On June 16, FERC issued issued a first step — technically called a “notice of proposed rulemaking” — that it aims to amend laws making it easier to connect sources of electricity to the grid.

The most productive geographical regions for wind and solar are generally far away from urban centers where the energy is needed.

There’s also the possibility of putting transmission lines underground, which, “is much more economic today than it used to be,” Gramlich said. But it’s still expensive, as much as ten-fold the cost, depending on the terrain you are trying to go through, according to Robb of NERC. In some cases, for example, putting a transmission line means blasting through granite. So, while “that’s a viable thing to do, it’s a very expensive thing to do,” according to Robb.

Overcoming NIMBYism on TransmissionLast August, the Niskanen Center and the Clean Air Task Force released a report that called for adoption of the “5 P framework” to overcome opposition to clean energy infrastructure. The construct builds on the transmission concept of “planning, permitting and paying.”

“We propose adding ‘participation’ as a fourth ‘P’ and then ‘process’ as [the fifth]. Because one of the challenges of transmission [is that] every single project is unique, because every state in every region is different,” said Liza Reed, Niskanen’s electricity transmission research manager for climate policy. “The reason that we raise participation up to an equal level with the other Ps … is that groups are really siloed in each of those policies right now. There is stakeholder engagement in planning. There is stakeholder engagement in permitting. There is stakeholder engagement in paying. But different stakeholders get brought in at different points, and that’s when groups start getting frustrated. And I think when folks hear the word ‘participation,’ they think angry town halls and lawsuits. But the whole point of bringing participation into a consistent process is to avoid that.”
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Joseph Rand offered an observation from his analyses on the siting and community impacts of large-scale wind and solar.
“What the wind energy developers have learned over time is that we need to move away from a process that people call ‘decide, announce, defend,’ [to one] called ‘consult, consider, modify, proceed,’ so that you’re meaningfully engaging local stakeholders in that process and being open to actually modifying your proposal,” said Rand, senior scientific engineering associate for the lab’s Electricity Markets and Policy Group.

To spur grid expansion, the federal government should consider a tax credit for large scale transmission investment in current budget reconciliation policy discussions and the FERC proposed rule for expansion, he said.

Congress needs to act to give a federal agency, either the Department of Energy or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), authority to site transmission lines. “They could pass a statute that’s about one page long,” Pierce told CNBC in a phone conversation at the end of May. “This is not hard to accomplish if you’ve got the political will.”
Pierce knows that there will be opposition to such a federal authority, to which he says: Too bad.
“You cannot allow the citizens of a single state to block actions that are imperative for the welfare of the citizens that the whole country much less can you can you afford to allow the citizens of one little town or one landowner to,” Pierce said. “It’s just frustrating."

Also, Gramlich sees a potential path forward in upgrading existing transmission lines. There, you don’t have the siting battles. “Reconstructing or replacing the old lines with new lines is a is a major opportunity,” he told CNBC. “There’s very little public opposition to transmission over existing corridors.

Thomas said the failed 700-mile HVDC Clean Line transmission project from Oklahoma to Arkansas, which the U.S. Department of Energy agreed to support, “had higher negatives than gonorrhea.”

“We have battle scars from that,” joked Michelle L. Manary, acting deputy assistant secretary for DOE’s Energy Resilience Division.

To avoid that problem in the future, Manary said DOE will focus not on transmission corridors but on specific projects.

“It’s much easier to study a specific project,” she said. “And I think it’s easier also for the states and utilities to comment on it and coordinate and facilitate with it because they know what we’re talking about — not just a broad swath of land.”

Missouri House Bill 2005 has been heralded as a win for farmers facing eminent domain from transmission line companies, but it won’t protect Randolph County farmers from the Grain Belt Express, Randolph County Commissioners said Monday.

But Commissioners John Truesdell, John Hobbs and John Tracy said the bill won’t affect eminent domain proceedings brought by Invenergy Transmission for its Grain Belt Express, a new long-distance transmission line in the works for the past 10 years.

The new law will not help farmers keep their land. “Grain Belt is not affected by this,” said Hobbs. “I, myself, say it’s hogwash. It’s not protecting the farmers on Grain Belt. It’s protecting the farmers for anything after Grain Belt.”

