As Trump talks infrastructure, power lines remain a hard sell.
WASHINGTON — A nationwide network of high-voltage power lines connecting wind farms in gusty regions such as West Texas with cities on the West and East Coasts has long loomed large on the wish list of wind developers.
After all, the state-mandated construction of power lines running across Texas a decade ago — known as CREZ or Competitive Renewable Energy Zones — has been widely credited with reigniting the boom in wind energy across West Texas and the Panhandle.
And with President Donald Trump and Democrats in agreement on the need to update U.S. energy infrastructure, a nationwide version of CREZ would seem like obvious common ground for Democrats eager to shift the economy away from fossil fuels and a president eager to set off a massive governmentfunded construction boom.
But even were they to cut a deal — something seemingly less likely after Trump’s blow up at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her comments that he is “engaged in a cover up” of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — interstate power lines remain a hard sell across much of the United States, particularly the landowners who would have to live underneath metal cables carrying thousands of megawatts of electricity.
“We have all this wind power. It’s the cheapest source in much of the country, and we have all these population centers that want to incorporate that renewable power. There’s a very efficient trade to be made,” said James Coleman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “But all those power lines are being held up because states are saying we don’t want to serve as the highway.”
Case in point is Houston firm Clean Line Power’s years-long effort to build a 780-mile power line connecting wind farms in western Kansas with cities to the east.
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Only getting to St. Louis, Chicago and Indianapolis means going through rural Missouri, where farmers and other landowners have furiously fought to stop a project they see as an ugly eyesore with little benefit for them. Last month, the Missouri House passed a bill blocking the project from using eminent domain authority to acquire land, an effort that has since stagnated in the state Senate amid Democratic opposition.
Wind developers are hoping the federal government will take action to stop states from blocking power line projects. When Trump recently announced in Houston he was going to speed up the regulatory process for the construction of oil and gas pipelines, the American Wind Energy Association wondered where it’s piece of the pie was.
“With billions in private investment to upgrade and expand transmission infrastructure being held up by regulatory uncertainty and inefficient process, we are missing a huge opportunity by focusing on only part of the infrastructure solution,” Amy Farrell, senior vice president of government and public affairs at AWEA, said in a statement.
On the line
But if history is any guide, getting federal action on power lines is not an end in itself.
Following a massive power outage in New York in 2003, Congress passed an energy bill ordering the Department of Energy to designate regions where power supplies were running short and incentivize utilities to build more power lines. But amid widespread opposition by landowners, environmentalists and others worried that the transmission program would encourage the construction of more coal-fired power plants, a years-long legal fight ensued.
In 2011, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California — a frequent target of Trump’s Twitter feed — blocked the effort, ruling the Energy Department had failed to adequately consult with state leadership in deciding where power lines were needed.