Agricultural impacts will also be reduced because no more than nine acres of land in Missouri will be taken out of agricultural production as a result of Project structures.

The Project is designed to have a minimal impact to land.  In Phase I for the HVDC Main Line approximately 9 acres will be taken out of agricultural production. For Phase I Tiger Connector approximately 0.2 acres will be taken out of agricultural production. And for the Phase II HVDC Main Line, approximately 7 acres will be taken out of agricultural production. 

There can be no debate that our energy future will require more diversity in energy resources, particularly renewable resources. We are witnessing a worldwide, long-term and comprehensive movement toward renewable energy. The energy on the Project provides great promise as a source for affordable, reliable, safe, and environmentally-friendly energy that will increase resiliency of the grid. The Project will facilitate this movement in Missouri, will thereby benefit Missouri citizens, and is, with the conditions set out below, in the public interest. 

Grain Belt has a viable plan for raising the capital necessary to finance the cost of constructing the Project on a project financing basis. Specifically, after advancing development and permitting activities to a status at which developers of wind and solar generation facilities and other potential customers of the transmission line are willing to enter into commercial agreements for an undivided interest (purchase or lease) or long-term contracts for transmission capacity on the Project, Grain Belt will enter such contracts with interested parties that satisfy necessary creditworthiness requirements. Grain Belt will then raise debt capital using the aforementioned contracts as security for the debt.


Grain Belt anticipates utilizing a combination of commercial and governmental sources of financing, and, at this time, is still evaluating all potential options for financing. Options for governmental sources of financing include the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) Transmission Infrastructure Program (TIP); and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Transmission Facilitation Program; Department of Energy loans to non-federal borrowers for transmission facilities pursuant to the Inflation Reduction Act and potentially other government funding options. Additional equity capital may also be raised to help finance construction of the Project, or Grain Belt’s existing investors may make additional equity investments in the Project.

Consistent with the Commission’s requirements for obtaining and maintaining negotiated rate authority, Grain Belt Express’s negotiated rates will continue to be just and reasonable. In the context of negotiated rates, the Commission considers whether the merchant transmission developer has assumed the full market risk for the cost of constructing its proposed project, and is not building within the footprint of the developer’s (or an affiliate’s) traditionally regulated transmission system. The Commission also considers whether the merchant transmission owner (or an affiliate) owns transmission facilities in the same region as the project, what alternatives customers have, and whether the merchant transmission owner is capable of erecting any barriers to entry among competitors, and whether the owner would have any incentive to withhold capacity.
Here, Grain Belt Express has assumed, and will continue to assume, the full market risk for the cost of constructing the Project. Grain Belt Express has no captive pool of customers from which it could recoup the cost of the Project. ​

• Air Quality and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions
• Geology, Soils, and Paleontology
• Water Resources
• Noise

• Vegetation
• Wildlife
• Cultural Resources

• Transportation and Access
• Land Use
• Recreation

• Environmental Justice
• Public Health & Safety
• Visual Resources
• Social, Economic, and Community Resources

• Limitations on land uses that could potentially result from the Project’s construction and operation
• Consideration of alternatives to the Project as currently proposed
• History of the Project, including previous routing studies and past interaction with landowners
• Concerns about the Project’s proposed route and infrastructure placement
• Potential impacts on wildlife; social, economic, and community resources; geology and soils; health and safety; and vegetation

The determination of whether a project is ready-to-go relied on two criteria: 1) whether the project is at or near the finish line on the various federal and state permits they may need; and 2) whether the project is actively pursuing the cost recovery, allocation, and/ or subscriptions required for the developer to proceed. Inherently some judgment is re- quired. Based on these criteria we excluded over ten significant projects that are in earlier stages of development and not yet far enough along to be considered ready-to-go. 

Clean Line – Originally proposed in 2009 by Clean Line Energy Partners to deliver renew- able energy from the Oklahoma Panhandle to Southeast markets, the Oklahoma portion of this DC merchant line was purchased and is now being developed by NextEra Energy.

Lake Erie Connector – DC line under Lake Erie, connecting Ontario with PJM, the grid operator in the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes region. The project had been under devel- opment for approximately 10 years, but ITC Holdings, which purchased the rights to the project in 2014, placed the project on hold citing economic conditions.

“ITC made the decision to suspend the project after determining there is not a viable path to achieve successful negotiations and other requirements within the required project schedule. External conditions – including rising inflation, interest rates, and fluctuations in the U.S.-to-Canadian foreign exchange rate – would prevent the company from coming to a customer agreement that would sufficiently capture both the benefits and the costs of the project,” an ITC spokesperson said in a prepared media statement. “As a result, the company believes suspending the project is in the best interest of stakeholders.”