But Randolph County Commissioners say the company isn’t following normal procedure and has not contracted with local energy companies to provide energy at lower costs.

“You have to drop something of value in Missouri before you can do eminent domain,” Truesdell said. But the commissioners say they have yet to hear of any local utility company that has contracted with Grain Belt to move their product.

“I haven’t heard from the county coop that we’re going to get any energy,” Hobbs said.

Ivenergy says Grain Belt Express will play a major role in economic recovery and growth in the Midwest by delivering thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in energy savings, and tens of millions of dollars for local communities and landowners.

Randolph County Commissioners say they haven’t seen any contracts or data that make them believe that.

The company also has to have a financial plan, which it doesn’t have, said Truesdell. “We have a lot of red flags in Randolph County.”
Though the company doesn’t have permission from Randolph County, it has started construction off Highway 3, Truesdell said. “It’s how they do business.”
Randolph County filed a moratorium to stop work until Grain Belt complies with all regulations, said Truesdell.
“They went in and did some dirt work,” said Hobbs. The landowners signed a contract with the company.

“They didn’t act like any other utility company we’ve ever dealt with,” said Truesdell in May. The company struggles with communication; one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing, he said.
A little over two years ago, Grain Belt was supposed to come visit with the commissioners, said Truesdell. It never did. The company has to have approval from the county to begin construction, which it doesn’t have, he said.

...large, merchant interregional HVDC transmission lines that, although in non-emergencies are contractually dedicated to the interregional delivery of a pool of renewable resources to more distant loads, can nonetheless also be made available should explicitly designated contingencies arise such that the power from these different capacity sources can then be available to help mitigate the designated contingency -- even where such delivery could require the power to flow in the opposite direction from that called for in the usual schedules. For example, the GBX Line could have in place arrangements in advance that would allow any of the regional transmission systems to override its dispatch for a period of time so that the GBX Line could be dedicated to addressing contingencies when they arise. It will be important that these arrangements allow such transmission systems to relax the interconnection and/or
injection limits that may have been authorized for normal operations. For example, if the
prevailing dispatch would deliver Midwestern power to Eastern markets, there must be
arrangements in place to ensure that when necessary to schedule power in the opposite
direction, such Midwestern transmission system is not constrained from receiving such power based on interconnection or injection limits that might be in place during non-
contingencies.

Indeed, assuming the GBX Line was subscribed to its full capacity (approximately 4,000 MW), had only a fourth of its subscribers agreed in advance to be curtailed if required for certain emergencies, an additional 1,000 MW would have been available to the system operator to alleviate the shortages in local capacity resulting from the storm.

Grain Belt Express requests that the Commission initiate a study to value the reliability benefits that interregional merchant transmission lines will provide and develop a template of the types of tariff-based arrangements that the Commission would accept. The Commission should direct regional markets to: (1) establish products or services to capture those reliability and resilience benefits; (2) develop specific methodologies to place a value on these services; (3) confirm that transmission systems will be allowed to relax interconnection and/or injection limits for deliveries from interregional merchant transmission lines during system emergency conditions; (4) direct system planners to account for and adequately value interregional merchant transmission in planning efforts; and (5) when accounting for interregional merchant transmission in planning, properly allocate network upgrades required to integrate and interconnect interregional HVDC lines, consistent with beneficiary pays cost allocation principles.

"Many regions lack clear and consistent rules for the interconnection of transmission lines.
For instance, MISO currently allocates all transmission interconnection upgrade costs entirely to the customer, but may allocate a portion of those same upgrades to load if they were identified within the generator interconnection process, and some regions (i.e., SPP) have no applicable rules that govern injection from such lines. Grain Belt Express has experienced this first hand in developing an approximately 800-mile, 4,000 MW high voltage direct current transmission line that will interconnect in and carry power to and from the SPP, MISO and PJM regions. But its development is complicated by the lack of any consistent rules governing its interconnections in the different regions. And further complicating the process, MISO has refused to include Grain Belt Express’ interconnection positions as assumptions in the base case models and studies for its long-range transmission planning initiative (“LRTP”), which is intended to identify and address issues looking 10-20 years into the future. This refusal to account for the expected injections and withdrawals of an advanced-stage merchant transmission project not only complicates Grain Belt Express’ own development, it means that MISO’s LRTP results may themselves be flawed and inefficient.”

