Large Midwest energy project turns to ex-Missouri guv
JEFFERSON CITY, MO. » Stymied by state regulators, a renewable energy company seeking to build one of the nation’s longest power lines across a large swath of the Midwest has turned to a prominent politician in an attempt to revive its $2.3 billion project.
Former Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, now working as a private attorney after recently finishing 30 years in public office, is to argue Tuesday to the Missouri Supreme Court that utility regulators he appointed wrongly rejected the power line while relying on an incorrect court ruling written by a judge whom Nixon also appointed.
Should Nixon prevail in court, it could help clear a path for Houston-based Clean Line Energy Partners LLC to build a 780mile (1,255-kilometer), high-voltage transmission line from the wind farms of western Kansas across Missouri and Illinois to Indiana, where it would feed into a power grid serving eastern states. Missouri had been the lone state blocking the project, until an Illinois appeals court in March also overturned that state’s approval.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for our state and an important one policywise” for the nation, Nixon said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The power line, known as the Grain Belt Express, has come to symbolize one of the largest challenges for renewable energy developers in the U.S. Although converting wind into electricity is increasingly affordable, it can be hard to get the regulatory and legal approval needed to transmit the power from remote areas where it’s produced to the places where it’s most needed.
Clean Line has been working on its proposed direct-current power line since 2010 but still hasn’t been able to begin construction.
The Missouri Public Service Commission rejected the project in July 2015 while determining it had little benefit for Missouri consumers and citing the burden on landowners in its path. Clean Line then agreed to sell power to coalition of Missouri municipal utilities. It won Nixon’s endorsement in June 2016 after the Democratic governor said the company agreed to his request to add more landowner protections.
Clean Line reapplied but got denied again by Missouri regulatory commissioners last August. This time they said that while Clean Line’s project was worthy, it first needed approval from all counties where it planned to string power lines across roads. The commission cited a western district state appeals court ruling in an unrelated case.
That’s when Clean Line turned to Nixon, a former state attorney general whose term as governor ended in January 2017.