislature's job to make laws.  It is the court's job to interpret them.  No court has ever deemed this legislation unconstitutional, therefore it is constitutional until a court says it is not.  If legislators are so scared of "unconstitutionality" that they fail to make new laws, then what's to prevent every special interest lobbyist from claiming a law it doesn't like is unconstitutional?   See how that works?  Claims of unconstitutionality by special interests should be ignored by the legislature while it goes about doing the people's work.
The Missouri Supreme Court earlier ruled that Grain Belt be granted public utility status because the $2.3 billion project is in the public interest.
Here's another recycled claim that holds no water.  As explained already, the Court interprets the law.  Under the law currently in effect, the court said GBE was a public utility.  However, that law was not written to knowingly grant a private profit corporation eminent domain authority to use Missourian's private property for its own gain.  If the law changes, then the Court's opinion will change.  The Court interprets existing law.  It does not make law.  Making laws is the job of the legislature.  If the legislature defines public utility to exclude merchant transmission that does not serve Missourians and only takes their property for its own private profit, then the Court shall find that GBE is not a public utility.
The project also has garnered the support of Sen. Bill White, R-Joplin, who says it will invest millions of dollars in the state’s rural areas, boost the local energy supply and help ensure energy independence.

White said Monday he had not yet reviewed the latest House bill, which moved out of the House last week on a 102-41 vote. But, he said retroactively targeting the company after it has already started buying land would be unconstitutional.

Another blast from the past.  Senator White claims the bill is "unconstitutional" before even reading it.  As if a Court would operate the same way?  Perhaps Senator White should spend more time investigating all the new electric transmission projects proposed by MISO to cross his district before he pans legislation designed to limit eminent domain and give landowners a fair shake.  Senator White's constituents are not being served here, just an out-of-state corporation.  Who does Senator White work for?
Labor unions, environmental groups and the Missouri Association of Municipal Utilities oppose the changes.

Jake Hummel, a former state senator from St. Louis who now oversees the Missouri AFL-CIO, said the project will create jobs as it crosses the property of 570 landowners in eight northern counties.
“The quest for American-made energy, while creating 1,500 Missouri jobs, is an opportunity our state cannot afford to pass up,” Hummel said.

Michael Berg of the Sierra Club’s Missouri chapter said the legislation is short-sighted in a time when energy production is evolving.
“More legal barriers for wind energy transmission give an unfair advantage to the highly polluting fossil fuel industry,” Berg told members of the House Judiciary Committee.
In addition, Berg said more than a dozen communities have signed up to purchase power from the line, including Kirkwood, Columbia, Hannibal and Farmington.
“The power delivered along this line is expected to save dozens of rural Missouri communities more than $12 million annually,” Berg said.
As an added benefit, Invenergy says it will use the power lines to also offer broadband service that could bring improved internet to over one million rural Missourians, including 250,000 within 50 miles of the transmission line.

So, labor unions think GBE will provide 1,500 jobs?  That's ridiculous, computer generated garbage.  GBE will actually COST Missouri jobs in agriculture and in local power production.  "American made energy" is another fluffy political talking point.  ALL electricity used in Missouri is "made in America."  If GBE is not built, it will still be made in America, and actually closer to home, right in Missouri itself.   So much propaganda piled on here it insults the intelligence of the average reader.

As far as the Sierra Club goes... there is no such thing as "wind energy transmission."  Electrons are not color coded and electrons from all sources are mixed together on transmission lines.  There is nothing preventing GBE from carrying electricity from any source and in fact it must offer its project to any generator who will pay its price.

About those dozen communities?  There are 955 municipalities in Missouri.  A dozen is not 50%.  As well, the $12M savings is completely out of date and was based on municipal contracts that have since expired.  Since the municipalities have replaced the very expensive Prairie State contract that expired last year with something cheaper, there is no longer any legitimacy whatsoever to the $12M figure.  It may be less, it may be more.  In fact, GBE may actually be MORE EXPENSIVE than current contracts.  Of course, nobody knows because GBE and the municipalities refuse to do the math.  What are they hiding?

Broadband?  Does Missouri even need this?  And where is the guarantee that it must be provided as a condition of building the line?  Who will pay for the last mile of line?  Can Missouri even afford to finish this?  And what about newer sources for internet service, such as satellite internet?  Might that end up being cheaper?  Why pour money into antiquated technology like broadband and overhead transmission on lattice towers?  Invenergy isn't in the broadband business, but it is in the business of making empty promises to Missouri.

Buyer beware.
1 Comment

    About the Author

    Keryn Newman blogs here at StopPATH WV about energy issues, transmission policy, misguided regulation, our greedy energy companies and their corporate spin.
    In 2008, AEP & Allegheny Energy's PATH joint venture used their transmission line routing etch-a-sketch to draw a 765kV line across the street from her house. Oooops! And the rest is history.

    About
    StopPATH Blog

    StopPATH Blog began as a forum for information and opinion about the PATH transmission project.  The PATH project was abandoned in 2012, however, this blog was not.

    StopPATH Blog continues to bring you energy policy news and opinion from a consumer's point of view.  If it's sometimes snarky and oftentimes irreverent, just remember that the truth isn't pretty.  People come here because they want the truth, instead of the usual dreadful lies this industry continues to tell itself.  If you keep reading, I'll keep writing.


    Need help opposing unneeded transmission?
    Email me


    Search This Site

    Got something to say?  Submit your own opinion for publication.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010

    Categories

    All
    $$$$$$
    2023 PJM Transmission
    Aep Vs Firstenergy
    Arkansas
    Best Practices
    Best Practices
    Big Winds Big Lie
    Can Of Worms
    Carolinas
    Citizen Action
    Colorado
    Corporate Propaganda
    Data Centers
    Democracy Failures
    DOE Failure
    Emf
    Eminent Domain
    Events
    Ferc Action
    FERC Incentives Part Deux
    Ferc Transmission Noi
    Firstenergy Failure
    Good Ideas
    Illinois
    Iowa
    Kansas
    Land Agents
    Legislative Action
    Marketing To Mayberry
    MARL
    Missouri
    Mtstorm Doubs Rebuild
    Mtstormdoubs Rebuild
    New Jersey
    New Mexico
    Newslinks
    NIETC
    Opinion
    Path Alternatives
    Path Failures
    Path Intimidation Attempts
    Pay To Play
    Potomac Edison Investigation
    Power Company Propaganda
    Psc Failure
    Rates
    Regulatory Capture
    Skelly Fail
    The Pjm Cartel
    Top Ten Clean Line Mistakes
    Transource
    Washington
    West Virginia
    Wind Catcher
    Wisconsin

Copyright 2010 StopPATH WV, Inc.