Blog Archives

What's a Transmission Open House?

7/29/2025

Yesterday, landowners in Virginia began receiving letters from FirstEnergy's transmission group with information about the first of several transmission extension cords ordered by regional grid operator PJM Interconnection to power Loudoun County's data centers with West Virginia generated coal-fired electricity. The letters also invited landowners to several "Open House" meetings to be held along the project route in mid-August.

Tuesday, August 12, 2025
6:00-8:00 P.M.
Lovettsville, VA
Lovettsville Volunteer Fire Hall
12837 Berlin Turnpike
Lovettsville, VA 20180

Wednesday, August 13, 2025
6:00-8:00 P.M.
Shepherdstown, WV
Shepherd University Wellness Center
164 University Drive
Shepherdstown, WV 25443

Thursday, August 14, 2025
6:00-8:00 P.M.
Winchester, VA
Museum of the Shenandoah Valley
901 Amherst Street
Winchester, VA 22601

If you didn't get a letter (yet), you can read the letter by downloading this file. Sorry, but FirstEnergy is withholding access to its website until August 12. Be sure to mark that down to include in your comments to the Public Service Commission... withholding of information and insufficient time to meaningfully interact with the community during routing.

firstenergy_gdgc_open_house_letter.pdf
File Size:	1443 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

You are encouraged to attend these Open House meetings to get more information and to ask questions, lots of questions. Feel free to attend any (or ALL) of the meetings, but the meetings will be identical. So, if you forget to ask a question, or need more information, hit repeat the next night at a new location.

The Open House meetings for transmission projects are always the same format, and I've been to lots of them. It's NOT a "Town Hall" or other form of meeting with a formal information presentation with designated speakers followed by a Q&A for everyone at the meeting to take turns asking questions. Instead, these meetings are a place for individuals to hunt for little bits of information at certain "stations" set up around the room. Bring your Sherlock Holmes outfit, not a prepared speech. It's pure divide and conquer. Each station will cover a specific topic and be staffed by one or more FirstEnergy subject matter "experts". You are supposed to enter the room and sign in to give FirstEnergy all your contact information so that their land agents have an easier time harassing you in the future. Then you are supposed to filter through and interact with each station set up along the perimeter of the room like cattle in a chute. When you finally get to the end of the stations (back where you began) you will be asked to fill out a comment card and let FirstEnergy know what you think about the project. This is a diagram of their set up:

There is no place for you to make a public comment to all the meeting attendees, so don't bother writing one. Instead, you will talk one-on-one with FirstEnergy employees and contractors. If you insist on having a moment and making a shouted announcement to all the attendees inside, count on FirstEnergy to have security at the meeting who will escort you out.

Open House meetings are loud and confusing. There are hundreds of people talking at once in a confined space. It is extremely hard to hear what anyone is saying, even someone right next to you.

Sometimes, the companies go all out and provide food, drink and freebie souveniers, such as keychains, notebooks, or cheap Chinese Yeti knockoffs with their project name on them. FirstEnergy ain't having none of that at the Maryland meetings for Gore-Doubs-Goose Creek (aka MARL). There will be nothing for you except paper handouts. Not even a drink of water. Bring your own so you can stay hydrated. It's been hot out there!

And speaking of hot out there... feel free to stage a protest outside the Open House meeting. Wave signs, sing songs, chant, but don't block the entrance or waylay people on their way inside. They'll probably be back to join you after getting their own dose of "information" from inside. Get to know other people in your community who are also affected by the transmission project. Exchange contact information. Create a petition against the project for people to sign. But remember, keep it peaceful and don't interfere with what FirstEnergy is doing inside. Sorry I won't see you there, but we can talk afterwards.

Here are some photos from FirstEnergy's June Open House in Montgomery County, Maryland.

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Is the Deep State Conspiring with Grain Belt Express?

