What's for dinner?

The New York Times is on a biased roll.  It keeps writing ridiculous and uninformed articles and opinions about "permitting reform" and electric transmission.  It refuses to publish any dissenting opinions or responses, such as this thoughtful piece from a New Jersey consumer group.

Instead, the NYT just doubled down with a second article singing the praises of Grain Belt Express.  The article purports that the opposition to the project is merely concerned about it being an "eyesore."

I'd like to give the reporters a few eyesores of their own, such as this blog and going to bed without supper a few times.

Communities have various reasons for blocking these projects. Landowners might worry about the government seizing their land. Power lines, wind turbines and solar panels can be eyesores in places that rely on beautiful vistas for tourism. Such projects can damage the environment by displacing wildlife or cutting down trees.

These poor, little New York City dwellers don't seem to know where their food comes from.  New transmission projects across working farmland remove land from production and pose various impediments to modern farming, preventing the efficient and economic use of land to produce food.  It's more than just an "eyesore", it impacts their business and their income.  And it also impacts the amount of food they can produce to feed arrogant and biased big city reporters.  Who is going to volunteer to go hungry for each acre of productive farmland that is destroyed by industrial wind and solar and new transmission rights of way?  Probably not these reporters, who must think their food is created at the Walmart factory.

These reporters also have many of their "facts" incorrect.  Let's examine a few:

With its open plains and thousands of miles of wheat fields, Kansas is one of the windiest states in the U.S. That makes it a great place for turbines that capture the wind and convert it into electricity. But too few people live there to use all that power.
So in 2010, developers started planning a large power-line project connecting Kansas with Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. They wanted to move the clean energy generated in Kansas, from both wind turbines and solar panels, to states with much bigger populations. That would let more communities replace planet-warming fossil fuels that have contributed to the kinds of wildfires and unhealthy air that have blanketed large swaths of North America this week.

Have they bothered to look at a wind resources map?  There are better wind resources located off both coasts and in the Great Lakes.  Why would they build in Kansas, miles from "people who use all that power" and not in those better resource areas located conveniently near all those power sucks?  They may not even need transmission to do that.  But they don't want to because they don't want that infrastructure in their own back yard.

No community can replace fossil-fuel baseload generation with intermittent wind and solar from thousands of miles away if they want the lights to go on when they flip a switch.  Renewables cannot follow load.  Load follows renewables.  The communities would still need a power source that could produce when it is needed.  There is absolutely no evidence that fossil fuels caused Canadian wildfires, or any others.  On the west coast, electric transmission lines actually cause wildfires.  The "unhealthy air" actually reduced solar production by an incredible 50%.  It's a circular argument.  Which came first?  The chicken or the egg?

Thirteen years later, however, full construction has not yet started on the project, known as the Grain Belt Express. Why? Because in addition to federal permission, the project needs approval from every local and state jurisdiction it passes through. And at different times since 2010, at least one agency has resisted it.

Full construction has not yet started because Grain Belt Express changed ownership, and then changed its project, including the route, requiring new state permits.  It also had to change the law in Illinois to grant itself public utility status and eminent domain in the counties it intends to cross.  The only "federal" permission the project needed was a conditional order to negotiate rates with potential customers.  That was granted in 2014.  The problem is, there have been no customers, aside from a small coalition of Missouri municipalities who signed a contract to purchase "up to" 200 MW of the project's 5000 MW capacity.  That's less than 5%.  The federal permission to negotiate rates also required former owner, Clean Line Energy Partners, to hold an "Open Season" to advertise its project's capacity to potential buyers.  Clean Line then had the ability to negotiate with those buyers and make a compliance filing demonstrating that it fairly negotiated with buyers who responded to its Open Season.  Clean Line held an Open Season in 2015, but no buyers were ever announced and no compliance filing was made.  New owner Invenergy says it is negotiating with potential buyers, but it has yet to hold a proper Open Season.  It also failed to notify the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission of the change of ownership and the change of project capacity, as required by the 2014 Order.  Seems to me that all delays were of GBE's own creation.

One way to get at that problem is to do what experts call permitting reform. The issue has recently gained national traction, and President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, discussed it during debt-limit negotiations last month. Local and state governments are considering changes, too.
The goal is to streamline the approval process for energy projects so they can avoid the fate of the Grain Belt Express. As long as such projects languish, Americans will keep using existing coal, oil and gas infrastructure for their energy needs.

Federalizing transmission permitting is not going to solve the delays detailed above.  And it will not make GBE find the customers it needs to make its project economically viable.  Recently, GBE has applied with the federal Department of Energy for a loan guarantee to construct its project.  Permitting reform will not make the DOE grant the loan.  Only sheer ignorance would make the DOE grant a loan guarantee to a project with few customers and little revenue with which to pay back the loan.

The case for a permitting overhaul is that the current system has gone too far. Existing policies have helped protect the environment, landowners and tourism. But they have also become a burden that slows projects far longer than is necessary to ensure safeguards. Reform, then, would be about finding a better balance.
And though changes could allow more fossil fuel projects, they would probably enable far more clean energy projects, experts say. With public attention to climate change, technological breakthroughs and hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending, clean energy is expected to become cheaper and more competitive than fossil fuels. So developers will be much more likely to build a clean energy project than a fossil fuel one — if they can get the permits.

So now we need to destroy the planet to "save" it?  I'm thinking it's more about certain special interests filling their pockets than saving the environment.

One astute citizen proposed that for every megawatt of renewable energy or transmission constructed in rural communities, the transmission lovers construct an equal amount of transmission and generation in their own backyard.  I'm a little more jaded though... I want to make them feel the impacts of the destruction of the productive farmland that feeds them.  No dinner for you tonight!  You saved the planet today instead!

Grain Belt Express is a lot more than an "eyesore" to the thousands of rural landowners who are facing the taking of their property to construct an overhead transmission line across their productive land.  These landowners participated in and watched with great interest last week when the Missouri PSC held hearings on GBE's new project.  These farmers should have been working their land last week, not watching a hearing.  I'm still trying to catch up on watching the hearings and will probably have a lot more to say about them when I finish.

The New York Times reporters should go to bed without supper a few evenings, just to see what their brave new world is going to be like.