Not only has investment in regional transmission lines been decreasing, but at the same time the need for regional transmission has been increasing due to a variety of factors. These include increasing demand growth, electrification of transportation and other sectors, higher natural gas prices due to European demand, a changing resource mix due to the economics of new renewable generation, increased customer demand for renewable resources, significant utility commitments for renewable energy expansion and decarbonization, and new public policies from local, state, and federal governments promoting carbon-free generation. The aggregation of these trends suggests a shift in the generation mix and significant load growth over the next few decades, both of which will require new transmission capacity. 

Transmission capacity is also critical in helping shift national economic policy toward an increased focus on onshoring manufacturing to develop domestic supply chains. De- velopment of new domestic manufacturing along with growth in data centers, partially driven by AI, represents the potential for significant economic growth and job growth for the US.

These new manufacturing facilities, along with new data centers, often require additional transmission to ensure the grid has the capacity to reliably interconnect significant new industrial loads. However, delays are already beginning to occur. Interconnection requests for data centers have dropped across the country and in Northern Virginia – a national hub for data centers – there is a scramble to meet the soaring power demand as current grid capacity is limited. 

Some experts estimate that fully electrifying the US’s industrial load could more than double current US power demand. The current issues are arising even before manufacturing for microchips and additional electric vehicle production and battery manufacturing facilities fully ramp up, along with hydrogen production facilities. If sufficient transmission capacity is not available, these investments could be significantly delayed or even canceled. 

There are also additional policy levers that Congress and FERC could pull to help facilitate faster and more effective buildout of new transmission. Americans for a Clean Energy Grid’s Legislative Principles outlines a number of these potential approaches.

If care is taken to make sure that host communities benefit in the short and long term from the energy projects in their backyards, they will be less inclined to oppose them, leading to faster timelines for clean energy and transmission projects. 

Community opposition to large-scale wind and solar projects is growing across the United States. There are many reasons for this trend, including misinformation about renewable energy, concerns about project impacts, and concern that most of the benefits flow outside of the community while the burdens fall within. Communities often see hosting renewable energy projects and transmission (which touches multiple communities) as an impediment to their goals, such as preserving community identity, land preservation, and in some cases ensuring ecosystem conservation. While some landowners see these projects as a potential source of revenue from leases, others worry that the projects will reduce the value of their land. Finally, in many communities, while there may be both supporters and opponents of clean energy projects, the opponents are often more vocal, better resourced, and more passionate than the supporters. Because of all these factors, an alarming number of communities are adopting restrictive zoning and land use ordinances that effectively ban the siting of clean energy projects.

​This rise in opposition highlights the importance of ensuring that developers and local officials disseminate accurate information about potential projects and that the permitting process allows engagement from a broad range of voices so that decision-makers can accurately assess the environmental impacts as well as benefits of projects. Furthermore, it is important to ensure that host communities share in the benefits of projects in their own backyards.

Several states, including New York, California, Illinois, and Washington, have enacted laws that improve the siting process for large-scale renewable projects and provide potentially powerful models for similar legislation in other states. Among other things, these laws modernize the permitting process and explicitly provide benefits to host communities via mechanisms like utility bill discounts. States should be encouraged to adopt model siting and permitting laws that expand community engagement while limiting the ability of localities to unreasonably ban all wind and solar projects.

​Bringing communities from opposition to support—or at least to open-mindedness—is a major challenge to renewable energy growth that needs sustained effort, engagement, and thought. Our recommendations provide a starting point.

Coalitions should work together to build support for well-sited projects that benefit the host community. In cases where developers have done their due diligence as outlined in the preceding recommendations, environmental and conservation groups, labor groups, local landowners and businesses, and other stakeholders—including, where relevant, environmental justice and tribal groups—should form coalitions and work together to support the project. A key part of this support should be highlighting the community benefit agreements, payments in lieu of taxes or other mechanisms for benefit sharing, the creation of local jobs, and addressing other ways to compensate local landowners for any perceived or actual diminution in property values.

Grain Belt Express LLC engaged Contract Land Staff LLC (“CLS”) to assist with negotiating voluntary easement agreements with landowners on the approved route. 

CLS remains engaged. Pursuant to the terms of the engagement, Grain Belt Express LLC is paying CLS approximately $50,000 per week and must continue to pay that amount for the duration of the stay. Grain Belt Express LLC is receiving no services due to the stay Order. Grain Belt Express LLC must, and intends to, keep CLS engaged or it will not have staffing available for land acquisition services when the stay is lifted.

“The landowner will not need to pay for an ‘updated title search, appraisal and ALTA survey’ to evaluate GBE’s offer during voluntary easement negotiation . . . because GBE will provide those or comparable materials in support of its easement offer.” 

