"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."  -- George Orwell

The final rule should be seen for what it is:  a pretext to enact, through administrative action, a sweeping legislative and policy agenda that Congress never passed.  The final rule claims statutory authority the Commission does not have to issue an absurdly complex bureaucratic blizzard of mandates and micromanagement to be imposed on every transmission provider in the United States for the transparent goal of spending trillions of consumers’ dollars on transmission not to serve consumers in accordance with the FPA, but instead to serve political, corporate, and other special-interest agendas that were never enacted into law.  The rates for transmission that will result from the final rule will not only be unjust, unreasonable, unduly discriminatory and preferential, but grossly unfair to tens of millions of American consumers already burdened with rapidly growing monthly power bills.   

...the final rule inflicts staggering costs on consumers by promoting the construction of trillions of dollars of transmission projects, not to serve consumers in accordance with the FPA, but to serve a major policy agenda never passed by Congress, to serve the profit-making interests of developers of politically preferred generation, primarily wind and solar, and to serve corporate “green energy” preferential purchasing policies.

 In fact, the final rule is not even about planning transmission, but is about planning policy, and it is very preferential about the policies it wants to promote.  As with the Great Oz, pulling back the curtain exposes the final rule for what it really is:  An essential component in a comprehensive plan by the current presidential administration to push what the media describe as “green policies” designed to prefer and promote the wind and solar generation it favors while simultaneously forcing the shutdown of the fossil fuel generation it disfavors, both needed to meet its political commitment.  Let me emphasize:  Whether the policies being promoted in this final rule can be described as “green, purple, red or blue” is irrelevant.  The point is that FERC, as an independent agency, has no business promoting the policies of any one party or presidential administration, especially when, as here, the effort to do so goes far beyond FERC’s legal authority and fails to perform our consumer protection function under the FPA.

Put most simply, the final rule is a shell game that plays this way: 
Step One:  For planning and cost allocation purposes, throw transmission projects that solve specific reliability problems or reduce congestion costs into the same bucket as projects designed to promote public policies or corporate “green energy” preferences and disguise the purpose of very different projects by re-labeling all projects in the new bucket with the innocuous-sounding name “Long-Term Regional Transmission Facilities.”
Step Two:  Mandate planning inputs that must be used in determining which projects get selected for regional plans, which starts the money flowing from consumers to developers before any state has even evaluated the need for, or cost of, the projects. 
Step Three:  Mandate benefits that will ultimately affect the allocation of costs to consumers across a multi-state region.  Combined with Steps One and Two, this makes consumers involuntary “beneficiaries” who will then be forced to pay for projects that promote another state’s public policy or corporate “green power” commitments. 
Step Four:  Order all transmission providers to develop and file a cost allocation formula that will automatically be the default applicable to the entire bucket of Long-Term Regional Transmission Facilities. 
Step Five:  Remove the NOPR’s requirement that states must consent to the details of Steps One through Four before their consumers can be burdened with costs.

Instead, what we have in today’s final rule is a patent instance of regulatory capture with the singular goal to build out preferential policy and corporate-driven projects, steamrolling the states and consumers alike.

Today’s final rule is much less the product of reasoned decision-making or the agency’s specialized expertise, as of political pressure and special interest lobbying.   In the chapter on “regulatory capture” in future economics textbooks, today’s final rule should be a featured case study.

​By doing nothing about the consumer-paid “FERC candy” incentives that this Commission regularly hands out to developers, and even removing the provisions dialing back the CWIP incentive—and with its overall aim to pile trillions of dollars of additional costs for big corporate and politically-driven transmission on consumers, which will largely flow to the increased profits of wind, solar and transmission developers—the final rule could be the inspiration for one of the great country and western songs “Lord Have Mercy on the Working Man.”  Warner Bros. Nashville 1992 (“Why’s the rich man busy dancing while the poor man pays the band?  Oh they’re billing me for killing me, Lord have mercy on the working man!”).

Mary O’Driscoll, FERC approves incentives for AEP, Allegheny grid projects, Greenwire, July 21, 2006 (“The approvals came as the commission finalized rules intended to promote transmission-grid additions that outline specific rate and other incentives that FERC will consider for future construction projects — the ‘FERC candy’ that critics contend gives the utilities incentives but not much in the way of corresponding requirements.”) (emphasis added), https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2006/07/21/ferc-approves-incentives-for-aep-allegheny-grid-projects-234508.

Dear Secretary Granholm, ​

I write with alarm about your total disregard for farmers in my State of Missouri, as you continue to pander to dark money groups and clean energy interests at the expense of my constituents. Last week, your Department announced new plans to designate a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) through my state of Missouri, in order to subsidize the flow of wind energy across farmers’ lands.1 This cannot stand. You should rescind these plans immediately.

As you know, the Department of Energy has historically avoided using the heavy hand of the federal government to second-guess state permitting decisions when it comes to electric transmission lines. Courts have narrowly construed your authorities under the Federal Power Act, until Democrats expanded these authorities in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Now, you are weaponizing these new authorities to benefit clean energy companies and monied interest as you bulldoze Missouri farmland to make way for transmission lines to carry wind power through the state. Indeed, I find it remarkable that your agency’s lengthy analysis makes no reference to farmers or landowners.

This issue is important to farmers in my state, who have already had to deal with Invenergy’s attempts to build electric transmission lines through farmlands. But at least our state legislature and regulators were able to achieve a new compromise, ensuring that farmers would receive 150% fair market value as compensation for these takings. But by designating a new NIETC in Missouri, you have chosen to federalize this issue and take any future consideration away from state regulators.

There is still hope. Your Department’s announcement only constitutes Phase 2 of the agency’s multistage process for designating NIETCs. I strongly urge you to stop any further consideration of this project and listen to the farmers of Missouri.

Sincerely,
Josh Hawley
United States Senator