7/28/2025

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It didn't take long for the deep state at DOE to "resist" Secretary Wright's cancellation of Grain Belt's conditional loan guarantee by spilling to some obscure fake news media outlet. In doing so, they really step in it... deeply! Secretary Wright ought to investigate these leakers... and fire every last one of them. They admit to breaking the law and conspiring with Grain Belt Express to hide the truth about the project in an attempt to fool President Trump and to push through a loan guarantee whose application process was not complete. The DOE never finished GBE's Environmental Impact Statement, which is supposed to guide its decision on whether or not to take an action (such as making a conditional loan guarantee). The admissions here are stunning. Is the DOE Deep State really that ignorant about energy laws? Or was this done arrogantly and on purpose with full intent? I'd like to ask these leakers some questions...

The Energy Department pulled the project's $4.9 billion conditional commitment against the advice of its attorneys — and without career staff.

You say that like it's a bad thing, but is it because they're the Deep State who issued that conditional approval as an attempt to guarantee the loan even though Grain Belt Express had not completed its EIS? And then the Deep State conspired with Grain Belt to hide the project's true purpose from the incoming administration!

When the second Trump administration took office, LPO staff worried that a requirement to secure wind and solar contracts for a certain portion of the line’s capacity could prevent the loan from moving forward — particularly after the publication of an executive order that made it much harder to build wind power. Right up until the last few weeks, sources told Latitude Media, both the office and Invenergy were discussing how to bring the Grain Belt Express agreement more in line with the administration’s priorities, by expanding offtakers beyond wind power.

So, let me get this straight... the DOE staff was advising Invenergy to remove all reference to wind (and solar) from its website and to leak that bogus story about building a gas plant and negotiating with coal-fired generators? And the DOE staff did this knowing Grain Belt's eligibility for a DOE taxpayer-backed loan is tied to Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) (42 U.S. Code [U.S.C.] 16513), as amended. Section 1703 of Title XVII (the Clean Energy Financing Program) defines eligible projects as those that, “avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs]; and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to commercial technologies in service in the United States at the time the guarantee is issued” (Public Law [P.L.] 109-58, Section 1703(a)). When Grain Belt's "clean energy" premise went away, so did its eligibility for the loan. How was DOE staff planning to explain how a transmission line carrying gas- and coal-fired power was avoiding, reducing or sequestering air pollutants or greenhouse gases? Or was DOE planning to have two faces... one for Trump and his administration, and one for the public and the courts? How did they ever think they would get away with this? Fact is, they didn't.

But, even when their horrible duplicity could have been buried forever and forgotten, these same Deep Staters decided instead to parade it around like a virtue and thumb their nose at everyone, drunk on their own power. These are people who survive on your tax dollars, arrogantly doing whatever they want. It's time to clean house at LPO, and probably a lot of other places, too. It's not "resistance", it's insubordination and law breaking.

And what else here breaks the rules?

...LPO staff worried that a requirement to secure wind and solar contracts for a certain portion of the line’s capacity could prevent the loan from moving forward ...

That requirement by DOE VIOLATES GBE's Negotiated Rate Authority issued by FERC. In GBE's original Negotiated Rate Authority Order (which may or may not have been amended, extended, or renewed recently) the Commission was emphatic that Grain Belt Express could not use generation source as a factor when selecting customers.

Grain Belt Express has not proposed in its application, and we do not approve, selection or ranking criteria based upon the type of generation that a potential transmission customer might seek to interconnect.

If the DOE was requiring that GBE use generation source as a factor to select its customers, then that means that GBE has violated it's Negotiated Rate Authority and therefore has no authority to negotiate with customers. And without voluntary customers... there is no Grain Belt Express! So the DOE Deep Staters were also thumbing their nose at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. How arrogant can those little government functionaries be?

And here's another...

Notably, the agreement didn’t require the federal government to shell out direct funds; instead, LPO agreed to act as a guarantor for the project, reducing risk for private lenders, but not making any payments itself unless the project failed.

Let's go back to that same FERC NRA Order...

To approve negotiated rates for a transmission project, the Commission must find that the rates are just and reasonable. To do so, the Commission must determine that the merchant transmission owner has assumed the full market risk for the cost of constructing its proposed transmission project.

The federal government using American taxpayers as a loan guarantor for the construction costs of Grain Belt Express means that the risk of the project has been shifted to taxpayers. If the project fails, then the taxpayers will pay for it. Taxpayers are being used as the insurer of last resort for a 100% voluntary, unneeded transmission line whose only purpose is to make a profit for Invenergy. LPO doesn't have any of its own money, it simply plays Monopoly with OPM (Other People's Money).

