Missouri is proceeding with a study of upgrading its Highway 36 into Interstate 72 in conjunction with the widening of Interstate 70, which runs through Kansas, Missouri and Illinois.

The study is going to cost Missouri taxpayers $2.5M.  Upgrading the highways is going to cost them even more.  What if there was a way to pay for these road improvements that didn't involve taxpayer funding?

Such an opportunity has existed for over a decade now, but Missouri lawmakers refuse to consider what's right in front of them.  What if Grain Belt Express was required to site its project buried on the edges of the new road right-of-way, instead of building it overhead on new rights-of-way across private property?  Instead of paying landowners millions of dollars in compensation payments for ruining their land, what if GBE simply paid the state those millions to use its road right-of-way?  The road improvements could get done faster and cheaper, and GBE would not have to struggle to acquire land from citizens against their will.  GBE would only have to negotiate with one landowner, the highway administration.

It's pure genius... a fitting use for Highway 36, which has been dubbed, "The Way of American Genius."  It practically writes its own press release.  You're welcome.

But, but, but, you say, there's a million reasons why GBE cannot exist with highways.  But, really there isn't.  All those old excuses have been dispelled by up-to-date research, science, and implementation.

READ the information provided on The Ray's website.  This non-profit organization has a mission to build "a movement to build net-zero highways."  It makes ever so much more sense to combine new highways with new transmission with new technology to create a useful system that not only doesn't cause new burdens on private landowners, but delivers so many benefits that we will find useful in the future.

The article about Highway 36 says,

What if those charging stations could be built along the highway using the DC power carried by GBE?  I know, brain explosion, right?  Maybe you want to let Rep. Louis Riggs, a Hannibal Republican, know about The Ray's work so he can use that information to make sure the new Highway 36 builds for the future, instead of the past.  You can contact him here. 

There's nothing stopping Grain Belt Express from changing its plan to route its project buried along a new Highway 36, except that they don't want to.  GBE has poured tons of money into its last century plan to build a DC transmission line overhead across over 200 miles of private property in Missouri in parallel to the existing Highway 36, even though better ideas were right there all along!  Any extra cost for the company is entirely GBE's fault because it chose to pursue an outdated project model when new research and discoveries pointed to better solutions.

We need to tell everyone about the possibilities of modern highways and modern transmission working together to propel us into a bright future!

I've been around since before clean energy was cool.  Does that make me a dinosaur?  Maybe, but it also gives me perspective.

Let's dial it back to 2008 or so.  Clean energy was a dream, a wish, and a lot of people didn't believe in climate change because they were allowed to think free thoughts.  Believe it or not, this was in the time before climate change became a new religion.  Like a lot of people back then, I thought clean energy might be a good idea.  Of course, back then it consisted of ideas like energy efficiency, distributed generation, and a very limited amount of wind energy.  Solar was something you put on your own roof to reduce your energy costs and provide power during outages... if the sun was shining.  Clean Energy was local. 

But even at that time, there were rumblings from people who lived near small wind turbine installations complaining that they hated them.  They were noisy and they decimated birds and bats.  We should have listened back then...

However, the political winds soon changed direction and clean energy got a little bolder, and much better funded.  Suddenly, wind turbines were the place to be to shovel tax dollar into your pocket as fast the blades spun.  Big Wind was born, and it was HUNGRY!  It proceeded to cover vast portions of the Midwest, where farmers were told they could farm around them and collect a huge windfall, pardon the pun.  Some fell for it and were instantly sorry.  Others fell for it but moved away with their windfall because who needs to do the hard work of farming when you can sit on the porch and watch the turbines spin?  Of course, sitting on THAT porch was no longer pleasant, so they rented their farmland and moved elsewhere.

This is the moment in time when Big Wind got all chummy with Big Green.  Suddenly, public interest groups like Sierra Club and Earth Justice were living just a little better with generous grant funding from clean energy foundations and other important donors.  And these public interest groups soon stopped talking about energy efficiency, distributed generation, and local solutions and started talking about wind "farms", tax credits, and a completely contrived non-product, "Renewable Energy Certificates."  A REC is defined as "the environmental and social attributes of clean energy generation."  As if an electron can be separated from its attributes.  RECs aren't real.  The attributes go with the electron.  Whoever  uses the electron gets the attributes.  You can't sell those separately to another user.  But, yes they did.  Something was starting to stink.

Big Wind said it needed lots of government funding and tax breaks.  It said they could power our entire country with their wonderful new generators.  If they overbuilt them to a mind-boggling degree, then they would always be producing the power we needed somewhere.  So our government gave them all the funding they wanted.  Big Wind, Big Green and Big Government declared fossil fuel dead.

So they built way too many wind "farms" in certain areas, but not anywhere near where the important elite people lived.  Those people were fortunate enough to beat them back with political pressure and fat wallets.  It's the regular folks who got saddled with them.

