General Manager Bob Stevenson said Clean Line contacted the BPW about a month ago, offering the utility a draft letter of intent. Clean Line hasn't made a firm proposal, but Stevenson called prospective prices "very attractive." He declined to disclose them, citing confidentiality, but Lawlor estimated Grain Belt Express could deliver electricity in the 3- to 4-kilowatt-hour range.

Starting Line now hears about a number of people interested in running for Rick Olson’s house seat. That includes Beth Conley, Marc Wallace and Connie Boesen. Conley works at Clean Line Energy Partners, and has a history of working with wind energy projects.

Electricity on the PJM grid normally flows from west to east. The major centers for electricity demand are the big metropolises along the Eastern Seaboard, at the eastern edge of the PJM system. There aren’t any power plants located in the Atlantic Ocean, therefore power that isn’t generated locally has to come from the west. As it happens, PJM’s western states have abundant, low-cost wind power — at night-time, wind power is so plentiful compared to demand that the price essentially falls to zero. The main factor limiting East Coast access to that cheap wind is the limited capacity of the transmission grid to carry it.

In the United States, 53% of the nation’s population lives in coastal areas, where energy costs and demands are high and land-based renewable energy resources are often limited. Abundant offshore wind resources have the potential to supply immense quantities of renewable energy to major U.S. coastal cities, such as New York City and Boston.  

Offshore winds tend to blow harder and more uniformly than on land.

Clean Line Energy has had a busy year, making progress on all of our projects. We are writing today to provide you with a brief update about our efforts to modernize the electric grid and bring more clean energy to communities.

Progress?  Does this mean you're actually permitted to build at least one of them?  No?  Of course not, there's been no real progress. 

You're not "modernizing the grid."  You're proposing to build a completely separate "grid" using 100-year old technology to transport energy from centralized generators to remote users.  A really modern grid isn't a grid at all, but many small microgrids that can either interconnect to share resources, or island themselves off during emergencies or grid outages.  You're not building that, Clean Line.

There aren't any "communities" that are asking you to bring them "more clean energy."  In order to bring "more" of something, you'd have to actually be supplying that commodity in the first place.  Clean Line still doesn't have any customers in any "communities."

First, we’ve been advancing the Rock Island Clean Line through interconnection studies, surveys, commercial development, and other work.  Additionally, we are pleased to share that we are moving through the regulatory process at the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB). On November 30th, we filed a motion to set a procedural schedule that will move the Rock Island Clean Line forward in Iowa in a timely manner, and will allow for a decision from the IUB as early as the end of 2016. We look forward to adding wind energy to the list of Iowa’s top exports.

Advancing?  That would indicate some sort of forward progress, however RICL has been stalled for the entire year in Iowa.  Clean Line is NOT "moving through the regulatory process at the IUB."  Filing a motion proposing a procedural schedule that allows bifurcation of the hearing process, when RICL's prior requests for bifurcation have been turned down, twice, is nothing but wishful thinking.  What was it ComEd's witness said about you, Clean Line? 

“Listing the number of transmission projects that have successfully achieved financing….is tantamount to my listing the members of the violin section of the Chicago Symphony  Orchestra as evidence that I will certainly become a member of the violin section of the orchestra if I follow the same regimen that they did. “ ComED/Lapson, p. 12

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Clean Line's "procedural schedule" won't be "moving" anywhere unless the IUB approves it, and that doesn't look very likely.

By the way, how are you going to add wind to the list of Iowa exports, Clean Line, when much of the wind developed for your project is actually located in South Dakota, Minnesota or Nebraska?

Clean Line’s other projects are making great strides, as well.

The Grain Belt Express Clean Line (will deliver wind energy from Kansas into Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and other states), has received regulatory approvals in three of the four project states, with  approval in Illinois last month.

Err... you forgot to mention that Grain Belt Express was DENIED by the Missouri PSC in July.  It doesn't mater how many other states "approve" GBE, unless you're planning to bypass Missouri entirely.  Without approval of the Missouri PSC, Grain Belt Express isn't happening.

You also forgot to mention that numerous requests for rehearing were filed in Illinois, including one from you, Clean Line.  Did the ICC issue you a worthless CPCN full of mistakes, Clean Line?  Awwwww.....

Go ahead, tell your supporters about how unlikely it is that GBE will ever be built at this point, Clean Line.  The truth shall set you free!

And, the Plains & Eastern Clean Line (will deliver Oklahoma wind energy into Arkansas, Tennessee, and other states) received its Final Environmental Impact Statement from the Department of Energy in November, bringing the project one step closer to construction.

Except the final EIS doesn't actually do anything without the DOE's approval to "participate" in your project under Sec. 1222 of the Energy Policy Act, Clean Line.  So, it's not like you really "stepped" anywhere.  And now you've managed to go and tick off Congress, who holds DOE's purse strings.  Probably not a good idea, Clean Line.

