...the DOE is among the most prominent defendants requiring payment from the Judgment Fund, which pays for claims against the government. The department paid out more in legal claims than any other agency last year and the year before, according to the fund's records — more than $5 billion over the last decade.

And according to the department itself, the bloodletting as far from over. The DOE has failed to make good on some of its most important contractual obligations for years, and its private partners have been collecting billions in damages.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 requires that the DOE dispose of nuclear waste being produced at civilian energy plants around the country, which in turn pay fees for a long-term storage facility. The department's contracts with dozens of energy companies said it would start disposing of the waste in 1998.

The companies held up their end, feeding about $750 million into the Nuclear Waste Fund each year. But the department did not manage to set up any facility to receive the waste, forcing energy companies to store it themselves on-site.

The hang-up has been in finding a location for the centralized storage facility. For decades, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was the only location that could legally be considered, despite fierce opposition from state and local groups. The Obama administration eventually abandoned the site as "unworkable" in 2011.

How will a grid that provides a two-way street to carry and store more renewable energy help resolve this situation? DOE's Hannegan responds with a sports analogy. On a mesh-like grid, the problem, whether it is a computer hacker, a big forest fire or a battery failure, is a threat that can be quickly isolated, allowing the rest of the surrounding grid to operate normally using better controls and quickly dispatched stored electricity.

Lawlor says this "isn't about eminent domain," which is one of the worries of many who live along the proposed route.  

"We will sit down with every single landowner and negotiate with them on the unique nature of their property. In fact we've been doing that for a couple years now."

What happens if a landowner doesn’t want to negotiate with Grain Belt Express?

The Company is allowing sufficient time for negotiations with each individual landowner along the route. Grain Belt Express is committed to conducting easement negotiations in a manner that respects the private property rights of landowners and achieves a voluntary easement acquisition. The Company is also committed to working with landowners to minimize the impacts of the Project upon their property. In order to ensure that infrastructure projects in the public interest can be completed, the entities building them need the right to condemn certain easements, particularly in cases of parcels that have title issues, parcels with missing or unlocatable landowners or heirs, or parcels where landowners refuse all reasonable attempts at contact or negotiation. Grain Belt Express views the use of eminent domain as a last resort that is appropriate only after exhausting all reasonable attempts at voluntary easement acquisition and title curative work. In all cases, landowners are entitled to due process and payment of fair market value for any easement acquired, and will retain ownership of their land.

...sit down with every single landowner and negotiate with them on the unique nature of their property.

Specifically, Clean Line has agreed to:

Offer the option of binding arbitration to resolve any compensation disputes.

Establish a Missouri Agriculture Protocol. Clean Line will follow strict guidelines to avoid, minimize and mitigate any impacts to agricultural fields or activities. The Missouri Agriculture Protocol should implement utility best practices and establishes an Agriculture Inspector to monitor construction activities. The Agriculture Inspector has the power to immediately stop construction when best practices are not being followed or when contractors are in violation of any negotiated obligation with landowners.

Establishment of a fund to decommission the project when it is determined to be near the end of its useful life.

Have a local firm update land value assessments. In the event land values have decreased since the last assessment because of commodity prices or any other reason, the Grain Belt Express will honor the higher of the values. Also, compensation will not be reduced after an Order has been issued approving the project by the Missouri Public Service Commission.

Motions to intervene, when granted, provide intervenors with certain additional rights beyond being heard by the Commission. In particular, an intervenor has the right to seek rehearing from the Commission and, in the event that an intervenor properly and timely files a Request for Rehearing that is ultimately denied by the Commission, such intervenor has the right to appeal through the Federal courts the denial of such request.
Thus, the granting or denial of intervenor status has important implications for the wouldbe intervenor, the Applicant, the Commission, the Commission’s processes, and
potentially the Federal court system and its processes.
The RG Developers recognize that the Commission takes a modern approach to
pleadings and emphasizes substance over form, often granting intervenor status to novice participants that do not fully comply with the letter of FERC’s regulations governing
interventions. The RG Developers generally endorse such an approach. However, over
the past year or more, there has been evidence of growing disrespect for the
Commission’s processes marked, not just by disruption outside of the Commission’s
Washington, DC headquarters, but also within the Commission’s meeting room while the
Commission is in session. Unlike entities seeking to intervene in good faith but who
inadvertently fail in their efforts to comply with the Commission’s rules, entities that
show absolutely no regard for the Commission’s rules do not deserve to be rewarded with intervenor status. The Commission has started taking deliberate steps to restore order to its own processes and preserve its ability to conduct its affairs and ensure those making a good faith effort to participate in an order fashion within the rules would not be prejudiced by actions of those who find it more convenient or effective to ignore the Commission’s rules.
In the Pre-filing docket (PF15-20) preceding the current, formal, application proceedings, the Commission also took innovative action to ensure stakeholders could be heard, while excluding disruptive elements. Specifically, those wishing to be heard (at the scoping meeting for this project and two other projects held in Port Isabel, TX on August 11, 2015) were required to present oral comments individually, in an orderly fashion, rather than speaking in front of everyone assembled at the scoping meeting in a manner that would have encouraged out-of-turn remarks from the crowd.
Now, the Commission is faced with another threat of disruption to its processes –
albeit via written filings. Specifically, the vast majority of the current submissions
purporting to be motions to intervene demonstrate an utter lack of a good faith effort to meet any of the Commission’s regulations setting forth the requirements for petitions to intervene...