The glass-and-metal building that Solyndra began erecting alongside Interstate 880 in Fremont in September 2009 was something Silicon Valley hadn’t seen in years: a new factory.

It wasn’t just any factory. When it was completed at an estimated cost of $733 million, including proceeds from a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, it covered 300,000 square feet, the equivalent of five football fields. It had robots that whistled Disney tunes, spa-like showers with liquid-crystal displays of the water temperature, and glass-walled conference rooms.

“The new building is like the Taj Mahal,” said John Pierce, 54, a San Jose resident who worked as a facilities manager at Solyndra.

We also found that the Department’s due diligence efforts were less than fully effective. At various points during the loan guarantee process, Solyndra officials provided certain information to the Department that, had it been considered more closely, would have cast doubt on the accuracy of certain of Solyndra’s prior representations. In these instances, the Department missed opportunities to detect and resolve indicators that portions of the data provided by Solyndra were unreliable. In the end, however, the actions of the Solyndra officials were at the heart of this matter, and they effectively undermined the Department’s efforts to manage the loan guarantee process. In so doing, they placed more than $500 million in U.S. taxpayers’ funds in jeopardy. 

While not the focus of the investigation, we were mindful of the concerns that had been raised regarding possible political pressure applied in the Solyndra decision-making process. Employees acknowledged that they felt tremendous pressure, in general, to process loan guarantee applications. They suggested the pressure was based on the significant interest in the program from Department leadership, the Administration, Congress, and the applicants.

But what must be the most difficult pill to swallow is the legislators’ statements that House Bill 2005, which reforms eminent domain law for future transmission projects, represents one of the success stories of the 2020 session.

Lawmakers should be willing to call it what it is. Perhaps not a sellout, but a difficult compromise that comes at the expense of those landowners who are most affected and led this fight.

You could point to several benefits of Grain Belt, the 780-mile transmission project bringing wind power from Kansas to populations further east.

The customers on the receiving end get plenty of benefits. But who, exactly? Unlike something more tangible like gasoline, it’s hard to see where electricity is directed on the grid, but the fact that Grain Belt will end near Indiana suggests that many of its beneficiaries are there and not here.

Invenergy, the for-profit company building Grain Belt, could benefit nicely when it starts to sell the power.

This spring, the legislature passed a bill that clamps down on the use of eminent domain for transmission lines. The legislation, now headed to the governor’s desk, requires a company or an investor-owned utility to pay 150% of market value for an easement on agricultural property. It also requires a project to deliver a proportional amount of power to Missouri so that it doesn’t just use rural counties as an energy superhighway on the way to bigger cities.
But House Bill 2005 contained the following words: “These provisions will not apply to applications filed prior to Aug. 28, 2022.”
That means Grain Belt, granted regulatory approval in 2019, is grandfathered in.
“We thank our many supporters for their tireless efforts in ensuring that this legislation recognized the legal rights of Grain Belt Express as a previously approved project that will continue forward toward full construction,” said Nicole Luckey, senior vice president of regulatory affairs for Invenergy, in a statement. “Missouri lawmakers brought stakeholders together around this important legislative compromise, which will benefit Missouri families, farmers, workers and businesses for decades to come.”


That’s not how Rogers sees it.
“I have a hard time with the Legislature right now,” he said.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA or the Act) directs the Secretary of Energy (Secretary) to establish a program, to be known as the “Transmission Facilitation Program” or “TFP,” under which the Secretary shall facilitate the construction of electric power transmission lines and related facilities. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE or Department) Grid Deployment Office is issuing this NOI to notify interested parties of its intent to implement the TFP and to describe the proposed approach for participation by eligible entities in the TFP. The Department also seeks input from all stakeholders through this RFI regarding the application process, criteria for qualification, and selection of eligible projects to participate in the TFP.

(19) The IIJA calls on DOE to seek to enter into capacity contracts that will encourage other entities to enter into contracts for the transmission capacity of the eligible projects. On what basis should DOE assess whether a capacity contract with an applicant will encourage other entities to enter contracts for transmission capacity?

