Clean Line’s owners are GridAmerica Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of National Grid USA (“National Grid”); Clean Line Investor Corp., a subsidiary of ZAM Ventures, L.P. (“ZAM Ventures”); Michael Zilkha; and Clean Line Investment LLC.

Clean Line Investment LLC is a vehicle for service providers and employees to invest in Clean Line, and is a small, minority shareholder in Clean Line.

Michael Skelly
Michael Zikha
Jayshree Desal    
James Glotfelty    
Mario Hurtado    
David Berry

While all these things seem kind of academic, it's pretty clear from Mario Hurtado's interview with NewsOK that the truthiness of this list isn't going to stop Clean Line from spinning it in a way they can use to preen (beg?) for financing and to pressure landowners.

"When the Trump campaign was looking at infrastructure, we thought it was a good thing to mention. We're just happy to be part of the conversation."

Like, when did you just happen to mention it? Did you run into them in the grocery store? How much did that conversation cost?

... a GOP penchant for infrastructure projects and commerce-building is expected to favor endeavors like the Plains & Eastern Clean Line, a $2 billion plan for transmitting wind power across 12 Arkansas counties from Oklahoma to near Memphis.

Academic voices say the trend toward renewables may be too entrenched to be crippled by Washington. Trump “can eliminate subsidies for solar power as well as electric cars, and he may not be very supportive of renewable energy, but ultimately technology and market forces will be the determining forces,” said Rajesh Sharma, an Arkansas State University assistant professor and expert in renewable energy technology. “Clean technology is advancing every year and costs are going down.”

Skelly sees opposition to the Clean Power Plan as “probably a net negative” to his ambitious project...

Clean Line recently announced an agreement with Southwire, designating Southwire as the preferred supplier of the overhead transmission wire for the Rock Island Clean Line. The agreement anticipates that the wire will be produced in Southwire’s facility in Flora, Illinois, where the company employs approximately 130 people. Clean Line and Southwire announced the agreement on March 6, 2012, at the American Wind Energy Association’s Regional Wind Energy Summit- Midwest.

A leader in technology and innovation, Southwire Company, LLC is one of North America’s largest wire and cable producers. Southwire and its subsidiaries manufacture underground and overhead Utility products, Renewable Energy products, building wire and cable, metal-clad (MC) cable, portable and electronic cord products. Southwire also provides OEM wire products, engineered products, continuous casting technology, and products made by Technology Research, LLC and Watteredge, LLC, both subsidiaries of Southwire Company.

Southwire’s Flora, Illinois plant has more than 40 years of experience in the design and manufacturing of overhead transmission conductor. Today, the plant leverages that expertise to support large-scale transmission projects like Grain Belt Express. The Grain Belt Express project could require as much as $35 million in materials from Southwire, depending on commodity prices and other variables.

SPRINGFIELD (Nov. 12, 2015) – The Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) today approved an Order granting Clean Line Energy a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity to construct and operate the Illinois portion of the 780-mile direct current Grain Belt Express Clean Line.

The project will bring approximately $700 million of private investment to the state of Illinois, create about 1,500 jobs and support Illinois manufacturing.

Clean Line is also committed to supporting local businesses and has designated Southwire Company a preferred supplier for wire for the transmission line. Southwire will manufacture the wire at its plant in Flora, Illinois.

“The Illinois Chamber of Commerce applauds Clean Line Energy and Southwire Company for coming together to support manufacturing jobs in Illinois,” said Todd Maisch, President and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce. “Through this agreement, the Grain Belt Express Clean Line will create vital work orders for a local company. Clean Line’s commitment to hiring locally whenever possible will ensure that the Grain Belt Express will be an economic boon to the state.”

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.

This will be GE’s first HVDC project in the United States since acquiring Alstom’s energy portfolio last year. This addition to our portfolio was critical.

The Grain Belt Express Clean Line wind energy project has made significant steps towards getting the final green light from the Public Service Commission.

“It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to build a line around Missouri,” Lawlor said, adding that he is confident the PSC will rule fairly on the merits of the project, not the factor. “They’re going to judge the case on its merits and whether it meets the standards that Missouri has under its statutes. They will ask, ‘Is there a need for the project and is it it in the public interest?’ We have put forth a strong argument that there’s a need.“

While Indiana and Illinois signed onto the project before Missouri, Missouri was always seen as the most integral partner of the project. Lawlor says that belief can cause some to believe Missouri would not get much benefit out of the project, even though Missouri would get roughly 500 MW from wind energy as a result.

“Some folks get distracted this is something going through Missouri, the reality is that this is delivering power to Missouri,” he said. “From day one, it was just going to be a Kansas to Missouri line, but we found the Missouri grid couldn’t take that much power.

“Missouri’s key to this whole thing and we hope and expect we can bring those benefits to the state,” Lawlor said.

A reporter attempted to interview Faughn about his companies’ money troubles. The Missouri Times is headquartered at 129 East High St. in Jefferson City. A reporter found Faughn there at the top of a two-story walkup, inside a darkened room resembling a lounge.

Faughn was standing behind a bar in the room with a laptop computer in front of him. Liquor bottles stood on shelves on the wall behind him. Black and white photos of politicians covered the other walls of the room.

Faughn declined a face-to-face interview. He said he would consider written questions sent by email. Questions were emailed March 17. Faughn acknowledged receiving them March 21, but said he could not respond until next week.