GBE seeks the following relief:
1. That this Court reconsider the Order, as the requested stay is not supported by any evidence of great or irreparable damage to the Landowner Alliance. To the contrary, the only verified evidence in the record is that GBE will suffer damage as a consequence of the injunction.
2. Moreover, that this Court reconsider the Order because the stay violates GBE’s constitutional rights and is not supported by any applicable legal principle.
3. That this Court failed to address the requirement for a bond, and, if this Court determines that any portion of its Order should remain in place, that this Court require the Landowner Alliance to post a bond in an amount adequate to secure the damages to be incurred by GBE.
4. In the alternative, if this Court elects to not reconsider its Order, that it clarify that the Order does not (and legally cannot) enjoin GBE from engaging in voluntary land acquisition or easement negotiations with landowners along the approved route for the transmission line project, as such an injunction would exceed this Court’s jurisdiction and violate GBE’s constitutional rights. 
5. That this Court clarify the “specific finding[s] based upon evidence submitted to the court, and identified by reference thereto, that great or irreparable damage would otherwise result to the [Landowner Alliance], and specifying the nature of the damages,” as required by the Illinois Public Utilities Act, 220 ILCS 5/10-204(b). 

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...the odds that any affected landowner will ever recover from a penniless project finance limited liability vehicle the costs and expenses they will have incurred in consequence of GBE's premature attempts to obtain easement rights will range somewhere between slim and none.

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Special legislation is expressly prohibited by our state constitution: “The General Assembly shall pass no special or local law when a general law is or can be made applicable.
Whether a general law is or can be made applicable shall be a matter for judicial determination.”

Section 8-406(b-5) benefits only GBE as opposed to all other potential applicants because GBE is the only entity that can take advantage of its specific requirements. There is no rational basis for the General Assembly to require that any application for a “qualifying direct current project” be filed by December 31, 2023, except to specifically favor GBE against all other applicants. In fact, the sponsor of the legislation that added Section 8-406(b-5) to the Act specifically admitted during the debate on the amendment that the new law was for “the transmission line [G]rain [B]elt.”

Section 8-406(b-5) also arbitrarily discriminates against landowners, including the Landowner Alliance, who own land within Pike, Scott, Greene, Macoupin, Montgomery,
Christian, Shelby, Cumberland and Clark Counties, Illinois (the “Enumerated Counties”), to the benefit of landowners that own real estate outside of the Enumerated Counties. Section 8-406(b-5) arbitrarily and unfairly deprives the landowners in the Enumerated Counties of the same legal threshold for the involuntary transfer of their private property by eminent domain as landowners in non-Enumerated Counties enjoy.

It is well settled under Illinois law that "…the determination of whether a given use is a public use is a judicial function."

Section 8-406(b-5) takes out of the hands of
the courts the determination of whether a particular use is a public one. Article II, Section 1 of the Illinois Constitution states that "[t]he legislative, executive and judicial branches are separate. No branch shall exercise powers properly belonging to another."

Though GBE asserts that it is presently capable of financing the Project, this is false. GBE’s own witnesses testified that financing for the Project will not be in place until it has secured transmission contracts with customers whose credit ratings are acceptable to lenders willing to lend to GBE on the strength of those customers’ creditworthiness. As GBE stated in its Initial Brief before the Commission, it will not be able to obtain financing for the Project until customer contracts are executed.

...the permit holder has made good faith efforts to engage with landowners and other stakeholders early in the applicable permitting process...

Taking the time today to listen to property owners and adjust plans in response to their concerns, they hope, will lessen the likelihood of drawn-out legal or political battles delaying the project later.

Christina Hayes, executive director of Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, said the two Minnesota utilities are following the best practice of early stakeholder engagement to avoid later potential litigation.

The third powerline was the last straw for Marla Britton.  Her and her husband’s 40-acre farm near Brainerd, Minnesota, is already framed by electrical wires on the east and south. When she learned of plans for a new project running along the north end of her property, she took action.  Britton wrote to state utility regulators and contacted the companies behind the planned Northland Reliability Project. The 180-mile line will eventually make it easier to move clean electricity between central and northern Minnesota.  Soon, a utility representative was at her doorstep to discuss her concerns and ideas for rerouting the line where it would have less impact on her and her neighbors.

“They listened to me and wrote down what I said,” Britton said. “They agreed it was way too much for my property.”

It’s yet to be seen how Britton’s feedback will be reflected in the final route, but the interaction illustrates the type of engagement that project backers say they are aiming for with the project. Taking the time today to listen to property owners and adjust plans in response to their concerns, they hope, will lessen the likelihood of drawn-out legal or political battles delaying the project later.