That decision, Latitude Media has learned, was made against the recommendation of career attorneys inside LPO, who advised the agency that rescinding the conditional commitment would constitute a breach of contract, and would be illegal. It was also made without the involvement of career staff who worked on the deal.

Ya know what else might be illegal? Issuing a conditional loan guarantee before the EIS was completed. And completely ignoring a FERC Order that DOE was aware of. And conspiring to thwart the intent of Title 17 of the EP Act.

In the case of Grain Belt Express, DOE is asserting that the project isn’t going to meet certain milestones that are required to finalize the loan.
But Grain Belt Express, which has already gone through two years of due diligence with LPO, still had a window of at least four months to reach financial close. Indeed, in the early months of this year, LPO career staff believed the project was moving in the right direction.

Right... was that during the time when DOE staff thought their cover up of GBE's windy purpose was working with the Trump administration? Even if it had another four years, I don't think GBE could find enough customers to provide collateral necessary for this loan. Wait... what? Collateral? Something pledged as security for repayment of a loan, to be forfeited in the event of a default. Does this mean that DOE was planning to guarantee a loan using tax payers as collateral WITHOUT ASSURING THAT GBE HAD ENOUGH CUSTOMERS TO REPAY THE LOAN? Due diligence, my ass!

...when Energy Secretary Chris Wright stepped in to order the cancellation of the loan guarantee in mid-July, DOE’s general counsel didn’t seem to look to offtake numbers for legal justification at all.

What the heck? Offtake numbers? That means nothing! It's only signed contracts from customers obligated to pay for capacity on Grain Belt Express that matter, and GBE has exactly NONE of those. The one contract GBE has said it has is completely optional and the Missouri municipalities can get out of it whenever they want. Does this mean that DOE pretended that "offtake numbers" in the form of Memorandums of Understanding, or simply a utility's future renewable plans unrelated to Grain Belt Express, were used as a form of collateral? No bank would ever rely on such flimsy collateral, and neither should DOE. That's how DOE got into trouble before with Solyndra.

In the spring, the far-right Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri began to publicly take issue with the project and its impact on farmers...

Sorry, far-left reporters, but Senator Hawley has been concerned about Grain Belt Express for the past several years, at least. Don't make it sound like he just found out about it.

The International Energy Agency estimates that nearly 50 million miles (80 million kilometers) of power lines will need to be added or replaced globally by 2040 in order to meet climate and clean energy goals

Well, there's another Deep State agency waste of taxpayer money. The federal government doesn't currently have any climate and clean energy goals, therefore this statement is irrelevant.

According to Rob Gramlich, president of the transmission and power markets-focused consultancy Grid Strategies, federal support could be particularly impactful for interregional transmission lines “where it’s hardest to find any other way to recover costs.”

“It is very hard to find state regulators to approve cost recovery for a multi-state line like this,” Gramlich said. “I’ve always thought that DOE should have a big pot of money for interregional transmission, and that should be the main focus of DOE spending across all of its programs.”

Rob Gramlich is not the federal government. In fact, he works for dark money organizations pushing a political agenda. He continues trying to get "permitting reform" passed so that the federal government can control transmission permitting. Doesn't look like it's going to do him much good right now, is it? The Trump administration is intent on building power generation on site with those new data centers, not doing something as inefficient as trying to transmit it hundreds of miles from generation to load. There's really no use for these kinds of transmission lines.

It's time to clean the Deep State out of our Department of Energy. I'm betting Gramlich knows exactly who they are. Who knows? Maybe they're having cocktails right now celebrating their "resistance"?

That was a close call. Never think that your vote doesn't matter. It stopped this Deep State hustle in its tracks.

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Weekend at Mikey's

7/24/2025

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"All I'm saying is why don't we just pretend he didn't die? Just for a bit?"

Introducing...

It sure took GBE a long time to make a statement after the DOE cancelled their taxpayer-backed conditional loan yesterday. And then what profound wisdom did Grain Belt finally have?