As you know, building multi-state, interregional transmission lines is a lengthy process that will bring long-term benefits.  The Rock Island Clean Line will enable $7 billion of new wind energy development that will power about 1.4 million homes with low-cost clean energy each year. We appreciate your continued support as we move through the permitting process.

Best,
Hans, Beth, Amy, Colleen and the Clean Line Energy Team

It sure is a "lengthy process."  In fact, you've been at it for 6 years now, haven't you, Clean Line?  And you're no closer to building any of your proposed lines than you were on the first day.  Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, you should have concentrated on building just ONE of your proposals, to see if you could get it off the ground?  Instead you've been shooting into the dark, hoping you'll eventually get lucky and hit something.  Probably not a good strategy.  Just sayin'.

Ya know what?  Wind and transmission is going to go right on being built without you, Clean Line, because you're really not necessary.  Or special.  Seems like you've made yourself obsolete by biting off more than you could chew and spreading your resources too thin over the past several years.  Arrogance is a sweet, sweet liar, but a liar just the same.

Quit pretending and wasting your investors' money, Clean Line.  Playing transmission company and terrorizing thousands of Midwesterners may have been fun for you over the past several years, but it's time to end this farce.  Stop.  Go away.  Go find another get rich quick scheme.  This one's timed out.

GBX is asking for a back-up plan for its field of dreams approach to recovering costs, by coming back to the Commission to comply with the financing condition proposed in the Final Order.

As the Farm Bureau previously argued before this Commission, the denial of GBX’s Application by the MPSC, along with the recent Circuit Court of Caldwell County Order which held that GBX has no authority to construct the proposed line through Caldwell County, Missouri, there will be no construction in Illinois by GBX due to the denials in Missouri. This Commission should consider additional evidence on this issue which occurred after the close of the evidentiary hearings, as described in Exhibit A, the Affidavit of Paul A. Agathen, a Missouri attorney who represents the Missouri Landowners Alliance (“MLA”). The Final Order erred on this issue. Thus, the Commission should rehear this issue.

The record in this docket is devoid of any evidence that the Project would promote the convenience or necessity of anyone other than GBX and certain West Kansas wind developers who said they would use the Project if it ever gets built.

Boiled down, GBX merely asserts that a beneficial project like the Project is needed. Why is it needed? Because it is so beneficial. GBX’s argument that a need for the project exists based on a set of alleged benefits amounts to question-begging on a grand scale. GBX assumes what the Commission should require it to prove. Rather than focus on whether there is any need for the project, GBX jumps right into a show-and-tell on how beneficial the Project will be. The Commission concludes from this that a project with this many benefits must be needed.

Stated another way, the Commission fails to distinguish a benefit from a need. It merely accepts GBX’s catalog of purported benefits as proof of need. Under the Commission’s look-only-at-the-benefits logic, it could just as easily conclude that residents of Point Barrow, Alaska need Frigidaires.

...the Illinois RPS may be satisfied by buying RECs generated in GBX’s targeted west Kansas resource area, and those west Kansas-generated RECs can be purchased without having to build a $2,750,000,000 transmission line across four states.

...the GBX Project is “[l]ike that old 1970s song about Oz and the Tin Man, [because GBX] will give nothing to PJM that it doesn’t already have.”

While the Commission makes soothing noises that it takes seriously the landowners’ concerns about GBX’s ability to use the power of eminent domain against them, it immediately and blatantly contradicts itself by dismissing their concerns as unwarranted because GBX has not specifically requested eminent domain authority in this docket.  Less than a moment’s thought suffices to show the absurdity of the Commission’s position on this issue. If GBX is granted a CPCN it could ultimately use the power of eminent domain against landowners under Section 8-509.
Instead of coming to grips with the power of eminent domain as an integral component of public utility easement acquisitions, the Commission adopts the Pollyanna Principle and accepts at face value GBX’s well-oiled talking points about its voluntary “code of conduct” when dealing with landowners, its promises of respectful treatment, its commitment to negotiate reasonably, and so forth. For the Commission to completely discount the potential impact of eminent domain on landowners simply because GBX did not ask for it in this docket is arbitrary and capricious, and an utter abdication of the Commission’s duty to Illinois citizens.

The Commission’s attitude toward GBX is one of serene and nearly limitless benevolence: whatever GBX can’t do now, it can certainly do later. The Commission will grant GBX its CPCN here and now even though it can’t satisfy most of the requirements of Section 8-406.1 until some unknown point in the future.

But when the landowners raise the issue of GBX’s potential future use of the power of eminent domain against them, which the Commission knows full well inheres in every easement negotiation between GBX and a landowner, the Commission summarily dismisses their concerns as premature because GBX hasn’t asked for eminent domain power here and now, in this docket. In this the Commission subjects the landowners to an egregious double standard, and indulges itself in arbitrariness and caprice of the grossest sort.

