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Grain Belt Express Wants a Taxpayer Handout

12/23/2022

2 Comments

 
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Or maybe we should call this "Solyndra 2.0"?

A week ago, the U.S. Department of Energy published a notice in the Federal Register entitled, "Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the Grain Belt Express Transmission Line Project."

You can read the whole thing here, or see the less technical version on GBE's brand new website.

To summarize, GBE has applied for a federal loan guarantee to build "Phase 1" of its project.  This taxpayer-funded gravy train is administered by the DOE, and because it now involves the federal government in the GBE project, the government is required to conduct an Environmental Impact Study under federal law (National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA).
Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) established a federal loan guarantee program for certain projects that employ innovative technologies. EPAct authorizes the Secretary of Energy to make loan guarantees available for those projects.  Grain Belt Express, LLC (Applicant), has applied for a loan guarantee pursuant to the DOE Renewable Energy Project and Efficient Energy Projects Solicitation (Solicitation Number: DE-SOL-0007154) under Title XVII, Innovative Energy Loan Guarantee Program, authorized by the EPAct. The primary goal of the program is to finance projects and facilities in the United States that employ innovative and renewable or efficient energy technologies that avoid, reduce, or sequester anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs).
When did this happen, you may wonder?  Nobody knows.  DOE conducts its guaranteed loans of taxpayer dollars in complete secrecy.  You don't get to comment about that, but they do have to let you comment about the environmental effects of GBE because of NEPA.

But I'm much more concerned about the federal government "loaning" GBE billions of dollars to construct a project that doesn't have an adequate revenue stream to pay back the loan.  What kind of a government geek thought this would be a good idea?  What kind of due diligence have they performed?  Doesn't sound like it was much... and that's how Solyndra happened.  The government loaned taxpayer funds to a company it didn't really investigate and the company went belly-up before repaying the loan.  That means that the taxpayers were never repaid.  But Solyndra lived high on the hog on taxpayer funds before the bill came due.  All that money... gone with the wind simply because some government functionary was lazy or under political pressure to approve a loan that any rational banker would run away from.  And here's another worry... what if GBE also has applied for a taxpayer-funded "capacity contract" from the DOE?  In that instance, DOE would pay GBE for its project (although it wouldn't actually USE it) for a period of 40 years.  So, what if GBE repays the taxpayer loan with taxpayer capacity contract funds?  Does that mean that we would repay the loan we made to GBE?  This is the epitome of bloated government waste.  Just throw around a bunch of taxpayer funds and "clean energy" will magically happen!  Or  maybe a bunch of well-connected rich guys will simply fill their pockets and zoom off into the sunset.  That's probably more like it!

Meanwhile, the DOE must evaluate the environmental effects of GBE, and it wants to do it in record time.

The first step of this process is what they call "scoping."  The scoping process collects public comment and uses that to set the parameters of what will be studied.  They want to hear your thoughts on
Potential impacts on resources include, but are not limited to, impacts (whether beneficial or adverse; short term or long term) on air quality and GHG emissions; soils and paleontological resources; water resources, including surface and groundwater and floodplains; vegetation, wildlife, and special-status species; land use and recreation; socioeconomics and environmental justice; public health and safety; cultural resources and Native American traditional values; transportation; visual resources; and noise.
And DOE plans to gather your comments before the end of February, 2023.  You may comment:
LPO will hold six public scoping meetings for the project, four in-person and two virtual meetings, at the following dates and times (Central Time). Registration for the virtual public meetings may be completed at the following web links:


• Wednesday, January 25, 2023, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., virtual meeting on Zoom ( https://us06web.zoom.us/​webinar/​register/​WN_​NOQzgumNTpOAIL5UoLVIeA)
• Thursday, January 26, 2023, 5 p.m.- 6:30 p.m., virtual meeting on Zoom ( https://us06web.zoom.us/​webinar/​register/​WN_​D619NGe1TGqMH0fcHx5SSA)
  • Tuesday, January 31, 2023, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4 p.m.-6 p.m., Dodge House Hotel and Convention Center, 2408 W Wyatt Earp Blvd., Dodge City, KS 67801
• Tuesday, January 31, 2023, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4 p.m.-6 p.m., Municipal Auditorium, 201 W Rollins St., Moberly, MO 65270
  • Thursday, February 2, 2023, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4 p.m.-6 p.m. Corinthians Hill Event Center, 464 NE 20 Ave., Great Bend, KS 67530
  • Thursday, February 2, 2023, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4 p.m.-6 p.m., Fairview Golf Course, 3302 Pacific St., St. Joseph, MO 64507


All meetings are open to the public and free to attend.
DOE will gather this information and then present a number of "alternatives" that they will study.  There are currently only two alternatives -- to build the project as proposed, or to not build the project at all.  There is no middle ground, such as building the project buried on existing highway or rail rights of way so that it doesn't affect the environment at all, certainly to a much lesser degree.  However, the DOE is also asking for your thoughts on possible alternatives that they have not yet thought of (such as burial on existing ROWs).

Once DOE has its alternatives and study parameters, it will study how each alternative effects the environment, and publish a draft study (estimated to be September 2023).  The public will once again be asked to comment on the draft study to tell DOE what they got wrong, or what they excluded.  DOE will take those comments and revise its study to produce a final Environmental Impact Study (estimated to be July 2024).  Once DOE has the final study, it will make a decision on which alternative to pursue no sooner than 30 days after publication.

Seems kind of quick, doesn't it?  Especially the scoping period, which begins just one short month after announcing the process on December 16.  As if you don't already have enough to do with the holidays and participating in your own state's public utility commission  hearings on GBE.  Now you just got a whole bunch more work dumped on you.  If you can't keep up, then DOE doesn't have to consider your comments and will just give GBE what it wants -- billions of your tax dollars.

I'm not going to go into a long narrative of what you should do here.  Please check in with your group leadership to see what the plan is. 

Ho Ho Ho from greedy GBE, who doesn't seem to have enough customers to pay for its project and now wants YOU to pay for it.  Santa is putting coal in GBE's stocking this year.
2 Comments

Urban Special Interest Groups Pretend to Represent Rural Landowners

12/23/2022

2 Comments

 
It takes real audacity to claim to speak for people you've never met, never talked with, and know absolutely nothing about.  But that never stopped a well-funded, urban, special interest group before.  They think they know everything about everything because they wish it to be so.

It's almost comical -- a bunch of urban special interest groups got together and wrote a letter to their oracle, Joe Biden, and told him what rural landowners affected by new transmission want.
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Now more than ever, we need strong environmental review and public engagement processes to avoid harming communities while effectively speeding up development of much-needed infrastructure to enable a rapid clean energy transition.
"Public engagement".  What does that mean?  Simply giving landowners "notice" and allowing them to blow off steam with "input" doesn't solve the problem.
A recent study from MIT concludes that a significant hurdle in developing clean energy infrastructure projects is local opposition --and early community engagement can avoid delays or cancellations. To address this major slow down and to ensure that our new transmission is developed in an equitable manner, we must work with the very communities that our infrastructure is supposed to serve and not against them.
But yet these special interest groups are working against rural landowners by creating some "public engagement" fantasy that did not "engage" the landowners in the first place.  Hypocrite much?

About that MIT study... it's pure garbage.  The study makes  up a completely unsupported conclusion for why certain transmission line projects studied were abandoned:
  1. Public Participation: Local residents (their legislative representatives and public agencies) oppose projects in which they believe their worries are not adequately being attended to by the developer.

These projects were stopped because of opposition.  There is no education deficit that can quell opposition by "adequately attending to worries."  The only thing that stops opposition is to stop bad projects.  Landowners impacted by new electric transmission towers and lines across their working land and adjacent to their homes aren't deterred from opposition by being told that their worries are unfounded.  That just makes the landowners even more angry and determined to stop the project.