America is energy dominant and an AI powerhouse, and Grain Belt Express will be America’s largest power pipeline. While we are disappointed about the LPO loan guarantee, a privately financed Grain Belt Express transmission superhighway will advance President Trump’s agenda of American energy and technology dominance while delivering billions of dollars in energy cost savings, strengthening grid reliability and resiliency, and creating thousands of American jobs.

Sure says a lot of nothing even though it took all day to write. Sorry, Invenergy, but Trump isn't buying your nonsense about Grain Belt Express. The DOE actually took a look at your project and decided it was never going to pencil out financially. It's over.

There's a reason Grain Belt opted to apply for a DOE taxpayer backed loan under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) (42 U.S. Code [U.S.C.] 16513), as amended. Section 1703 of Title XVII (the Clean Energy Financing Program) that defines eligible projects as those that, “avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs]; and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to commercial technologies in service in the United States at the time the guarantee is issued” (Public Law [P.L.] 109-58, Section 1703(a)). Applying for this loan cost Grain Belt a bundle and it required an Environmental Impact Statement, the cost of which has been said to have made other energy executives have meltdowns in the Secretary of Energy's office. Surely if private financing was available, Grain Belt would have pursued that instead. Except other commercial financing usually requires some proof of enough revenue to repay the loan. Grain Belt's only customer is a collection of Missouri municipalities that might want to purchase up to 225 MW of transmission capacity on Grain Belt, less than 5% of its total available capacity. That isn't going to make the loan payments, especially because Grain Belt gave the municipalities a loss leader price for signing up in order to secure Missouri PSC approval. And on top of that, the Missouri munis want to purchase wind energy from Kansas and have inked a series of contracts to purchase energy from wind farms over the years. I'm pretty sure the munis don't need to import coal or gas from Kansas... they've got enough of that right there in Missouri. The other possibility for Invenergy would be to find itself a sugar daddy Skelly-style. However, it's not just $200M that Invenergy needs, but $11 BILLION. Who's got that kind of money to risk it all on Grain Belt Express? And doesn't GBE's reputation precede it in this circle of influence, where investors lost hundreds of millions on the project already when it was owned by Clean Line? GBE had a reason for applying for the DOE loan and perhaps that was because it thought DOE was going to loan it money it would never be able to repay. Isn't that what happened with Solyndra?

My guess is that Invenergy really hasn't decided what it wants to do with Grain Belt yet, so for now it's going to parade it around like Bernie and pretend it's still viable. It's a project idea whose time has come and gone and it is not adaptable to new energy sources or new purposes. Grain Belt has been trying to find customers for its project since 2010. And they have found none, other than a gullible group of municipalities that thought there was a free lunch somewhere. If Grain Belt Express was needed, or provided any ratepayer savings, or had any useful purpose, then customers would be lined up around the block to purchase capacity. The fact that they are not speaks for itself. Speculative merchant projects do not work unless they have buyers up front.

But Grain Belt continues its charade, pretending it's now a transmission line for gas and coal-fired electricity. Just a day before the DOE cancelled its conditional loan, Grain Belt craftily leaked to Axios that Invenergy was planning to build a gas-fired generation station to provide power to Grain Belt Express and the company is "also in active discussion with a company to bring existing coal-fired generation onto the proposed Grain Belt Express project." Invenergy wants to change how the line is perceived.

Perception is the least of Grain Belt's problems. The real problem with GBE is that is was a project designed for a very specific purpose... to export electricity produced by wind turbines in Kansas to east coast cities. When that purpose is removed, GBE is nothing but an extension cord in the middle of nowhere that isn't plugged into anything. When the proposed wind turbines are gone, GBE's beginning is in a generation desert in southwest Kansas. There's nothing there to connect and therefore GBE isn't needed. Invenergy's ambitions to build a gas plant are not even logical. Is there enough natural gas available near GBE's AC Collector transmission system in Kansas? Where are these existing coal plants? Are they anywhere near the AC Collector system?

Why not build the new gas plant somewhere near load, Invenergy? There is no load to serve in southwestern Kansas. Building a gas plant there serves no purpose... except to try to create a "need" for GBE to move those electrons to load...when the actual gas generation plant could be built near load and avoid the cost of transmitting the energy 825 miles.

