The U.S. Department of Transportation on Tuesday issued guidance on working with its state counterparts to facilitate the use of existing highway rights of way for building electric transmission lines.
The memo encourages state transportation departments to consider not just transmission, but also renewable energy, broadband internet expansion, electric vehicle charging infrastructure and inductive charging lane projects for existing highway ROWs. It also urges Federal Highway Administration division offices to develop programs for handling requests to develop such projects.
“This announcement reflects the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to use resources across the government to combat climate change,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “Our new guidance will help states use their rights of way to expand clean energy, lower costs and create good-paying jobs in their communities.”
The White House included the memo as part of a “fact sheet” pushing for expanded transmission infrastructure as a means of mitigating climate change and improving employment. The administration also announced up to $8.25 billion in loans available from the Department of Energy: $3.25 billion through the Western Area Power Administration’s Transmission Infrastructure Program; and $5 billion in loan guarantees from the department’s Loan Programs Office for “innovative” transmission projects and projects owned by Native American tribes.
“DOE is making financing available for projects that improve resilience and expand transmission capacity across the electrical grid, so we can reliably move clean energy from places where it’s produced to places where it’s needed most,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said. “These investments will make our power system more resilient against threats and more reliable as we increase our clean energy capacity, creating thousands of jobs in the process.”
The administration released the fact sheet in the middle of a webinar hosted by Americans for a Clean Energy Grid (ACEG) on a report the group released the night before detailing the 22 “shovel-ready” high-voltage transmission projects that could be built in the near term with just “an additional policy push.”
The report, which the administration linked to in its announcement, serves as a primer on the many long-in-development projects across the U.S. It includes a map showing their locations and a table listing their mileages, voltages and costs. The White House touted the report’s claims that, combined, the projects would create more than 1.2 million jobs and increase U.S. renewable energy capacity by 60 GW.
Among the projects are a few originally proposed by Michael Skelly’s defunct Clean Line Energy Partners, including the Grain Belt Express and the Plains & Eastern Clean Line. (See Out of the Game, Skelly Still High on Wind Energy.) Other names that would be familiar to RTO/ISO stakeholders include Cardinal-Hickory Creek, SOO Green, Lake Erie Connector, Southern Cross and SunZia Southwest.
“The reason we put these projects on the list is because they’re sited, and they’ve got interconnect agreements, and they’ve got studies; they’re ready to go,” said Skelly, now a senior adviser at Lazard, who joined ACEG Executive Director Rob Gramlich and several representatives of the listed projects’ developers in presenting the report.
Observing the report’s map, Skelly said, “If you squint a little bit, you can see the beginnings of what would be a nationally connected system. Obviously, there are plenty of gaps here, but … if these lines get done, then we have the beginnings of a something” that could “grow organically into a national grid.”
It was a busy day for transmission expansion policy watchers. The White House also noted the formation of the Grid Infrastructure Advisory Council, a 29-member group of stakeholders under the GridWise Alliance that will lobby for at least $50 billion in federal spending on grid modernization, including distribution.
The group includes former FERC Commissioner Colette Honorable, American Electric Power COO Lisa Barton, Analysis Group Senior Adviser Sue Tierney, American Public Power Association President Joy Ditto and former New York Public Service Commission Chair Audrey Zibelman (now with Google X after serving as CEO of the Australian Energy Market Operator).
“GridWise Alliance’s new Advisory Council will be a vital asset as we work to build support in Congress and throughout the country for grid modernization and for President Biden’s ambitious and potentially historic infrastructure plan,” said Gil Quiniones, GridWise board chair and CEO of the New York Power Authority.
Additionally, transmission trade group WIRES held its spring meeting Tuesday, which similarly focused on grid expansion as a means of increasing renewable capacity. (See related story, Panel: Grid Planners Must Abandon Silos for Renewable Future.)