The only thing that can end opposition to a transmission project is not to engage the landowners in the first instance.  If you don't site overhead transmission across private property, then landowner opposition never forms.  Planning new projects buried on existing highway or rail rights of way, or underwater, is a guarantee that no landowners are affected in the first place.

Of course, a bunch of special interests that live in the big cities and think they should be provided with "clean energy" produced elsewhere have absolutely no idea what people that live and work in rural areas want.  If the cities want "clean energy" then they need to find ways to produce it themselves.  Build a new nuclear power plant in your own city.  It is not the responsibility of rural America to provide for all your needs.  Self-sufficiency is highly valued in rural areas.  You should try it sometime because rural folks will continue to resist.
2 Comments

FERC Engages in Political and Special Interest Narrative Building

12/17/2022

2 Comments

 
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At the end of the week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking entitled, "Applications for Permits to Site Interstate Electric Transmission Facilities."  Yes, it's just what it sounds like.  FERC is developing rules for applying for a federal permit from the agency.  This was made possible by last year's "Bipartisan Infrastructure Act" that gave FERC permission to issue a permit for interstate transmission in the event that a state denied one.  FERC's new rules are going to guide the process for a transmission developer to usurp state authority and use federal eminent domain to site a new transmission line on your property.

The NOPR itself contains a plethora of really awful ideas, and your job is to comment on them and advocate for something different.  Yes, it's a federal agency and you may find that daunting, but ultimately you are the one who is going to have to live within these rules so don't give up your only opportunity to say your piece.

One of FERC's absolutely ABSURD ideas is to allow a developer to engage in a pre-application process at FERC at the same time as it is engaged in a state application process for the project.  FERC reasons:
"The purpose of the pre-filing process is to facilitate maximum participation from all stakeholders to provide them with an opportunity to present their views and recommendations with respect to the environmental impacts of the facilities early in the planning stages of the proposed facilities."
FERC thinks you have nothing better to do than "participate" in its permitting process while you are also engaged in a state permitting process.  Double your time, double your effort, double your money!  And while we're doubling things here, it also costs the transmission developer double their costs to participate in two different permitting processes at the same time.  In many RTO-planned, cost allocated transmission projects, ratepayers (that's you) pick up the tab for all the permitting costs.  So this double permitting process costs you double!  The epitome of waste here is that if the transmission project is approved by the state (which it is in a vast number of instances) then the FERC permitting process becomes completely unnecessary!   Instead, FERC should sit back and wait until a state either approves or denies a project before giving transmission developers the green light to proceed with the FERC application.  It should wait until it knows whether the FERC process is even necessary before spending all that time and money on it.  FERC has not given a plausible reason for having to run these two permitting processes simultaneously.

Another FERC brain fart is titled "Eminent Domain Authority and Applicant Efforts to Engage with Landowners and Other Stakeholders."  This proposed rule governs how the applicant will "engage" with you.  FERC suggests:
...an applicant may demonstrate that it has met the statutory good faith efforts standard by complying with an Applicant Code of Conduct in its communications with affected landowners.
FERC purports that if a transmission developer files a "Code of Conduct" and promises to abide by it, then so it shall.  There is no enforcement, no investigation, no public forum to keep the developer honest.  FERC just takes the developer's word for it that you are treated well and that you will be all aboard for the transmission project if you are only "engaged with" early on.  We all know that transmission developer "codes" are not worth the paper they are written on.  They are nothing but a fig leaf.  There is no place to report a violation of the "code" and absolutely no enforcement of it.  This is utter garbage and serves no useful purpose.  If FERC needs to ensure that landowners are treated fairly, it needs to roll up its sleeves and get its hands dirty actually engaging with the public in an effort to keep the developer honest.