Or, how about this? If Invenergy builds new gas plants in southwestern Kansas, how about if new load moves there to use the energy? Again, transmitting the energy 825 miles is completely unnecessary. And what load could Kansas build near new generators in the southwestern part of the state? AI data centers. Data centers have made Loudoun County, Virginia, the wealthiest county in the nation. Why wouldn't Kansas want a little of that tax revenue for themselves, instead of continuing with the Grain Belt Express farce that simply ships power out of state so that other states can build AI data centers and realize the tax revenue? Wake up, Kansas! There are now better ways to monetize your energy potential than Grain Belt Express! President Trump is looking for places that would welcome new data centers that bring their own power generation. Kansas no longer needs Grain Belt Express at all!

But, back to the puzzle of what Invenergy WAS going to build and what it says it WILL build now...

Invenergy has long been planning two enormous new wind farms to generate the energy for Grain Belt Express.

That's a total of 1,800 MW. Grain Belt was supposed to deliver 2,500 MW of power to Missouri. And how was Invenergy going to connect its new wind farms to Grain Belt Express? Using the recently approved GBE AC Collector system shown on the below map.

Lines up perfectly with the Mako and Thresher projects, doesn't it? Because of the location of the collector system, all energy development for Grain Belt must take place south of Dodge City. And what's south of Dodge City?

This is a map of the electric grid around Dodge City. There's nothing but wind south of Dodge City... and lots of open space without grid infrastructure at all. Where are you going to put your gas plant, Invenergy? And why isn't there any actual plan for it that you can point to? What about those coal plants Invenergy is having talks with? The only ones anywhere nearby are in Dodge City and Holcomb to the west. Both of these plants are what would be considered TINY plants by West Virginia standards. How would they even have any need to ship excess capacity anywhere? These coal plants are nowhere near the AC Collector system. What's supposed to happen to Mako and Thresher? Are you cancelling them? Are you cancelling the AC Collector System?

Grain Belt's claims about remaking the project into one that exports coal and gas-fired electricity are about as realistic as Bernie. It's just pretend.

Grain Belt Express was only logical when it was supposed to export wind energy from Kansas. And even then it was too expensive to be financially viable. Now it's just a hot mess of pretend projects that are propping up a dead transmission line and marching it around to commercial and private financing sources pretending it's still alive.

It's time for Kansas and Missouri to re-think their approvals (Illinois doesn't have to because that approval was reversed). GBE is no longer the project they approved and everything has changed. Missouri has already taken the first step to request updated economic studies. Kansas needs to follow suit in the best interest of its people and state (and not in the best interest of a company from Illinois). Unwinding the Grain Belt Express is going to be complicated, but it can be done. It's no longer needed. Any new plans are just an attempt to prop up an unneeded transmission line... and throw good money after bad.

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Ding Dong! The Grain Belt Express Witch is DEAD!

7/23/2025

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Play it loud! It's time to celebrate!

As coroner, I must aver, I've thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead. She's really most sincerely dead!!!

Today the U.S. Department of Energy issued a press release that cancels its conditional loan commitment.

Grain Belt Express will no longer be getting a $4.9B taxpayer funded loan for its unmarketable project.

After a thorough review of the project’s financials, DOE found that the conditions necessary to issue the guarantee are unlikely to be met and it is not critical for the federal government to have a role in supporting this project. To ensure more responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources, DOE has terminated its conditional commitment.

It's amazing what you can see when you take off those green-tinted glasses!

Of course this doesn't necessarily mean that Grain Belt Express is done, but now it will have to find commercial financing for its project and not rely on a taxpayer handout. There's a reason GBE was trying to get the government to finance it... maybe due to its lack of customers?

Without customers, there will be no loan. Just like you can't get a bank loan without a job, GBE cannot get a bank loan without revenue. The circus is over. It's time to pack up and head out of town, Invenergy.

Congratulations, citizens of Kansas, Missouri and Illinois! After 15 years of entrenched opposition, victory is yours! Never give up!

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The Grain Belt Express Circus Has Come To Town!

7/18/2025

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Remember the days of yesteryear when one of the highlights of summer was the circus coming to your town? Well, we're all getting to relive those glory days with this summer's Grain Belt Express Circus Spectacular!

