How to Disrespect the Court, by Clean Line

If Clean Line wrote a guide to disrespecting the courts, it would probably sound a lot like this.

It's no surprise that Clean Line doesn't agree with the decision of the Illinois Third District Court of Appeals that voided the permit for its Rock Island Clean Line (RICL) project issued by the Illinois Commerce Commission.  What is sort of surprising is that RICL has taken to the media to appeal the appeal in the court of public opinion.  It's also surprising that Clean Line whined to a different Appeals Court hearing the appeal of the ICC's grant of a permit to the Grain Belt Express project, suggesting that the court should not rely on the Third District's Opinion, but allow arguments on its merit.  Since when is an appeals court the proper venue to appeal the decision of a different appeals court?

The Opinion of the Third District Court of Appeals is the rule of law unless and until the Illinois Supreme Court takes the case and issues its own opinion overturning the lower court.  The Illinois Supreme Court takes very few cases, saving its review for cases of great importance to the state, cases that disagree with prior Supreme Court rulings, and cases where a conflict has arisen between the opinions of different appellate courts. 

It doesn't matter what RICL's counsel thinks, what the ICC thinks, what the labor unions think, what the media reports, or what a smarmy RICL lobbyist pretending he's a lawyer spews to a reporter.  The only thing that matters is the opinion of the Third District, and that Opinion reversed the Order of the Illinois Commerce Commission that granted a certificate of public convenience and necessity and ordered the Illinois Commerce Commission to enter an Order consistent with the Court's decision.  It no longer matters what the ICC did in 2014.

Detweiler said the ruling ignores that the project would lower electricity prices for Illinois consumers as more power would be made available in the market. The new line would be designed to move up to 4,000 megawatts, enough to power 1.4 million homes.

There's no proof that the project would lower electricity prices for Illinois consumers.  No Illinois consumers have signed up for service on the project (and may never do so).  In fact, it's possible that all the power may be purchased by utilities in those mysterious "states farther east" resulting in not one electron being used by any person in Illinois.  Simply dumping power into an existing market doesn't necessarily lower prices if it creates an expanded market that encourages higher priced markets to begin to compete for available supply.

It's different than most high-voltage lines in that its developers aren't asking regulators to force captive ratepayers to pay higher electricity rates to finance the project. Instead, Rock Island is a "merchant" line and will be a success only if it signs up enough wind farm developers to pay it to move their output from low-population parts of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Kansas and Iowa to population centers like Chicago and the mid-Atlantic.

What makes RICL different is that it skipped the regional planning process whereby lines are found needed and the costs of building them are assigned to consumers who will benefit.  Being a "merchant" project doesn't make a project more consumer-friendly.  It just means that there is NO reliability, economic or public policy need for the project.  It is not needed to keep the lights on, make power cheaper, or meet state renewable energy laws.  Instead, it's a completely extraneous project built on the premise that voluntary customers may want to pay for it.  Therefore it is not a public utility worthy of wielding eminent domain over private property "for public use."  RICL has no customers who want to pay for its project.  The ICC's now voided approval depended entirely on hypotheticals -- something RICL would accomplish later to be granted a permit now.  RICL wants to be a utility now, although it will only legally become one later.  Chicken.  Egg.

The decision doesn't pass constitutional muster, [Detweiler] said.

"It's a terrible precedent—not just for us but any nonincumbent," Hans Detweiler, Rock Island vice president of development, said of the decision in an interview.

He argued that the logic of the ruling is that only established utilities like ComEd and Ameren Illinois can win approval for transmission lines. That undermines competition, he said.

I must have missed the article about Hans Detweiler being a constitutional law scholar.  I think he should go back to law school and brush up on this, and perhaps take a course in logic while he's at it.  Then he can do a couple internships at regional transmission planning organizations, where nonincumbents compete to build needed transmission all the time.  Let's face it... Clean Line's projects are nothing but pure market speculation that may never serve any person in Illinois.  In fact, they may never serve any customer, any where, at any time.  Certainly that kind of market speculation is not "for public use," it's for private profit, and not worthy of a utility's eminent domain authority.

The chances that the Illinois Supreme Court will decide to take up RICL's appeal of the Third District's decision are slim.  No matter what RICL wants to pretend for the media, the courts have spoken.  No media spree can change that.