12) Recognizing that transmission projects are located based on the availability of generation, and ultimately customers to buy that generation, and have limited long term direct employment impacts:

• What equity, energy and environmental justice concerns or priorities are most relevant for the TFP? How can these concerns or priorities be addressed in TFP implementation?
  

DOE participation is to help provide certainty to developers, operators, and marketers that customer revenue will be sufficient to justify the construction of a transmission line that meets current and future needs. Applications for capacity contracts are not required to account for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) environmental impact review, because DOE's entry into a capacity contract does not independently trigger NEPA review.

Because we conclude that the Commission’s decision denying the Siting Applications and rescinding Transource’s provisional CPC was in accordance with Pennsylvania law, including Sections 1501 and 2805(a) of the Code, and Section 57.76(a) of the Regulations, and is supported by substantial, credited evidence
of record, we affirm.

As for Transource’s arguments that PJM’s determination of need would be binding due to this matter involving issues of interstate regional transmission subject to FERC oversight,the ALJ held that the Commission was obligated to make an independent determination based on Pennsylvania law. (Id.at 82, 86, 99-102.)The ALJ further observed that while FERC has exclusive jurisdiction over the interstate transmission of electric energy and wholesale electric process, that jurisdiction was limited to matters that are not subject to state regulation. (Id.at 85 (citing Section 824(a) of the Federal Power Act, 16 U.S.C. § 824(a)).) According to the ALJ, FERC recognized this limitation by stating that there is “longstanding state authority over certain matters that are relevant to transmission planning and expansion, such as matters relevant to siting, permitting, and construction” and that the FERC was in noway invoking “an exercise of authority over those specific substantive matters traditionally reserved to the states . . . .”(Id.(quoting Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation by Transmission Owning & Operating Pub.Utils., 76 Fed. Reg. ¶¶49,842, 49,861 (Aug. 11, 2011) (FERC Order No. 1000)).) This means, according to the ALJ, that FERC Order No. 1000 was “not intended to dictate substantive outcomes” or to allow FERC to “determine what needs to be built, where it needs to be built, and who needs to build it.” (Id.at 85 n.13 (quoting S.C. Pub. Serv. Auth. v. Fed. Energy Reg. Comm’n, 762 F.3d 41, 57-58 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)).)

As for the resolution of congestion in the APSRI, it does not appear that we have ever held that congestion, which is an economic consideration, is sufficient on its own to support need or necessity under Pennsylvania law.

It was not just OCA’s witness who criticized PJM’s cost-benefit analysis, but PJM’s own Independent Market Monitor who suggested that its market efficiency process, which includes the cost-benefit analysis, be reevaluated and that the actual costs and benefits of a project should be considered and not ignored in determining whether a market efficiency project is needed.

But building transmission, she said, “takes patient money” and “a deep engagement with many, many regulatory bodies” and stakeholders.
“The very big reality is, whether we’re doing a 100-mile [transmission] line or a 500-mile [transmission] line, pretty much anyone can stop it. You can have local jurisdiction, county jurisdiction, state jurisdiction. And you don’t typically have condemnation rights.”
Overcoming landowner opposition “takes a lot of engagement. It takes a lot of humility. You’ve got to talk to people from where they’re at. You can’t come in political. You can’t come in with preconceived ideas. You can’t come in even with the implicit idea that this is essential for the greater good. You have to come in, when you’re talking with landowners, profoundly respectful, that you may be dealing with heritage ranches that have been in families for over a century. And you need to be willing to sit down, listen, have hard conversations [and] follow up again.
“And then you have to work with their concerns. … They can say, ‘You know, I am protective of this particular view. Can you work on the routing around this precious part of the land for me?’ And so I think that that’s really the key to engagement.”
Webster said Pattern takes a broad view of its “host community.”
“You’re a host community if you’re hosting an actual facility with turbines or panels. You’re a host community if you’re hosting a substation, or a major piece of transmission infrastructure. But to us, you’re also a host community if you’re supporting the public good by allowing your transmission line to pass through your county or your property. And so we created standardized community benefits packages based on just mileage that [is] consistent across our entire footprint.”