The circus is indeed in town, and it's a three ring biggie! In the first ring, we have ringmaster Attorney General Andrew Bailey, whipping the GBE pony with an investigation into its business practices. In the other ring, we have ringmaster Missouri PSC Chair Kayla Hahn, yanking on the highwire on which GBE's acrobats are balanced. And, in the center ring, we have ringmaster Senator Josh Hawley unloading the GBE clowns out of their tiny car before lighting it on fire with his magical Department of Energy torch. It's all so much I don't know where to look first!

Let's start at the beginning...

On March 1, 2025, the Grain Belt Express website looked like this. It was all about clean energy (from Kansas) and powering 3.2 million homes. But, suddenly the website changed mid-March to remove any reference to clean energy and to, instead, power 50 data centers. Why the change? It's sort of like jumping from one galloping horse to another during a circus act. Many believe that the change was an attempt to morph into something that would be supported under President Donald Trump's unleashing American energy policies. If GBE could suddenly be something that Trump supports, then perhaps it could survive the Trump clean energy purge. It may have worked initially, when nobody was really paying attention, however there were a couple of people who saw right through GBE's sheep costume.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sprang into action to out GBE from the Trump henhouse. He opened an investigation into GBE's business practices and requested a long list of information from the company. I read an early news article where the company welcomed the investigation, saying it had nothing to hide. Grain Belt's initial comments on that investigation seem to have gone missing lately, and now GBE has filed a lawsuit against the Attorney General, asking the circuit court of Cole County to quash and set aside the investigation. All of a sudden, Invenergy has lots to hide.

AG Bailey also sent a letter to the Missouri Public Service Commission asking them to hold GBE accountable for its wrongdoing by requesting new information about some of GBE's incredulous claims made during the PSC case. Bailey said in his letter that the PSC may revoke GBE's certificate at its discretion if the project is no longer beneficial to Missourians. He supported this with reference to Missouri code that he says "...support[s] the PSC’s authority to revoke a CCN if the utility fails to comply with the imposed conditions or if the operation or construction is deemed imprudent." It only makes sense that the PSC could take action if a utility is not complying with a certificate it issued, otherwise why have the certificate in the first place? Does the PSC really have no authority to ensure that its orders are followed? More on that in the other ring...

AG Bailey also sent a letter to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright to urge rescission of the DOE's conditional loan guarantee issued by the Biden administration in its waning days.

Meanwhile, in another ring, the MO PSC discussed AG Bailey's letter at their open meeting this week. Despite GBE's spin about the PSC rejecting the request to revoke the certificate outright, that's not exactly what the PSC did. Watch the video for yourself, beginning at 1:06:00 on the video. The staff attorney said while the Commission cannot outright revoke the certificate, it can request that the company file further information and monitor the situation as it sees fit. PSC Chair Kayla Hahn proposed that the PSC request that GBE submit a range of updated studies regarding the project's electric bill savings and wage and jobs claims. She thinks the companies claims were aggressive, especially when including a carbon price in 2027 (that is never going to happen now). She thinks the company should have submitted a range of assumptions on the project's economic impacts, wage and jobs information to better explain their assumptions under different modeling scenarios. My impression is that the PSC simply swallowed GBE's aggressive studies hook, line and sinker and perhaps that wasn't the smartest approach. Commissioner Kolkmeyer said that MISO and SPP "convinced us" that Missouri is short on generation and transmission. Huh? Those entities never testified in the GBE case and I'm sure they never told the PSC that Missouri needed Grain Belt. Perhaps he's remembering Grain Belt telling the Commission that MISO and SPP were short on generation and transmission, but the Commission never verified that at the source and, again, simply swallowed GBE's claims hook, line and sinker. Nevertheless, Comm. Kolkmeyer thinks that GBE's numbers were aggressive and the PSC needs to determine whether they are still relevant. The order of the PSC, therefore, was to issue a notice in the GBE case file that more information must be filed. Not exactly the GBE win that the press reported, but just another example of an entity swallowing what GBE says without question. Isn't it time to STOP doing that, Missouri?

