For example, the Commission could permit applicants to request the recovery of specified O&M expenses as capital costs for ratemaking purposes in the area of forestry and vegetation management to encourage best-in-class practices. Effective vegetation management is vital to the reliability of the Bulk Power System, as evidenced by the 2003 Blackout.*
Extreme weather conditions, whether it be excessive rainfall, drought or heat, is making traditional vegetation management more challenging while simultaneously increasing its
importance. Vegetation management is an on-going and evolving challenge facing transmission owners as extreme weather conditions intensify, which only heightens importance of vigilance in preventing encroachment of vegetation to ensure the reliability of the grid.  The NERC Reliability Standards applicable to vegetation management do not apply to facilities that are
below 200 kilovolt. Vegetation management, therefore, should be considered as one of the most critical components to maintaining system reliability, and should be prioritized in a way that puts it on equal footing with transmission investment. Best-in-class vegetation management creates long-term system benefits by reducing outages. The Commission could provide a greater incentive to adopt and implement state-of-the-art vegetation management practices by allowing transmission-owning entities to book the costs
that currently would be categorized as O&M expense as a capital cost to be amortized over an appropriate period. Treating these costs as capital would allow transmission owners to earn a return on the unamortized balances and thereby create an incentive to these entities to focus funds in this reliability-critical function. This incentive rate treatment would support the Commission’s reliability goals and benefit customers by reducing outages over the long term. By permitting applicants to capitalize certain O&M expenditures, the Commission could incent best practices for grid security and reliability that benefits all customers.

*And the East Texas issue!

According to PSC records dating back to the 1970s, the commission has never rejected a utility application to build a transmission line.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead

Apex Clean Energy Vice President of Public Affairs Dahvi Wilson said it’s no longer simply a matter of getting landowners to sign off on projects. Now, Wilson said, utilities need to secure public support.
“We’re increasingly before state [and] local governments, and we’re facing opponents that are very sincerely concerned about what’s coming to their communities but also misguided,” Wilson said.
Utilities are increasingly facing the deliberate spread of misinformation online about proposed projects, she said. “We’re in a lot of debate right now over what’s true.”
Wilson said regulators must now ascertain whether data are scientifically rigorous or simply pulled from a questionable webpage.

North Dakota Indian Affairs Commissioner Scott Davis, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, led negotiations with the Dakota Access Pipeline over a two-year period. He described how he was constantly afraid of a protester’s death and listening to helicopters conducting crowd control near his home.
“Don’t underestimate the power of my people. You can tell them not to do it, and they’re going to do it,” Davis said. “Quite honestly, government hasn’t treated us very well in the decades of our existence.”
Davis said “old-fashioned” face-to-face discussions with tribal or community leaders is the best approach to introducing projects with communities, native or not. Davis also warned that treaties protect tribal land.

“[For] a lot of you that have tribes in your states, treaties are the law of the land. They’re in the Constitution. … Understanding tribes, where they’re coming from, is so important,” Davis said. “I think in this world of progress, progress, progress, what drives us — what pushes the gas pedal of progress — is trust. If you’re just rubber-stamping [energy infrastructure projects], you will have an issue.”

Wilson said the wind industry, which previously tended to submit projects quietly, hoping for little public notice, is now more transparent. She also agreed that it’s imperative for utilities to spend face-to-face time in a community.
“If the people that are fighting our projects are much more liked in the community, the community is going to believe them over us,” Wilson advised.
However, she said, it’s still a “hard sell” to convince many utilities to spend money to embed company representatives in a community to foster trust.

Environmental Law & Policy Center Senior Attorney Brad Klein said it’s generally good practice for a utility to perform a full environmental impact analysis early in the process and thoroughly investigate alternatives to a large energy infrastructure project.

“I don’t think alternatives are appropriate in all cases, but they should be fully considered up front,” Klein said. Decisions should be made based on “full and fair information,” he said, which should contemplate new technologies, battery storage and collections of distributed resources.

