Tens of billions of dollars in transmission project spending could help the economy recover from the pandemic and help fight climate change, according to a panel at the WIRES 2021 Summer Meeting on Thursday.

“Delaying the infrastructure also delays our success at curbing the significant property damages and health damages to our economy” resulting from extreme weather events, said Julia Frayer, managing director of London Economics International.

LEI in May published a report that examines the economic impact from $83 billion in approved or planned transmission projects across the U.S.

A transmission project that runs between PJM and NYISO doesn’t necessarily undermine the benefits of a project in the Midwest between SPP and MISO, Frayer said.

“When we talk transmission versus renewables, many folks think of lots of renewables; every rooftop will have a solar panel, so we don’t need transmission,” Frayer said. “I think that is a myth that has a probably grown too big and is on very shaky facts, because in fact it is a combined system that we’re trying to create here.”

Building interregional transmission lines is key to making the power grid work better, said Brennen Cain, policy adviser with clean energy advocacy coalition BlueGreen Alliance.

“There are all these places that are producing renewable energy right now … and increasing connectivity to deliver power to places that don’t have the capacity for massive solar farms or onshore wind farms is going to be vital,” Cain said.

To add more solar in parts of the country will require massive increases in the transmission network, said Aaron Bloom of Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG). “Because we don’t have that we’re seeing lower quality sites being developed … and they’re just struggling to find that place to interconnect,” which slows down the scale of deployment.

Panel moderator and Bloomberg News reporter Brian Eckhouse asked about labor unions advocating for large transmission projects.

“Engagement from labor unions comes with individual projects when those projects are planned and have approval and are shovel-ready,” Cain said. “We focus our efforts on making sure that the federal investment in these projects … have labor standards attached to them.”

The multiplier effect is also known as the “drop in the water” effect, Frayer said.

One dollar goes to the construction worker, who in turn needs to go and buy some groceries, or buy or rent a home, “and we want to see this private sector spending really reach as far across the economy as possible,” Frayer said.

States Key to Tx Planning

Need is the key factor in building large infrastructure projects, whether generation, distribution or transmission, and state regulators are best situated to determine need, said FERC Commissioner Mark Christie, who spent nearly 17 years on the Virginia State Corporation Commission before being appointed to FERC in January 2021.

“The best transmission policy is the policy that is actually achievable … so it needs to be based on the reality of the circumstances,” Christie said. “State regulators are critically important to getting needed infrastructure built, and you’re not going to get the needed transmission built without state regulator involvement and the credibility that they’re going to bring.”

Christie recalled the “extremely controversial” Trans Allegheny Interstate Line (TrAIL), a 165-mile, 500-kV transmission line that crossed Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia.

“I can remember sitting in high school gyms where people were passionately opposed to having this 500-kV line built,” he said.

All three state commissions, despite the opposition, approved TrAIL and it got built, which today is the largest single regional project ever built in PJM, he said.

Christie recalled another controversial project, Project Mountaineer, which was going to be four 765-kV lines running from West Virginia to East Coast load centers. He never had a chance to rule on the project because PJM, which had originally put it in its Regional Transmission Expansion Plan as a needed project, ultimately changed the load forecast and took it out.

He challenged the presumption that had the federal government designated the project as a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC), it would have been built. None of the opposition would have gone away, and state regulators still would have done monthslong analyses, taken hundreds of pages of testimony and held hearings where people could express their opposition, he said.

It’s the states that determine the need, and “it’s the states who are going to review all the projects and do what we did in TrAIL and compile an extensive record which can stand up on appeal — and it did stand up on appeal. … That’s the vital role that state regulators play getting these projects built because the state commissions do their due diligence and have credibility,” Christie said.

He also dismissed the idea of a national “transmission czar” who could force a needed project on an unwilling public.

“I don’t think it’s realistic to think some national transmission czar is going to override a decision made by state officials and have any credibility in that state, and I think you’re going to have a firestorm of opposition if you start trying to do that,” Christie said.

State vs. Federal

Developing coordination and collaboration between state and federal agencies will be a major key in successfully upgrading the transmission system as renewable resources continue to proliferate, according to participants in the second panel in the afternoon.

Abe Silverman, general counsel of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and self-professed history lover, said that when he looks at the current transmission buildout, he is seeing the “most profound transmission expansion since rural electrification” in the 1930s.

Silverman said New Jersey is at the forefront of the transmission expansion as it continues to proceed with its offshore wind initiatives, including installing 7,500 MW in the next decade. (See NJ Awards Two Offshore Wind Projects.) He said adding generation in locations that previously did not have it is creating transmission, interconnection and distribution-level issues.

“We’re talking about for the first time taking the grid to places where it isn’t at the moment, whether that be off the Eastern Seaboard or to renewably constrained areas that don’t have a robust transmission system,” Silverman said.

The “herculean challenge” of building out transmission must be done at a price that consumers can afford, Silverman said, or excessive costs will “kill this transmission revolution.” He said the “enormous untapped power” between state and federal regulators will help to keep costs in check, pointing to entities like PJM playing a major role.

Silverman said New Jersey wouldn’t be able to enact their ambitious wind goals without the use of the state agreement approach with PJM that began a year ago to aid in the transmission planning. (See PJM Dusts off ‘State Agreement’ Tx Approach.) He said he would like to see similar programs be the default across the country.

“States can’t be expected to take on this burden alone,” Silverman said. “We really need to be working with our fellow states and collaborators.”

Sue Glatz, director of strategic initiatives and interregional planning at PJM, said the RTO has recognized the world is “generally moving towards decarbonization.” She said that while PJM remains technology- and fuel-neutral for generation, it recognizes the change in generation goals among different states and must assure their processes are in place to meet the changes and the “evolution of the fuel mix” in the region.

Glatz said the state agreement approach has allowed PJM to work with a state like New Jersey on complicated transmission planning projects not typically done on a local level. “We’d like to see that this becomes perhaps a role model or a template should other states want to move forward either individually or collectively.”

Moderator Jodi Moskowitz, deputy general counsel and RTO strategy officer for Public Service Enterprise Group, asked where the lines of responsibility and authority exist between FERC and the states regarding transmission planning and cost allocation.

Jennifer Murphy, director of energy policy and senior counsel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said she’d like to see a move away from the idea of “lines of authority” to “areas of cooperation.” Murphy said there are different ways RTOs and ISOs take into account state perspectives and input into the planning process across the country, and having a way to share lessons learned and best practices in planning with different entities would be helpful.

Murphy said she agreed with comments made earlier in the conference by Christie, which she said debunked the myth that states are the entities slowing down or stopping infrastructure development. Murphy said there are ongoing efforts in Congress to “increase the backstop siting authority” for the federal government, but that it’s “imprudent” for the federal government to take that role.

Federal regulators typically aren’t familiar with state laws and different circumstances on the local level regarding projects, Murphy said, leading to scenarios and planning that aren’t in the best interest of states.

“To have the federal government override a decision can be very detrimental not only to the process but to the public interest in general,” Murphy said. “It’s important to listen to state regulators.”