And, in the center ring, Senator Josh Hawley recently tweeted that he met with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and President Donald Trump and came away with a promise to put a stop to the Grain Belt Express project. Senator Hawley followed that up by filing an amendment to the rescissions package that passed last night. The amendment says:

NO EXPENDITURE OF AMOUNTS FOR GRAIN BELT EXPRESS LLC.
No funds appropriated under this Act or any other Act to the Department of Energy shall be made available for Grain Belt Express LLC.

Seems pretty clear to me. Grain Belt Express is going to have to get its project financing elsewhere if the rescissions package passed with that amendment still in place. We may have a little circus sideshow on that later today as the package passed in the wee hours of Friday morning and I can't get a list of what was in it when it passed (thanks, AI, you're still just a conglomeration of useless crap).

If GBE is going to have to get financing elsewhere, it's going to need more customers than the 39 Missouri cities that signed up to use less than 5% of its 5,000MW transmission capacity. But there is no indication that there are any other customers. I had this really wacky dream last night... in my dream, Invenergy was looking for a government loan to pay itself back for all the money it had wasted on Grain Belt over the past several years. Once it was paid back, Invenergy didn't care about Grain Belt anymore and abandoned the project for lack of customers. I woke up mad as hell that taxpayers ended up funding Grain Belt's colossal waste of money and paying back its lost investment, but luckily it was only a bad dream!

So, folks, enjoy the circus while the show lasts. It's costing GBE a bundle of money and distracting its attention from any progress. Have you seen GBE's statements and claims about the current circus? Calling a U.S Senator and a state Attorney General "unhinged" has to be a new low for a company that has been riding high on the political hog during the Biden administration and has engaged in lawfare when it suited them. Now they don't like being the star of this circus.

Remember what happened when Clean Line's circus went bust?

And you know what happens when the circus is over? The tent folds, the acts are packed up, and it chugs slowly out of town under cover of darkness.

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Hark! Is That Grain Belt's Death Knell I Hear?

7/11/2025

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Yesterday, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley announced a commitment from U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to halt the $4.9B taxpayer-backed loan that Grain Belt Express had applied for back in 2022.

Without a risky, taxpayer-funded loan to build GBE, can GBE get financing elsewhere? Maybe not, since GBE doesn't have enough customers to make the project financially viable. There's a reason GBE applied for a government loan and spent the past 3 years winding its way toward approval paying for an overly expensive Environmental Impact Statement process.

The bell tolls for thee, Grain Belt Express. It's time to stop throwing good money after bad. GBE's attempt to make its merchant transmission line into something President Trump needs is not working. I heard that the President was also at the meeting and so now he knows the truth about Grain Belt Express, too.

But Grain Belt is still selling their own brand of snake oil:

In a statement from the Grain Belt Express, it says, in part, that Hawley is attempting to kill the largest transmission infrastructure project in U.S. history.

“Senator Hawley is trying to deprive Americans billions of dollars in energy cost savings, thousands of jobs, grid reliability and national security, all in an era of exponentially growing demand. The project is the critical infrastructure needed to achieve America’s energy future and has support from the White House and House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans,” the statement reads.

“The project has also secured approvals from all four route states.”

Largest transmission project in U.S. history? You say that like it's a good thing, GBE. It's not a good thing, and it means absolutely NOTHING in the grand scheme of things except for the fact that it was always too ambitious to succeed.
Deprive Americans of cost savings? Cost savings how? There's no generation at the Kansas end of the project so there's no way to know how expensive that would be. It's also unknown how much extra it would cost to buy capacity on GBE to import that mysterious energy from western Kansas. There's no proof that it would save anyone a dime. And maybe that's why GBE doesn't have enough voluntary customers? If it was really a cost saver, GBE would have customers lined up around the block. The lack of customers speaks for itself.
Jobs? You mean that artificial jobs number that was spit out by IMPLAN's software? That really means nothing and the vast majority of any real jobs will be filled by out of state contractors. Tell me, GBE, how many of those new jobs are related to building new generation in Kansas?
Grid reliability. NOT!!! That's reliability nobody needs. If GBE was needed for grid reliability, it would be a project planned and ordered by SPP and/or MISO, and Grain Belt Express has never even been reviewed by the grid operators. These federally regulated grid operators are the sole determinant of what's needed for reliability. Because GBE is a merchant, speculative, voluntary project, there is no reliability need associated with it. Sure, my electric service would be more reliable if there were 6 or a dozen service lines coming off the street, but that's not "reliability" I need or want to pay for. GBE is the same... reliability we don't need and don't need to pay for.
National security? No. The military has its own back up power sources. It doesn't trust the grid or privately owned transmission lines like GBE.
Growing demand? Right. Growing demand requires growing generation. Not transmission. A transmission line is like an extension cord not plugged into anything.
Critical infrastructure? NO! If it was it would be ordered by SPP or MISO. Not critical. Voluntary. Speculative. Extraneous.
Support from the White House and Congress? Not really. You can't determine that earlier uninformed mistakes were some sort of actual support. GBE was able to fly under the radar earlier this year, but that's over now. The White House and Congressional Republicans know the truth.
Approved in all four states? NO! GBE's Illinois permit was reversed by the Fifth District Appellate Court in August 2024. GBE doesn't have an approval in Illinois!!! Quit saying that, GBE, nobody likes a liar.

