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Contact Jim: jdipeso@rep.org (253) 740-2066 / 2009 Archive / 2008 Archive / 2007 Archive / 2006 Archive / 2005 Archive
Power Trips
March 16, 2009
Power lines will never win a popularity contest outside of utility circles.
Few people like looking at them and no one wants them in their favorite places, least of all on conservation lands or on their working lands.
The geographic reality, however, is that renewable resources won't likely make a significant dent in greenhouse gas emissions without a significant investment in transmission.
Unless tens of millions of Americans decide to relocate to the windy high Plains or to desert locales with 300-plus days of annual sunshine, long, long power lines will be needed to move electricity from where it can be renewably generated in large quantities to where people live in large numbers.
Therein lie the seeds of another sticky question involving power lines – political power lines, that is.
Permitting of long-distance transmission lines is a mixed grill of state and federal authorities. States can block interstate lines if they decide that their residents wouldn’t get a fair share of the benefits. As Arizona regulators said in 2007 in rejecting an interstate transmission project, they had no interest in approving an extension cord for California consumers to plug into Arizona energy resources.
State-by-state permitting results in transmission permitting and cost allocation decisions that may not take adequate account of broader regional benefits, including a significant expansion of low-carbon energy sources.
There is talk in Congress of expanding the federal government’s power over permitting interstate transmission, beyond the limited “backstop” authority granted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
While taking out permitting hoops for the broader cause of developing a cleaner energy economy is appealing, proponents should not overlook the danger of the feds overreaching — either by running over legitimate local concerns, such as the impacts of power lines on natural resources or historic sites, or by allocating the costs of transmission upgrades inequitably among power plant developers and consumers.
In testimony at his confirmation hearing, Energy Secretary Steven Chu cautioned against a federal power grab and urged Congress to negotiate with the states.
A middle-ground approach would be bringing states into regional transmission planning and cost allocation negotiations, similar to the process that Texas used to facilitate construction of transmission to bring electrons from windy west Texas to consumers in the state’s metro areas.
People may never learn to love transmission lines. But if the process of permitting them is fair and enables America to use more clean energy, they could learn to live with them.
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