Except wind turbines are not reliable.  They only produce energy when nature provides the fuel.  And it soon became apparent that we could not power our country with just one source for electricity that was not reliable all the time.

Enter Big Solar.  The collective Bigs (wind, solar, green and government) said we could reliably power our entire country if they could also build a massive amount of solar "farms".  So the government funded those as well and the energy companies proliferated and began to build solar on every piece of farmland they could lease.  People began to hate them as much (or more) than wind turbines.  Solar is quiet, they said.  Solar has no moving parts.  Solar is cheap if we import the panels from China.  They told us that if we had lots of wind turbines and solar panels that we could power our entire country with them.  They insisted if we had enough solar and wind, something would always be generating enough power to supply our needs.

Except solar isn't reliable.  It only produces energy when nature provides the fuel.  Vast regions, such as the Midwest, that covered their ground with wind and solar soon began to have reliability issues.  It was feast or famine -- too much wind and solar, or not enough, depending on weather.  Storage was not a practical or economic solution.  It soon became apparent that even with a huge amount of wind and solar, it just wasn't true that something was always generating enough power to serve the region.

Meanwhile, due to all the government subsidies, wind and solar became the cheapest power available.  Because the cost of producing it was funded by the government, these generators could bid into regional markets at low cost, maybe even zero.  How about that?  Some "free" power courtesy of trillions of your tax dollars!  Except that's not really how markets work.  Generators bid in and the bids are stacked in price order.  Beginning at the lowest cost, the market buys available resources in order.  When the need is covered, the buying stops.  The highest price paid is then paid to every generator in the stack.  So, even if a resource is bid at zero, it ends up earning the top clearing price.  But, back on topic.  Because reliable generators like gas, nuclear, coal that can run when we need them have an actual, unsubsidized cost, they cannot bid in at zero.  Therefore, they are higher in the cost stack.  Some are just priced out of the market.  If you're too expensive to compete, you make no revenue.  No revenue means you are out of business.  So, the coal, gas, and nuclear plants began to close.  And the Bigs crowed about how many "dirty" power plants they had closed and how wonderful everything was.

But wait... big wind and solar are not reliable all the time and without those "dirty" plants to back them up, we started to have reliability problems that could tank the whole wind and solar scheme.  So they told another lie to prop up the first two.

Suddenly, we need a whole bunch of new electric transmission lines so that wind and solar can be shipped to other regions of the country.  Certainly if they could spread their failure over an even bigger area from coast to coast, their other lies about wind and solar being able to produce reliable power when needed would finally pan out.  Now that reliability issues have surfaced and continue to expand every year, they blame it on "extreme" weather caused by climate change, and not on reality:  there are not enough "dirty" plants to back up wind and solar.  Wind and solar cannot supply reliable power for our nation without a huge amount of back up nuclear, gas or coal-fired power plants.    Reliability issues are incorrectly blamed on the weather and climate change.

Building an enormous amount of solar, wind and  transmission isn't going to change the weather.  See  how that circular argument goes?  Clean energy causes reliability problems but that's only because the weather is extreme because of climate change.  If we just keep building wind and solar, we can change the climate and stop extreme weather and then clean energy will be reliable.  Ya know, I think your arrogance has gone to your head.  You can't change the weather.  It's not "extreme" due to climate change.  That's just one more lie from the Bigs.

If we continue down the path where clean energy needs new transmission subsidies, what's next?  Big transmission  isn't going to solve our problems.  It's just going to make the failure and reliability issues even bigger.  Big transmission is just another lie, meant to prop up the earlier lies of Big Solar, Big Wind and Big Green.  But it is a series of lies that our current Big Government supports in its quest for power.

Whoever controls the power has the power.

It's time to stop.  I don't believe the lies anymore.  Bring back the local solutions.

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me! 

The proposed Burns substation in Callaway County, Missouri, will be owned by Ameren and enable the interconnection of "Show Me State Solar" (aka Ranger Power) and possibly Grain Belt Express Tiger Connector, if that project is approved by the PSC.  The proposed substation will be located here: 

While you may think it looks small on the map, it is estimated to be 14 acres in size.  Fourteen acres of ugly, shiny, metal towers, transformers, switches, lines, insulators.  That's a pretty large substation, as substations go.  Compare it in size to the existing McCredie substation represented by that little white square to the left of Burns.

Anyhow... Ameren has to build a new substation to accommodate these new interconnections since the interconnections are on an existing transmission line it owns (the red line on the map).  As the new owner of the substation, Ameren had to apply to get a permit from the Missouri Public Service Commission to build the Burns substation.  Ameren applied in docket number EA-2023-0226.  In the application it states that Ranger Power is responsible for acquiring the land for the substation that Ameren needs to build the substation.