Specifically, those requirements include:
1.  Any person filing a petition to intervene or notice of intervention shall state specifically whether he seeks formal hearing on the application.
2.   A motion must contain a clear and concise statement of (1) the facts and law which support the motion; and (2) the specific relief or ruling requested.
3.  A motion to intervene must state the position taken by the movant and the basis in fact and law for that position.
4.  A motion to intervene must also state the movant’s interest in sufficient factual detail to demonstrate that (i) the movant has a right to participate which is expressly conferred by statute or by Commission rule, order, or other action; (ii) the movant has or represents an interest which may be directly affected by the outcome of the proceeding, including any interest as a consumer, customer, competitor, or security holder; or (iii) movant’s participation is in the public interest.
5.  A filing must begin with a caption that sets forth the docket designation, title of the proceedings if a proceeding has been designated, a heading which describes the filing, and the name of the participant for whom the filing is made.
6.  Any filing with the Commission must be: (1) [t]ypewritten, printed, reproduced, or prepared using a computer or other word or data processing equipment; (2) [h]ave double-spaced lines with left margins not less than 11/2 inch wide, except that any tariff or rate filing may be single-spaced; (3) [h]ave indented and single-spaced any quotation that exceeds 50 words; and (4) [u]se not less than 10 point font.
7.  Any participant filing a document in a proceeding must serve a copy of the document on each person whose name is on the official service list, and any other person required to be served under Commission rule or order or
under law and a certificate of service must be attached to the document and have the proper language.

The Commission’s May 19, 2016 Notice of Application in the RG Developers’ Dockets expressly called attention to these  requirements stating:
[A]ny person wishing to obtain legal status by becoming a party to the proceedings for this project should, on or before the comment date stated below, file with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 888 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20426, a motion to intervene in accordance with the requirements of the Commission's Rules of Practice and Procedure (18 CFR 385.214 or 385.211) and the Regulations under the NGA (18 CFR 157.10).

The Commission’s Notice went on to explicitly note: “A party … must mail a copy to the applicant and to every other party in the proceeding.”

On May 27, 2016, House File 2459 was signed into law, adding § 478.6A “Merchant line franchises – requirements – limitations” to the Iowa Code. This newly- enacted statute creates a new class of electric transmission lines, called “merchant lines,” and sets time limits for processing franchise petitions for merchant lines. Clean Line’s proposed electric transmission line is a merchant line as defined in the new statute. Going forward, all petitions for a franchise for a merchant line that involves the taking of property under eminent domain will be subject to § 478.6A, which establishes a three-year deadline for Board action on those petitions.  If that deadline is not met then the petition shall be rejected and the petitioner may not file a petition for the same or similar project within sixty months following the date of rejection.
Section 39 of House File 2459 sets out slightly different time requirements for merchant line petitions filed on or after November 1, 2014, that have not yet been approved by the Board as of May 27, 2016. The three-year approval period is not applicable to these petitions; instead, the Board must act on these petitions within two years. The Clean Line petitions fall into this classification and therefore a decision on these petitions must be issued by the Board no later than May 27, 2018.

Another challenge facing the industry is the need to insulate state utility regulators from political pressure.

In instances around the country, he said, "you're seeing the confluence of politics challenging that independent regulatory model."

It's a reason the California Public Utilities Commission was located in San Francisco instead of Sacramento back in the 1800s when it was the California Railroad Commission, to protect regulators from the political influence of the powerful monopoly railroads.

Clark cited the Nevada Public Utilities Commission decision late last year in which regulators posted fixed charges for NV Energy customers with solar energy systems and slashed rates for compensation for excess energy put back on the grid (ClimateWire, Jan. 11).

He quoted a solar industry executive who told reporters that Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval should "get control of his appointees."

The comment, Clark said, "drives home that large segments of the public -- and sometimes fairly sophisticated people that operate in this space -- view regulatory commissions as just another extension of politics."

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.

MARK TWAIN, "How to Tell a Story"

In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

MARK TWAIN, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Preliminary calculations, assuming existing production tax credits for wind project participation in the project, could reduce costs by as much as $10M/year or $10 per  megawatt hour compared to delivery of other wind projects from SPP to MISO.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

MARK TWAIN, Autobiography

Government is merely a servant – merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

MARK TWAIN, The Bible According to Mark Twain

Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

MARK TWAIN, Europe and Elsewhere

$1,167 per MW/month, escalating at 2 percent (2%) annually beginning as of the  Commencement Date for the first 100 MW tranche.

$1,667 per MW/month, escalating at 2 percent (2%) annually beginning as of the Commencement Date for the second 100 MW tranche.

$2,500 per MW /month.  For the first two years, after which time the contract may be extended for a period up to 26 years.

the Parties shall cooperate with
each other to obtain all Governmental Approvals that are required for Transmission Provider to construct and operate the Project and put this Agreement fully into effect, including making any filing in support of another Party's application for any such approval as requested by the Party
seeking such approval. From and after the Execution Date, the Parties shall not take any action, or seek any relief, before any other Governmental Authority that is inconsistent with the terms and conditions of this Agreement.