Electric power transmission is key to the transition to cleaner generation of electricity, replacing fossil fuels with sun and wind. But the aging U.S grid and legal restrictions on solving territorial bottlenecks are serious roadblocks to moving wind and solar electricity from where it is made most successfully at large scale – mainly the western and central U.S. – to where the most customers live, in the heavily populated East and Pacific coast.
There is no question that the U.S. grid – or, more accurately, loosely interconnected regional grids – are due for serious attention. The U.S. transmission grid is not what former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson in the Clinton administration called it: “third world.” But it is, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2021, deserving a C-minus rating.
That problem is well understood. New high-voltage transmission lines are needed, along with more robust interconnections among the regional grids. But, to steal a bit from Mark Twain, many talk about transmission, but nobody is doing much about it. The recent political wrangling and horse trading during the debt ceiling wheeling and dealing talked about transmission, and then, a familiar Washington political solution, kicked the contentious can down the road.
Democrats wanted action – big spending on transmission grid investments. Legislation from Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and Rep. Scot Peters (D-Calif.), as reported by Politico called their bill the “Building Integrated Grids With Inter-Regional Energy Supply” or “BIG Wires Act.” It would have focused on improved transfer among the regional networks in times of stress. Republicans resisted, displaying their distaste for new federal spending – or even spending already underway. The GOP was pushing for “reform” of federal environmental permitting policies.
Neither side got what they wanted, although the parties settled on some mostly small-bore permitting changes. The transmission grid result, a classic Washington dodge: agreement for two-and-a-half years of studying the problems confronting the grid, both in terms of its current limitations and the future strains of new renewable generation. The American Prospect described the study dodge as “a special ring of legislative hell where critical issues go to fossilize.”
The estimable Ari Peskoe, head of Harvard’s Electricity Law Initiative, told the Wall Street Journal, “This study was designed to slow things down.” Some monopoly electric utilities see increased ability to transfer power among regions a threat to their ability to control prices to their captive customers, he said. Many states and localities object to bearing costs, economic and environmental, for transmission of nearby power to distant markets, when they get few benefits.
“This study was designed to slow things down.” Ari Peskoe
The Biden administration is, predictably, putting a positive spin on the outcome. Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, who lobbied on the issue, told the Journal, “This was a starting point, and we are going to make sure that we can get clean energy expanded by working on transmission in the future.”
The U.S. does not have a truly national grid, in part because the federal government, in the form of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, does not have the kind of authority it has to advance national objectives for natural gas transmission. The Natural Gas Act gave Washington authority to oversee development of a national gas network. The earlier Federal Power Act gave the feds considerably less power, handing local opponents, through state governments, strong weapons to prevent interstate transmission lines. The FERC administers both laws.
Congress attempted to address this problem in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which gave FERC “backstop” authority to override state objections to siting interstate high voltage electric transmission in cases where the Department of Energy designated the power line in a “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor” or NIETC. The policy failed. A recent analysis from the Vinson & Elkins law firm explained that “federal circuit court decisions over a decade ago stymied FERC’s backstop authority and vacated the only two NIETCs that DOE designated. DOE has not designated a NIETC since that time.”
The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, enacted 18 months ago, said the legal analysis, a provision in the new law “attempted to rectify this quagmire by adding more objective criteria to the list of considerations DOE uses to select and designate NIETCs and by clarifying when FERC can exercise its backstop authority.”
FERC and the DOE have begun moving to implement the new IRA’s provisions. At its Dec. 22, 2022 meeting, FERC approved a proposed rule (published in the Federal Register Jan. 17), that would, according to the Steptoe law firm, “implement FERC’s resurrected authority to grant construction permits when a state has denied siting approval, speed the FERC filing process, address landowner protections, and achieve environmental justice objectives.” Last month, DOE issued a “notice of intent request for information,” saying it intends “to establish a process to designate ‘route-specific’ National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors (‘NIETCs,’ pronounced \NIT-sees\).”
How the FERC and DOE actions – assuming they take some actions – will influence the broader study and discussion in the coming months is unclear. There are currently no details of just what the congressional punt on transmission in the debt deal will look like.
–Kennedy Maize
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