While the PSC staff investigated the proposal and recommended that the Commission approve it, the Commission has not yet issued an order giving Ameren permission to construct the substation.  Ameren has no permission to construct the substation.  It cannot begin any construction until it has that permit in its hand.

But wait...

It seems the neighbors have documented that there is in fact dirt being moved at the site.  What permits are there for this work?  Whose contractors are these?  Ameren's?  Or Ranger Power's?  Which one of these companies is engaged in building a substation without a permit?

The astute neighbor has already reported this faux pas to the PSC for investigation.  The Burns Substation is NOT approved.  A permit has not been issued by the PSC.  What's the penalty for beginning construction before a permit is issued?

Three words that strike terror in the heart of every landowner.  G-men showing up at your door and taking what you've worked for, and in some instances what your ancestors worked for, and giving it to some elite political donor who wants to use it to make a profit.  Worse yet, the biased government flunkies who made the decision to take your property have never been anywhere near it and think food comes from some giant Walmart factory.

But that's exactly what's in store thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (aka "Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill" aka "Biden's Build Back Better").  This bloated government giveaway gave the federal government the power to overturn a state utility commission decision with 4 little words, "has denied an application."  If a state has denied an application for an electric transmission permit, the federal government can overturn that and empower the transmission company with federal eminent domain.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are working in cahoots to increase electric transmission lines 3 times over.  That's right, for every transmission line you see now, there will be 3 new ones, if someone doesn't stop them.  Do we need that much transmission?  Not according to the regional transmission planners/operators that keep our grid going at a reasonable cost.  It's just the latest "green new deal" theory, after their last one didn't turn out so good.  Because intermittent generation sources like wind and solar cannot keep the lights on all the time, now they have turned to transmission from other parts of the country to keep the lights on when the sun sets and the wind dies.  It's all about building transmission, anywhere, by anyone.  Nothing scientific or coordinated about it.  If some elite speculator rolls out of bed one morning and wants to build a transmission line between, say the Oklahoma panhandle and Memphis, then all he has to do is ask his pals at the DOE to create a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) that corresponds with his preferred route.  Once designated using a very subjective and undefined process (remember, they want lots of transmission, everywhere, there are no standards), then the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has the ability to site and permit the transmission line in the event that a state denies a permit for the unneeded, uneconomic transmission brain fart.

FERC recently created some new rules to update its regulations governing its permitting process to go along with the new legislation.  One of the major things FERC did in its proposed rules was to propose that transmission companies be permitted to begin the FERC permitting process as soon as they file a state application.  That means that the state utility commission case will be going on at the same time as the FERC permitting case, and you'll be expected to participate in both of them to preserve your rights to appeal.  The second is to ask transmission owners to voluntarily comply with a completely meaningless "code of conduct" for land acquisition agents.  The legislation requires "...the Commission to determine, as a precondition to receiving eminent domain authority, that the permit holder has made good faith efforts to engage with landowners and stakeholders early in the permitting process."  FERC thinks that having a "code of conduct" and making transmission owners submit reports of their landowner contacts will somehow prove "good faith."

Next, FERC opened a comment period on its Rulemaking.  More than 50 comments were filed on Wednesday.  It will come as no surprise that at least half of them were from a plethora of "clean energy" groups (some I have never heard of before) and these commenters just LOVE the new rules and FERC's permitting authority.  Perhaps most galling of all is their pretension that they somehow speak for landowners affected by transmission and therefore if they say FERC's new rules are good for landowners, they must be.  It doesn't seem to matter that these are all the same groups that intervene in the state permitting cases to advocate FOR the transmission project and against landowners.  Somehow they can re-create themselves as landowner representatives at FERC, even though they have never been affected by a transmission project or even spoken to a landowner who has been.  I found this passage in the comments of Niskanen Center to be so much pompous junk.

But they also say...

So they want the federal government to take your land using eminent domain and give it to a for-profit transmission company "...despite a demonstrated lack of public or market need..." and they think they can "represent" impacted landowners at the same time?  Isn't that like hiring a criminal to guard your treasures?

But they're not the only one.  There was a virtual parade of idiots who know nothing about transmission telling FERC how great thou art.  If it wasn't for a group of landowners who have actually been impacted by transmission proposals, their hubris might have worked.

Impacted Landowners filed these comments.

A comment from a real impacted landowner is worth 10,573 form letter comments from environmental activists. 

Meanwhile, as the FERC battle is waged, another one starts at the DOE, who is now seeking public comment on its proposal to let transmission developers request an NIETC for their project's route, instead of DOE developing needed routes and then soliciting competitive projects to fill them.  It's quick and easy to comment.  Just go here and click on the "Submit a Formal Comment" button.  You can even submit an anonymous comment instead of entering your name and contact info.  Have fun with that!

As we said in our FERC comments, we shouldn't have to make protecting our land from government intrusion a part of our business plan.