There's also some "environmental justice" box checking going on here.  An applicant must provide an Environmental Justice Public Engagement Plan.  This plan requires the developer to "meaningfully engage with potentially affected environmental justice communities."  What is an environmental justice community?
...the term “environmental justice community” includes disadvantaged communities that have been historically marginalized and overburdened by pollution. The term also includes, but may not be limited to, minority populations, low-income populations, or indigenous peoples.
These communities are rarely found along transmission routes in rural areas that all the interstate transmission projects traverse.  Despite the word "justice", it is not dispensed equally to all persons.  Are you an environmental justice community if you already have a transmission line or two (or a gas or oil pipeline, or a highway, or other visually polluting infrastructure) sited across your property?  We should definitely find out because they don't have a real definition here.

Perhaps the best part of this train wreck are the "concurrences" of Commissioners Danly and Christie that are attached at the end of the document.  Despite voting for this rulemaking, they both manage to find ways to criticize it.

Commissioner Danly wonders:
... whether the proposed rule constitutes good policy, such as, for example, whether it will be beneficial in determining whether to site electric transmission projects when the states have not done so, or whether the rule will tend to ensure almost nothing is ever sited.
But Commissioner Christie sums it up like this:
State regulators are much better prepared to deal with that myriad of local concerns, including concerns over routing and costs, than FERC. Furthermore, state processes are far more convenient and user-friendly than processes at FERC, if for no other reason than geographic proximity. So, waiting one full year to allow a state to “go first” and make its decision makes sense for a lot of reasons. One obvious reason is that if the line is truly needed, the state regulators will in all likelihood approve it, and no FERC staff time and resources will need to be expended at all. The whole mantra that goes “the states are blocking needed transmission all over the country!” is simply a political and special-interest narrative. The steadily mounting increases over the past decade in transmission rate base nationally, with concomitant skyrocketing increases in transmission costs to consumers, blows up the narrative that states are systemically blocking needed transmission lines. Contrary to the narrative, states need more authority to scrutinize transmission projects for need and prudence of cost, not less, to protect consumers.
Ignorant special interests writing legislation that they believe will help them fill their pockets is never smart.  It always results in dumb stuff like this.

If you want to be involved in a group effort to comment on this Rulemaking, let me know.

Happy Holidays!  Krampus had delivered a bulging bag of evil for good little landowners this year while they're distracted with family activities.  More to come...
2 Comments

GBE Won't Commit to its Project

12/11/2022

0 Comments

 
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If you're a person in the Grain Belt Express target zone who is currently being harangued and pursued to sign an easement, or perhaps a utility regulator being told that GBE is a sure thing, you might find this interesting.

About a month ago, Invenergy filed with FERC a "Request of Grain Belt Express LLC for Prospective Tariff Waiver, Expedited Action, and Shortened Comment Period."

The gist of this filing is that MISO has tendered an interconnection agreement for GBE and Invenergy only has 60 days to negotiate and sign it, or to file it unsigned.  GBE's negotiation period ends December 31.  GBE wants FERC to grant a waiver so that Invenergy can wait until some time next year to sign the agreement and make two large deposits for the transmission upgrades its GBE project will cause.

GBE has applied at MISO for both interconnection of its project and injection rights.  Interconnection and injection rights are two separate things.  Interconnection allows GBE to connect to MISO's existing system, but injection rights allows GBE to inject a certain amount of electricity into MISO at the interconnection site.  Both the interconnection and injection rights require MISO study to identify and plan any upgrades to the system that they will cause.  Interconnection and injection rights run on two different study tracks.  MISO determined that GBE's interconnection will require approximately $144,248,000 worth of work to the existing system to support the interconnection.  However, MISO has not yet completed the study that will determine the cost of the injection rights work, although GBE estimates it will be an additional more than $177 million.  GBE wants to know the injection rights number before it negotiates and signs the interconnection agreement, because once it signs the agreement it is obligated to make non-refundable deposits totaling approximately $77 million before it knows the injection rights number.