Klein also acknowledged that there will be environmental trade-offs with any large infrastructure project. But utilities and regulators shouldn’t insult groups of concerned citizens, he said.
“Don’t dismiss local communities as NIMBYs [‘not in my backyard’]. That’s insulting,” Klein said. “When we lose the public’s trust, you lose the larger fight.”

What you want
Baby, I got it
What you need
Do you know I got it?

On August 2, 2019, the Verde Transmission Project notified the United States Bureau of Land Management and the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs that the Project would not be moving forward and that the Project was officially requesting to withdraw its application for right-of-way approval from these agencies.

Our results also suggest that transmission line developers may garner greater support from communities that will host such lines if they explain explicitly that at least one source of electricity is solar or wind.

Of course, higher support for transmission lines that carry renewable electricity may not be sufficient to overcome all opposition, especially from property owners most directly affected by the siting; nor is it guaranteed that a response to a hypothetical survey scenario reflects how one would respond to the same scenario in reality.

Invenergy’s investment will support three of the organization’s central programs:

• The Blue Jacket Program, which Invenergy will donate 125 signature jackets annually.
  
• Career and Leadership Development Events.
  
• Building out the FFA national alumni network.
  

More than half of Invenergy’s U.S.-based renewable energy projects are located in the same zip code as an active FFA chapter.

“FFA is important to the communities where Invenergy projects operate..." said Mick Baird, SVP of Renewable Development at Invenergy.

The Court of Federal Claims held that none of the developer fees were includible in the applicants’ qualified grant basis because the fees had not been substantiated to the satisfaction of the court. The court applied as its legal basis for this disallowance, the so-called “sham” transaction doctrine applied under the tax law.

The development agreement was a three-page document, according to the Court of Federal Claims, wherein Bishop Hill agreed to pay IWNA a $60 million development fee. The government’s requested findings suggest that the development agreement disclosed that this amount was intended to compensate IWNA for development services that it had already performed for Bishop Hill. The development agreement was signed by two officers of Invenergy Wind and was terminable by construction lenders if the exercise of their remedies resulted in Bishop Hill being no longer controlled by IWNA. According to the government, another single member disregarded entity of Invenergy Wind, Invenergy Wind Development North America LLC (IWDNA), transferred $60 million to Bishop Hill’s construction account in July 5, 2012. On the same day, the $60 million amount was transferred to IWNA’s operating account. And, on the same day, the $60 million amount was transferred back to the same IWDNA account from which the amount originated. According to the government: “Thus, on July 5, 2012, $60 million travelled through three bank accounts and in each account, the debit and credit of $60 million cancelled each other out.”

While the Mid-Continent Independent System Operator (MISO) approved this project in 2011 as part of its Multi-Value Project portfolio, in the years since 2011, circumstances have changed considerably, requiring additional analysis to avoid an expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars for a line that may not be needed.

The lack of recent peak load growth, associated with the expansion of distributed solar, wind and battery technologies, creates a very different situation from that analyzed in 2011 when the line was originally proposed. It is necessary to consider recent alternatives to determine whether the transmission line is needed.

But to her, Skelly’s no hero and Clean Line was never a good idea.

“I didn’t object to how I was presented in the book,” Morton told Arkansas Business. “The opposition was all about the land [and landowners’ right to challenge eminent domain]. But I do have trouble with the second half, and I’m not even sure it should be called nonfiction.”

The author fell victim to what Morton calls the “Skelly spin,” in which Clean Line’s representatives are kind and caring, eager to help landowners, she said. “They must have been Jekyll and Hyde, because they were actually condescending Ivy Leaguers who thought they were the smartest people in the room.”

“So many people in our grassroots movement called legislators,” Morton said. “So many that they asked us to stop calling. That made a difference, and our delegation made a difference. They’re made into villains in the book, but actually, for once, they listened to the people, not the billionaires, and did their job.”

“I told Mr. Gold that this outdated technology, lines on 20-story-tall steel towers, is no longer viable.” She champions the approach of SOO Green Renewable Rail, which plans to ship Midwest wind energy to Eastern markets via underground transmission lines buried along existing railroad tracks. “This would cut out permitting issues and give you just one owner to deal with, and you wouldn’t be putting huge towers across 8,000 acres of our beautiful state.”