Ding Dong!

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MO AG Investigates Changes to Grain Belt Express

7/8/2025

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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has opened an investigation into "the misleading claims and a track record of dishonesty surrounding the Grain Belt Express transmission line project." He has issued a demand for documents and sent a letter to the Missouri Public Service Commission asking that they evaluate GBE's "at best speculative and faulty, or at worst intentionally fraudulent, information in their application, including in their impact analysis." He also reminds the PSC it has the authority to reevaluate the benefits of the project and request more information.

Looks like GBE's game of Permit Wack-A-Mole is back in full swing!

The Missouri PSC can snatch GBE's permit away and demand that they file a new application if there have been material changes to the project. What's a material change? It's anything the PSC wants it to be!

Maybe the PSC ought to take a gander at GBE's website and compare that to the project they thought they approved several years ago. Gone are the Kansas wind farms and solar panels. In fact there's no mention of any generation in southwestern Kansas, of any kind. Therefore, what's going to be "collected" on the GBE AC Collector lines the Kansas Corporation Commission recently approved? Without wind turbines or solar panels, what's there to collect? Is Kansas going to build five new large nuclear or gas-fired power plants there? What good is GBE's extension cord when it no longer plugs into anything?

Yeah, we all know that GBE is simply pulling on another sheep costume and trying to remake itself as an "all of the above" energy source transmission line so as to escape notice of the Trumpian sheep dogs. And maybe they'd have gotten away with it, too, except Missouri AG Andrew Bailey just hand delivered a letter to the Secretary of the Department of Energy yesterday, asking that the DOE rescind the "conditional" loan approval it was granted by Biden's goons on their way out the door.

Without the wind turbines, Grain Belt Express no longer even pretends to qualify for the loan it applied for, which was only for projects that "reduce greenhouse gases."

Grain Belt Express LLC, (the Applicant), applied for federal financial assistance via a loan guarantee from the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) (42 U.S. Code [U.S.C.] 16513), as amended. Section 1703 of Title XVII (the Clean Energy Financing Program) defines eligible projects as those that, “avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs]; and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to commercial technologies in service in the United States at the time the guarantee is issued” (Public Law [P.L.] 109-58, Section 1703(a)).

It never even qualified in the first place because GBE is just a transmission line. It can accept electricity from any source and therefore it cannot, by itself reduce any gases. I told the DOE this in my comments on the draft EIS.

GBE is gas lighting everyone now pretending to be an energy source for data centers. Since GBE won't be connected to any source of energy, I'm pretty sure they're not interested. If a data center is looking for cheap energy from Kansas, it can locate... in Kansas! It doesn't need to pay GBE a bunch of extra money to ship electricity to Missouri so it can locate in Missouri. As much electricity as data centers use they can't afford to pay extra for unnecessary transmission.

GBE is an idea that has long outlived its usefulness. It's not even logical anymore. It's just a giant extension cord that doesn't connect with anything on either end. No generation. No customers. Just a bunch of exaggerations and half truths. Let's hope AG Bailey can finally get to the bottom of it.

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Hark! Is That Grain Belt's Death Knell I Hear?

MO AG Investigates Changes to Grain Belt Express

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