Let that sink in... Invenergy doesn't want to spend money on a project without knowing its full cost.  As Invenergy puts it
Otherwise, GBX will be placed in the position of having to decide whether to commit millions of dollars in security or cash pursuant to the executed TCA before it understands its total upgrade cost exposure associated with the Injection Rights.
This would have absolutely no relevance if there was not the possibility that Invenergy would cancel this project if the injection rights end up costing too much.  If Invenergy is going to proceed with GBE no matter how much injection rights cost, then the deposits don't matter.  The deposits would only represent a loss for Invenergy if it cancelled the project.

Apparently Invenergy is not going to know whether its project is going to proceed until at least the end of April, 2023.  But yet there are reports that Invenergy is filing eminent domain suits and taking landowners to court.  And, of course, Invenergy is pushing state regulators to approve its project in a big ol' hurry, even though Invenergy wants another 5 months to decide if its even going to proceed with interconnection to the existing transmission system (and that's if MISO's study gets completed on time, which in these days of clogged interconnection queues may not happen). 

Invenergy says having to put up cash as surety for its project is "too risky" for the company but taking your land via eminent domain isn't risky at all for Invenergy.  It's all about who bears the real risk, isn't it?
0 Comments

The Fossil Fuel Phantom

12/5/2022

2 Comments

 
I laughed so loud when reading this op ed that it shot to the top of the blog pile.  Have you ever read a more ridiculous and contradictory notion?
Data shows the public, including communities hosting wind and solar projects, approve of renewables and want more of them.
But then...
Unfortunately, proposed wind and solar projects have faced an avalanche of local opposition in recent years...
If local folks love living in industrial energy generation facilities so much, why do they oppose them so vehemently?

It's the Fossil Fuel Phantom, of course!  Ya know how the "clean energy now" folks were so quick to accuse anyone who questioned their unicorn utopia of being on the fossil fuel payroll?  It used to be the Koch brothers purportedly sending me checks to think logical thoughts and give voice to them on the internet, but then they died.  So now the clean energy nutbags have invented a Fossil Fuel Phantom to take their place (and send me phantom checks).  This new entity is indeed a phantom because nobody can actually point to a real person or company who is responsible for these phantom payments.  It's just concocted out of thin air because "clean energy now" needs a boogy man to oppose its unicorn utopia ideas.  It goes like this:
Unfortunately, proposed wind and solar projects have faced an avalanche of local opposition in recent years, often based on misinformation or outright fallacies. Opposition groups, following a playbook organized by a fossil-funded think tank, spread fallacies about impacts to wildlife, property values, health, and more, sowing fear and anger.
All the "proof" of the existence of a Fossil Fuel Phantom is questionable in itself.  There is no proof.  Just a bunch of accusations and mysterious "associations" drawn where there is no actual evidence.
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So what's the unicorn solution?  "Permitting Reform."  They're really unclear about how this should go, but it might involve increased federal power to simply mow down local opposition and usurp permitting authority.  It may also include some phantom "fact checker" or truth police that would attempt to shape public opinion to believe only "clean energy" propaganda. 

How in the world is that supposed to fix things?  These folks live in a dream world, drunk on their own power.  Real people will continue to resist being forced into industrial energy generation installations.  The more "big government" tries to shut down their sharing of information, the deeper underground it goes.  They seem to forget that they are trying to perpetrate this on rural America, where local community information is shared at the grain elevator, not on Fakebook.  They seem to forget that rural Minnesota farmers carried out a legendary transmission opposition campaign in the 1970's using telephones, snail mail, and local meetings to communicate.  Nobody is afraid of the thought police.  The federal usurpation of local permitting is also not going to work.  It's just going to bog things down while the fight becomes about permitting in general, not actually building anything.  And it's probably not quite legal.  If "clean energy" wants to spend all its time and money in courtrooms, instead of building things, this is indeed the path forward.

However, the only thing that will work to speed up building "clean energy now" is to stop bothering people.  Stop trying to take what they worked for.  Stop trying to force your unicorn utopia on people who don't want it. 

Because they really don't.  Phantoms don't exist and most people don't believe in them.  Go build your crap somewhere else, like in the backyard of the dolt who wrote that op ed in Forbes.
2 Comments

    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.


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