Texas grid operators and regulators are warning of the possibility of blackouts this summer.  They say that there is not enough dispatchable generation to cover periods when renewables like solar and wind are not performing.  A dispatchable generator can generate electricity when needed.  An intermittent renewable generator only generates power when nature provides the fuel.

But it's not just Texas.  The Southwest Power Pool, that operates the grid in the southwestern plains has also issued an alert for next week.

And it's not just ERCOT and SPP.  The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) is warning that there could be problems this summer.

And it's not just ERCOT and SPP and MISO, PJM Interconnection, the grid operator for Mid-Atlantic states recently issued its own warning.

It's no longer a fluke or a coincidence.  It's reality, and it's spreading.  Environmental groups say "don't blame wind and solar, blame increasingly bad weather."  And of course, that increasingly bad weather, they claim, is a direct result of "climate change" and "climate change" is caused by reliable baseload power generators, like coal and gas.  So, if we turn off all the fossil fuels, will the weather change enough to provide 24/7 dependable wind and solar power?  Absolutely not.  This is a ridiculous contention.

Here's a good article on how and why this resource inadequacy is spreading like the plague.

PJM is the last fossil-fuel generating hold out, and in the face of its own looming reliability problems, it can no longer be the powerhouse of the eastern interconnection.

Are these the solutions the clean energy peddlars and our bloated, woke government see?  They'll be the first to scream when the lights go out.

It's all the rage in the environmental non-profit circle to produce recommendations for how the government could overcome the impending resistance to new transmission from impacted landowners.  The sad thing is that none of the groups writing this tripe have the first clue about why landowners resist, how they form and operate their grassroots opposition, or how to change things for the better.  You'd think they'd want to engage with transmission opposition groups to actually understand the problem they are trying to solve, but they don't.  That's because none of this nonsense is attempting to solve anything, it's just a charade to try to make government officials believe they have the answers.  Doesn't mean those answers are right.  In fact, they are wrong as can be.  If the government wants to know why there is always, and I do mean ALWAYS, opposition to new transmission, then they'll have to get their hands dirty and consult the opposition, not some glad-handing, self-righteous environmental justice groups who have never had to deal with new transmission proposed in their own community.

I've read a lot of these bogus "solutions" to transmission opposition, but I ran across one this morning that takes the cake. These bloviating pretenders have written something so completely meaningless that even the government is going to laugh at it.  There's a lot of words in it, but it's nothing but a word salad of nonsense.  I read a lot of crap.  I write a lot of crap.  Words are my friends.  But I've never come across something so completely senseless.

This paper was created by a group who "met in New Orleans" last fall.  I wonder who paid for them to live it up while pretending they were solving important societal problems?  They even gave themselves a name that doesn't make sense, "The Equitable Grid Cohort."  The group consists of "25 community and environmental justice leaders, electric grid analysts, and labor representatives."  Right... people who have never been impacted by electric transmission at their own homes or deigned to speak with a transmission opposition group.  These self-important blowhards who did not participate with any persons affected by electric transmission wrote this:

Hah!  That's rich.  What part of these recommendations were "participatory design" that "meets the needs" of people impacted by new electric transmission?  None of them.

First you need to practice what you preach! 

But why do that when you can indoctrinate your fellow idiots, especially wokester government officials.

Stop it, this makes no sense to real people outside the Beltway!  Was it written in Wokenese to appeal to the government functionaries holding the taxpayer purse strings?  Or do you really talk like that every day?  Life must be rough if you do!  How do you even order a cup of coffee?   "I'd like you and your co-workers to meet to develop an equitable, organic chalice of sustainable, quietly ground woke syrup for me, but only if you're not triggered by this request?"

Some of the recommendations here stand a snowball's chance in hell of ever happening, but the Equitable Grid Cohort is so clueless about the energy world that they don't know how ridiculous they sound. 

Nobody who wants their lights to turn on when they flip the switch wants the grid planned by a bunch of woke idiots spewing nonsense.

Or perhaps this...

And where do you think utilities get their "funds", little cohorts?  From ratepayers.  The utilities are never going to let this happen.  Dream on!   They're not going to go for this, either...

Why would a "community" share in the wealth when only certain members of the community are actually sacrificing anything for the transmission project?  Here again, they are overstepping by including the broader "community" in compensation.

Let's see... wealthy landowners actually impacted by transmission should share their compensation with "communities affected by the construction."  Aren't these the same people?  They're either wealthy or low-income, but not both.

So now transmission companies must train impacted landowners to build the transmission that will wreck their own properties?  Well, I'd feel really safe if electric transmission was built by a bunch of people who had never done it before.  How about you?

That's enough of that.  I can't think about this codswallop any longer.

So, I hope the cohorts had a good time in New Orleans because the result of their meeting is a laughable failure.