Faughn, the former mayor of Poplar Bluff, launched the Missouri Times in 2013 with former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton. Faughn was Jetton’s former campaign manager. Jetton has since severed ties with the operation.

The PATH project is an example of a project that faced significant public opposition.

As part of its analysis of the public interest, the PSC acknowledged the substantial opposition to the project expressed by business owners, farmers, and individual landowners across whose properties the project was proposed to cross. The Missouri PSC noted, “In this case, the evidence shows that any actual benefits to the general public from the Project are outweighed by the burdens on affected landowners.”

The National Park Service, for example, required significant and expensive mitigation measures from the developers for the Susquehanna-Roseland project in order to gain its approval for completion of the portion of the line that crossed the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, which it is mandated to protect.

The development of a transmission project is a commercial venture involving investors who are prepared to incur significant, yet ultimately limited, up-front development costs in return for the opportunity to earn future profits from the sale of transmission services and/or a regulated return on invested capital. Adopting a developer’s perspective enables us to look at the factors reviewed in this report as ones that affect either the cost or time required to construct a transmission project. The extent to which these factors represent barriers to the implementation of transmission projects is thus an assessment of whether these costs or time requirements are avoidable or necessary.

There are documented examples of project developers who have sought to reduce these costs and associated time requirements through up-front information sharing and joint (and early) development of mitigation approaches (including abandonment of early proposed and development of new routing options). The success of these activities has hinged largely on the extent to which they lead to meaningful engagement and tangible commitments to address public concerns over line routing.

The state-centric public-interest issue that arises most vividly for multi-state transmission projects involves the so-called “fly-over” states. These states are situated between the states that are the starting and ending points for a long-distance transmission project. The initial decisions by the Missouri PSC to deny the CPCN application for Grain Belt Express exemplify this issue. The public-interest issue raised by states in the middle is that, at bottom, they are being asked to bear significant portions of the cost or adverse impacts of a project, yet they do not believe they are being provided with sufficient opportunities to share in the benefits of the project.

The need to satisfy a middle state’s public-interest requirements is a classic example of what economists describe as the role and importance of “side payments.” In this instance, the gains from trade must be sufficient to cover side payments to affected parties who have standing but who would not otherwise benefit from the transaction. Thus, the situation faced by developers, such as those for the Grain Belt Express project, is tangibly and fundamentally (but not solely) commercial in nature. Notably, as discussed, the developers for Grain Belt Express recently reached an agreement to sell power from the project to an association of municipal utilities in Missouri and, based on this agreement, plan to re-file their request for state regulatory approval. It remains to be seen whether the fact of a Missouri entity signing an agreement that could be seen as demonstrating the public-interest value of the project in Missouri will result in the Missouri PSC approving the project on its third attempt in the state.

Developing a transmission project involves simultaneously managing two categories of commercial risk. One is the risk associated with securing the capital necessary to build the project. Eto (2016) focused on one example of capital risk: that associated with seeking regional cost allocation. The other category encompasses risks associated with the actual construction of a project. This report is focused on a key subset of these project-construction risks: the cost of satisfying the due process requirements of state and federal agencies involved in permitting and siting lines, which is often increased when there is organized public opposition to the project. These are necessary costs associated with transmission-line construction. Some can made more manageable through proactive actions by developers. Still others can be made more manageable through the actions of federal and state agencies to enhance the efficiency and accountability of their processes. Thus, while the project review process can be slow and add costs to project development, on the whole transmission lines are being built. Moreover, there are promising signs that both groups are taking actions to improve the processes, both in terms of their duration and the quality of the decisions that get made. We found examples of merchant transmission projects successfully gaining needed approvals and being constructed. Their experiences, in particular, suggest that if the economics of potential projects are sound, someone will find a way to build them.

Hibblen:  "So, I take it the property owners don't want to sell?"
Massey:  "Well, some of them don't want to sell.  And others sort of resent being forced to sell even though they may get a good price for the use of their land."

Massey:  "Well, the delegation would say the difference is that this is the benefit of private company that is Clean Line Energy Partners of Houston and it's a little different from an interstate in that Clean Line has not been declared a utility by the PSC so the Congressional delegation is framing this as an unprecedented partnership between the Department of Energy, which is backing this project, and a private company."

Hibblen:  "What would be the benefits of this project?"
Massey:  "Well there would be a few jobs in maintaining the line, but the main benefits would be to the landowners."

"But the big number is the $147M in taxes that would flow to the 12 counties that the line crosses."

Hibblen:  "Are the landowners and Clean Line talking possible settlements?"
Massey:  "Clean Line is negotiating with individual landowners and they have commitments with a great many of them as I understand it."

"So I think a great many people find this attractive and would be happy to have the money for the line coming through their land.

“In my view, Dominion looked really hard at the input this community had and listened to us around the table. I’ve served on a lot of task groups in Alexandria, but this is probably the best I ever sat on.”

And Mayor Allison Silberberg touted Dominion’s proposal for the fact that both options keep power lines underground.

“The good news is Dominion put forward two alternatives that are, in the proposal, both shown to be underground in Alexandria,” Silberberg said. “That’s really good, because that has been a top concern. We are awaiting more info from Dominion with regard to the specifics, and then once we get that specific info from them, we will be reconvening the work group, which has been excellent, to go over these considerations and the two options.”