GBX’s least cost argument thus rests entirely on its claim that it has no alternative but to be least cost because its entire corporate existence will be some kind of Darwinian
market struggle where only the fittest survive.

The unmistakable irony here is that GBX destroys its own claim to be least cost by asserting that it can exempt itself from those same inexorable free market forces if the going gets tough: GBX reserves to itself the right to seek cost allocation to ratepayers, and in so doing proves itself just another corporate dissembler trying to evade committing itself irrevocably to the ups and downs of the market. And if there are too many downs, the ratepayers can bail GBX out.

But in this docket GBX tells the Commission that it is a “merchant transmission owner” not because it has assumed the full market risk of the Project, but because it plans to earn revenues through discrete transmission services contracts with shippers. This definition of “merchant” transmission owner” appears nowhere in FERC’s orders. That’s because it is a definition concocted entirely by GBX itself, and it differs fundamentally from FERC’s.

Understanding the term “assumption of all market risk” does not require a degree in economics: an assumption of all market risk means exactly that, all market risk, come Hell or high water.

This Commission has no jurisdiction to determine whether or how much of an interstate transmission operator’s costs may be recovered from anyone. The rates, terms and conditions of service for interstate transmission are exclusively matters of federal jurisdiction.

...GBX has no power to confer on this Commission subject matter jurisdiction over the rates, terms and conditions of service on interstate transmission facilities.

If GBX were really a “merchant” transmission owner as defined by FERC, then there would be no questions concerning cost allocation,
and this entire discussion would be unnecessary. GBX simply wants to have it both ways, eating its free market cake while having its cost allocation too.

Craig Lang of the Windward Iowa has written in support of the project, citing the benefits to wind energy development in the state. An Iowa coalition that supports increased wind energy development in the state. The group--Windward Iowa--also supports increased transmission development as an essential part of new renewable development.

As an Iowa resident who understands the importance of agriculture in our communities, I appreciate Clean Line Energy for taking every possible step to ensure that the planned transmission line route has a minimal impact on farmland and homes.

As a farmer and an Iowan, I think it is reasonable to ask a small group of individuals to give back in order to benefit our whole state and the nation

Now, Clean Line argues that an unknown number of landowners have expressed a preference to wait until after a Board decision on the franchises to sign easement agreements. This means that if all issues are addressed in a single hearing, Clean Line will have to prepare more Exhibit E applications than it will under the two-hearing process. For this reason, Clean Line argues, administrative efficiency would be advanced by the two-hearing approach. Clean Line does not offer any indication of the number of such landowners, other than “many.”

It appears Clean Line could have provided the number of these landowners without violating the confidentiality of the individual negotiations. In the absence of a substantiated number, it is difficult to accept that this group represents a significant part of the overall number of easements Clean Line needs to acquire.

In all, this argument for increased administrative efficiency is speculative at best, and outweighed by the inefficiencies associated with having two hearings to decide issues that are normally decided in a single hearing.

Further, a number landowners wish to have clarity on the Board’s decision about the Project in general before negotiating a parcel-specific easement.

Arcadia Power will buy renewable energy to match your usage, ensuring that an equal amount of clean energy is getting on the power grid.

...we buy Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) on behalf of residential and business customers, and sometimes we source our own RECs from projects we directly invest in.

RECs are not offsets and the voluntary green power market does not reduce emissions from electricity generation.

The problem is that green power markets, as currently structured, cannot achieve this goal. They were created on a fundamentally flawed foundation—that buying a virtual attribute can substitute for physically consuming a specific good or service. Further, the incentives of the participants in green power markets—power companies selling RECs, intermediaries marketing them, organizations certifying them, and companies buying them—are aligned, leaving no one with a strong interest in questioning the claims being made.

With these concerns in mind, we are challenging everyone to question their own assumptions about voluntary green power markets.

Nonetheless, claims that voluntary RECs reduce carbon emissions are highly suspect. Their direct effect is not to reduce net emissions, but to shift responsibility for emissions between parties. They only reduce net emissions, if at all, indirectly, by demonstrating demand for clean energy and by providing a modest boost in revenue to the clean electricity industry.

It's weak tea. Buy voluntary RECs if you like, they're cheap as hell, but have no illusions that by doing so you are offsetting your emissions. It's like tossing your supermarket change into a Unicef jar. Whatever, it's better than not doing so, but you're not "curing poverty."

We offer a flat-price premium of $0.015 per kWh for 100% Wind Energy in all states except for Oregon and Washington state.

Arcadia Power pays your local utility directly and provides you with a consolidated statement each month that combines your local utility charges with your clean energy from them.

Arcadia Power simplifies your life by providing every customer with automatic billing – either with a credit card or direct debit from your checking account. We provide you with an easy-to-read e-statement every month and you never have to worry about missing a payment!