Transmission lines hold much of the same challenge and
promise of the interstate highway system a century ago. The transmission
network – the high voltage, long distance power lines that carry electricity
from power facilities and into communities – is currently a patchwork system,
lacking centralized organization or planning. Assuming that America cannot
achieve 100% clean energy with distributed resources, the transport of
renewable electric energy across state lines is a major hurdle to realizing a
future without fossil fuels.
Transmission line siting is state rule. Generally, the
federal government regulates the electricity that travels in the
transmission system and the sale of that electricity. Siting is a matter of
local land use controls and state sovereignty. Every transmission line that
crosses a state border must go through the years long siting and permitting
process of each individual state.
America has massive renewable energy potential. The Great
Plains has been called the Saudi Arabia of wind. This photo has been floating around the Internet showing
how little solar we would need to power the world. Wyoming has nowhere to sell
its wind energy.
How do the transmission lines get built to move this energy
from geographically isolated places to urban areas throughout the country? Why
would any state sacrifice its sovereignty and bear the environmental, social, political,
and economic burden of covering itself in transmission line networks to serve
out of state end users? It’s a problem more complicated than requiring more
renewable energy. It necessitates the federal government or perhaps regional
interstate compacts to consider environmental, land use, federalist,
economic, and political values.
Initially, transmission lines caught the nation’s attention
after a series of blackouts in the early 2000s. Addressing these reliability
issues and the underlying problem of transmission line bottlenecks, the Energy
Policy Act of 2005 directed the DOE to establish National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors (“NIETCs”)
and gave FERC some added authority over transmission line siting within NIETCs.
A full recounting of these regulations and the resulting litigation is
available here [pdf (pg. 8)]. Basically, eight years later the NIETCs
do not yet exist and FERC’s siting authority is limited to being able to step
in if a state does not act within a year on deciding on a transmission siting
permit in a NIETC.
The pdf cited above focuses on FERC’s authority and does not
fully consider what may be the best solution to the transmission line issue:
regional interstate compacts. Authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005,
states of three or more can sign regional compacts creating a siting authority
that functions as a layer of government somewhere between federal and state. It
provides a way of preserving state sovereignty while offering the
administrative convenience of a single forum for multi state transmission line
permitting. Rules would be created for the application process and federal
courts would provide judicial review for any appeals. Importantly, member
states would be able to work together to consider regional benefits. Kansas is
taking the lead with House Bill 2101, which authorizes a regional compact and
is now in the State Senate Committee on Utilities after passing in the House
118 to 1.
Interstate compacts may benefit the goals of FERC Order 1000
[pdf], which is meant to integrate renewable energy goals
into transmission planning. Furthermore, these compacts could push state RPS
programs, especially those that require in-state generation (which is
unconstitutional anyway), to reconsider the amount of energy that could be
supplied and where it would come from. They also may become more palatable if
transmission lines were located underground like natural gas pipelines or
offshore.
Utility scale renewable energy facilities will find a way to
produce and there are multiple forces pushing them forward. The 7th Circuit
just upheld MISO’s plan to finance transmission lines that
will transport the supply of wind energy from remote areas of the Great Plains
to meet the demand of urban areas throughout the service area. Essentially,
rather than using the traditional method of allocating transmission costs to
the geographically closest utility, MISO’s plan will require all utilities to
proportionally share the cost of “Multi Value Projects” (transmission lines
built to deliver renewable energy among other purposes), putting more of a burden
on urban areas.
The wedge idea
still exists; there will continue to be many complimentary energy solutions. I
recently co-authored articles on the viability of microgrids for climate resilient communities and the interconnection rules for small-scale renewable generation.
It’s been an exciting time to track the evolution of frequency regulation and
storage. Developing these solutions and more while wrestling with multiple value
systems is the best way forward. As far as transmission lines go, under current
federal laws, regional interstate compacts seem promising.
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