The footprint of wind and solar in RE+ [scheme] are extensive and will require broad-based and sustained support from communities across much of the nation.

Build societal commitment.

Creation of the coalitions of public support and political will needed to achieve 2020’s targets.

Major stakeholder engagement campaigns to build:

1. Broad societal awareness of local, state and national benefits of net-zero energy pathways; and
   
2. Acceptance, management, and mitigation of impacts on landscapes and communities associated with the transition.
   

o Major consumer awareness campaigns and incentives to drive low-carbon energy investment decisions

FERC’s powers may be limited, but it can do more. Taking a firmer line on transmission investments proposed by utilities could push more of them to put their planning in the hands of independent regional bodies. In addition, the 2005 Energy Policy Act grants the Department of Energy the power to designate priority transmission corridors; if states refuse to comply, FERC has the authority to approve projects. Court challenges stymied early efforts, yet the legislation remains on the books. The Biden administration should work to revive it.

CCUS at gigaton scale from power plants and industrial facilities will require a major CO2 pipeline infrastructure and significant hubs for geological CO2 storage. In addition, reaching net zero emissions – and eventually net negative emissions – throughout the economy will require carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere and upper ocean layers.

I recommend that Congress create and fund a Federal Electric Transmission Authority with the capabilities and funds to manage and coordinate national-scale transmission planning, design, and construction. This Authority should work closely with FERC, the states, DOE, and existing industry and reliability authorities to expand, build and adapt a robust transmission network that meets our nation’s needs over the long term. This will require decades of effort. Therefore the Transmission Authority must be created by statute to maintain mission, expertise and funding continuity (much like the Federal Highway Administration) and protect it from changing administration policy preferences.

“Not only yes, but hell yes,” James Hoecker, FERC chairman from 1997 to 2001, said of the need for major new transmission investment in a Wednesday webinar introducing the report. Beyond the need to absorb the country's growing share of wind and solar power, the grid will likely “need to double in size to support the electrification of transportation, heat and other industrial processes,” all of which are needed to decarbonize the U.S. economy. 

“I say ‘hell yes’ as well; we need to do more interregional transmission,” Wellinghoff, former FERC chairman from 2009 to 2013 and current CEO of GridPolicy, said at Wednesday’s event. 
“Order 1000 has fallen short on its vision, certainly short on my vision of it." 

By all accounts, wind and solar resources will become a much larger portion of the resource mix in the future, and electrification of transportation and buildings will substantially increase demand. These trends magnify the benefits of building large regional and inter-regional transmission infrastructure to connect resource rich areas with load centers.

“Nobody likes transmission. We will always be litigating it,” Nora Mead Brownell, co-founder of energy consultancy Espy Energy Solutions and FERC commissioner from 2001 to 2007, said during Wednesday’s event. “But I think if we had a more fact-based basis for it and...more coordination between regions,” a broader planning regime could “build people’s confidence that they’re getting a fair shake.” 

given the challenge of siting new projects that may be particularly acute in some regions, limiting competition may be a catalyst for new development because it limits the number of developers that may stir up “not in my backyard” or “NIMBY” opposition via project development activities.

In contrast to the Midwestern Clean Line projects, the 2,100-megawatt SOO Green appears to be encountering little if any resistance.

Renewable energy is ready for prime time.  That is if -- like Michael Polsky -- you don't mind angering farmers and chopping up a few bald eagles.

Back in Chicago, Polsky leads an impromptu tour of the three floors Invenergy occupies at One South Wacker Drive in the pandemic ghost town that is downtown Chicago. It’s a Friday morning. Ordinarily, there would be dozens of people in open-plan workstations and offices, but only a handful are present, including the 24/7 crew manning Invenergy’s control center—watching, and even operating, 6,774 wind turbines spread across the country.

Sharing Invenergy’s digs are the offices of Polsky’s $150 million green-tech-focused VC fund, Energize Ventures. Among its 13 portfolio investments: Drone Deploy, which inspects turbine blades using infrared beams and drones, and Volta, which is building a chain of electric vehicle charging stations.

These days, Polsky has reluctantly traded the standing desk in his office for Zoom calls from his living room and quality time with his second wife, Tanya, 47, a former banker, and their three young children. “I’ve spent a lot more time with family than before,” the compulsive dealmaker admits. He seems to be enjoying it. “I’ve discovered being home, in a way.”

Then there’s that Grain Belt Express, which would install an 800-mile high- voltage line across Kansas and Missouri into Illinois at a cost of $7 billion. It was originally the brainchild of wind-industry pioneer Michael Skelly, whose Clean Line Energy was backed by the billionaire Ziff family, among others. Skelly’s team burned through $100 million fighting NIMBys and bureaucrats in its quest for permits and approvals. “After a decade, it was hard for us to attract capital,” says Skelly, now a senior advisor at Lazard.

Polsky agreed to take over Grain Belt on the condition of Invenergy winning those approvals—in other words, all he risked upfront was the cost of lawyers and lobbyists. “It’s much more complicated than just building a wind farm,” admits Polsky, who relishes the challenge. A bill that would keep non-utility companies like Invenergy from using eminent domain to take private land passed the Missouri state assembly this year but has been bottled up in the state senate. Meanwhile, two Missouri appeals courts have upheld the state public service commission’s approval of the Grain Belt Express.

Despite ongoing appeals, farmers like Loren Sprouse, whose family owns a 480-acre tract west of Kansas City that the high-voltage line would cross, are becoming resigned to the fact that soon Invenergy will be able to negotiate with the sledgehammer of eminent domain. “Once you get eminent domain, the price may still be negotiated, but they would have the right to do it,’’ he says.

Sprouse’s land is already crossed by three buried petrochemical pipelines, which he says transport warmed crude that “runs so hot it dries out the ground and kills the crops.” (Indeed, the proposed transmission lines would run along the pipeline right-of-way.) But Sprouse prefers the pipelines to the visual blight of hulking transmission lines, and he’s concerned about the health effects of electromagnetic radiation. Polsky is encouraged by Invenergy’s legal victories in Missouri, and expects Illinois approvals to follow. “It will be built. It has to happen,” he says.

Polsky is buying turbines from GE Power that are twice the size of those at Grand Ridge (at 700 feet, they’re taller than Trump Tower in New York) and generate up to 3 megawatts each. He intends to erect more than 1,000 of these enormous machines on 100,000 acres in Kansas, on what could become the nation’s biggest wind farm.

YOU HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME
One big obstacle to green energy is spelled y-o-u. Technological advances have made wind and solar power cheaper than coal, nuclear and even natural gas. So why aren’t we using more of the stuff? Quite simply because you (and your neighbors) oppose and block the construction of wind farms and new transmission lines for green power.

A new transmission line connected to the Grain Belt Express will bring thousands of jobs and $8 billion in investment to the state of Kansas, Gov. Laura Kelly announced Wednesday.

“Economic recovery and long-term economic competitiveness in Kansas and Missouri depend on new investment, more jobs, and tapping into low-cost, homegrown clean energy, which Grain Belt is moving full speed ahead to deliver,” Zadlo said. “Grain Belt is proud to increase our investment in Kansas and Missouri to rebuild the economy, deliver billions of dollars in energy cost savings, and meet growing renewable energy demand.”

The governor said the state has a lot of unused wind energy and this will be a good way to make sure it isn’t wasted.