Federal Transmission Permitting Is a Bad Idea

This guy.  Ugh.

The Republican Party’s current infrastructure spending bill is missing one item: a provision establishing federal siting authority for electric transmission lines. Oddly, this idea has few champions in Congress and only tepid support from environmental groups.

That's because its an awful idea that nobody supports.  Congress doesn't support it.  And do you know why that is?  Because states and citizens oppose it.

While natural gas is limited by its geographic sourcing, electricity generation can take place anywhere.  The days of coal mine mouth electric generation plants and long distance transmission lines are over.  It's much more efficient to move fuel to generation plants located closer to load.  And it's much easier to move fuel than it is to build electric transmission lines.

We don't need federal authority for transmission lines.

Problematically, the best locations for wind and solar power plants are far from population centers—in the windy central plains or the sunny southwestern deserts.

That's absolutely not true.  The "best locations" for wind plants are offshore, conveniently located within just a few miles of the largest population centers.  The "best locations" for solar are right on your own roof, where source and sink align to create the most reliable system.

More than ever, consumers want green power.

Also not true.  When consumers were given an opportunity to purchase renewable energy transmission capacity from the Midwest, there were no takers.  Whether it was a matter of price (new transmission will produce a cost to consumers in the billions of dollars), or a matter of favoring local resources, or both, consumers rejected Clean Line Energy Partner's plans for new transmission.  Consumers who say they want "clean" energy in a random survey are never given complete information about how much this "clean" energy is going to cost, and when the rubber hits the road, consumers vote with their wallets.  Any consumer truly dedicated to a "need" for clean power can make it happen at home.  We don't need big utilities and expensive new infrastructure to make it happen.

Conservatives claim that federal transmission siting authority would threaten state sovereignty or landowner property rights, but those claims ring hollow. Why are those values worth protecting against transmission lines but not against natural gas pipelines?

Those claims don't ring hollow to the affected landowners, and those are the only parties who matter in this instance.  Landowners, frankly, don't give a shit if some policy wonk in the big city thinks their legislators' protection of private property rights sounds hypocritical.  Those policy wonks won't be voting in the next local election, but the landowners will.

Why is it that these liberal wind bags demand that you abandon your own beliefs if you don't support theirs?  "Okay, so you're against transmission lines, therefore you must also be concerned about my issue."  No, we're not.  Attempts to reframe the argument to paint opposition as hypocritical serve no one and are just a waste of time.  But while we're on the subject of hypocritical arguments, that's where your environmental groups come in.  They attempt to use landowners to serve their environmental goals by latching onto non-environmental arguments, such as eminent domain.  And then they get caught supporting eminent domain for electric transmission lines, but not for gas lines.  And then the people start to feel used.

Dude, your argument is crap.  Federal permitting and siting for electric transmission has been attempted many times over the years and it has consistently failed.  Elected officials know it can't happen.  That's why they don't support it.

Duh.

Never going to happen.