The nation’s most abundant wind resources reside in the remote regions of the Upper Midwest and Great Plains. Residents of these areas routinely enjoy the benefits of wind production in the form of lease payments, jobs, economic development, and tax revenue. But these same lightly populated communities demand only a small amount of electricity, making it imperative that a new generation of transmission infrastructure be put in place to move this energy from where it’s produced to where it’s needed most.

Need
Concerns over need are more difficult to address than some other stakeholder issues. The concern over need often relates back to a concern over who will ultimately benefit from the project—is a transmission project needed for this area, or is the area merely a means to connect a generating source to a distant community? Localizing benefits of a transmission line can be a difficult task, especially if the developer is not in need of any materials or services that a community can provide.
Another option to address this is to make clear the benefits of improving the aging transmission infrastructure that runs across the country. Showing how upgraded transmission can affect consumer’s rates and reliability may be a good tact for developers. Although this doesn’t necessarily improve the local economy, it does show stakeholders that they are not taking on a transmission project without any sort of reward.

In order to improve the transmission system in the Midwest and across the country, it is important that developers and advocates confront the concerns of those affected.

Sam Brownback, Republican Kanas Governor, and lawmakers in a dozen other US states who fought off cynical attacks to repeal state Renewable Portfolio Standards, which have catalysed thousands of wind and solar projects across the country and generated hundreds of thousands of jobs.

hero |ˈhi(ə)rō|
noun (pl. heroes)
1 a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities: a war hero.

The recent disclosure of the manipulation of scientific evidence by climate researchers is exactly the kind of important information that needs to be brought to light. The emails and documents recently disclosed paint an alarming picture of the state of climate research. In the emails that have been disclosed we’ve seen evidence of manipulation, efforts to avoid freedom of act information requests, abuse of the peer review process and a research process that that is driven more by a political agenda than a quest for truth. [Brownback, DeMint, Ensign, Isakson, Vitter, and Wicker, 12/8/09]

Due to an exceptional amount of pressing business, the KCC inadvertently failed to notice the subject proceeding until after the date for timely intervention had passed.

...the KCC’s failure to file a timely intervention was based upon factors outside of its control.

[KCC] is the regulatory agency that has jurisdiction over the wholesale and retail rates that will be impacted by the proposed formula rate and incentive rate adders filed for approval in this docket.

Mr. Akins said he wants to avoid the bruising battles that delayed or doomed big projects in the past, like the 275-mile Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline project from West Virginia to Maryland. AEP and partner FirstEnergy Corp. dropped development plans for the complex project in 2011.

"Sometimes, we were just dreaming" that the companies could get enormous power lines built across multiple states, Mr. Akins said. He said AEP now is focusing on shorter projects blessed by federal regulators that eliminate grid bottlenecks. "It's where you want to put your money," he said.

This includes traditional tactics, such as upgrading power poles and trimming trees near power lines. But it also encompasses newer approaches, such as microgrids and energy storage, which allow operators to quickly reconfigure the system when portions of the grid go down. Implicit to such plans is the need to ensure uninterrupted power to critical sites such as oil and gas refineries, water-treatment plants, and telecommunication networks, as well as gasoline stations, hospitals, and pharmacies.

Some of the nation’s leaders seem receptive to such approaches.

...a transformation of the company’s structure and a shifting notion of what AEP needs to do to remain relevant in a changing energy landscape.

In doing so, the company is de-emphasizing what was once a crown jewel, the fleet of Ohio power plants, and putting a greater focus on developing an interstate network of power lines.

“The less we have to spend on centralized generation, the better off we are,” he said in a recent interview.

When he says “centralized generation,” he means big power plants. AEP will be closing more plants than it is building.

The company is shifting resources so it can expand its transmission system, made up of the high-voltage power lines that carry electricity across state lines and between metro areas.

...NRG is installing solar panels on rooftops of homes and businesses and in the future will offer natural gas-fired generators to customers to kick in when the sun goes down, Chief Executive Officer David Crane said in an interview.

AEP, which was reluctant to split its Ohio operations, has responded by focusing on the delivery business.

Meanwhile, the Ohio power plants are a shrinking asset. Because of environmental rules and the age of some of the plants, the company has announced a series of shutdowns that will occur over the next few years.

Also, AEP is in the process of transferring two plants away from Ohio regulation. The plants, both of which are in West Virginia near the Ohio line, will be regulated in nearby states that allow a utility to sell electricity directly to consumers.

Once the moves are complete, AEP will have 8,668 megawatts of power-plant capacity in the new Ohio power-plant subsidiary, which will be down from 11,652 megawatts today.

Akins says the company is responding to an economic climate in which there is little reason to build power plants in Ohio. The state’s electricity demand has been flat, and the regulatory structure provides no clear way to pay for plant construction.

Akins says he’s having fun and is eager to see the work of the past two years come to fruition.

“We are now at a point where we can start defining our success,” he said. “Before, we had a huge anvil we were dragging around, whether it be environmental expense or whether it be other things we were dealing with that were reactionary. We’re finally at a point where we can map out the strategy of this company going forward. It is exhilarating.”

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,  committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. --
Margaret Mead
US social anthropologist (1901 - 1978)

But Joel Gordes, a West Hartford-based energy consultant, said the regional approach toward addressing energy issues has a downside as well.

“This is a compact region, but each state has its wants and needs that are in conflict at times,” Gordes said. “If this leads to building more transmission lines across New England instead of focusing on other areas that decentralize energy production, like microgrids and solar energy, than I see this as something that weakens our safety net in the aftermath of some of the large storms we’ve seen. Distributed energy projects, like microgrids, would make us more resilient.”

The goal of the agreement, which was announced jointly late Thursday by the governors, is to reduce energy costs in the region.

The agreement calls for the states to jointly determine how to spend billions of dollars in ratepayer money from all six states to develop additional transmission projects for both natural gas and electricity.

"...the commitment to an initiative that can support additional transmission lines to bring cleaner electricity into Connecticut is essential to reduce our carbon emissions and help mitigate the devastating impacts of climate change that we have felt so severely here in Connecticut.”

[New Hampshire] Governor Maggie Hassan says the agreement - which she calls a "mission statement" - commits to expanding infrastructure like transmission lines and natural gas pipelines, which would help lower energy costs in the whole region. “But we want to make sure we do that in a way that really honors each state’s needs, and doesn’t disproportionately or inappropriately burden the people of any one state,” said Hassan in a cell phone interview on Friday.

The announcement comes at a time when the governors of Southern New England, with their more aggressive renewable energy goals, are especially concerned with rising energy rates. But some in Northern New England are worried about becoming a thoroughfare for renewable electricity destined for Boston and Hartford.

“I just think it’s a really positive an encouraging development,” said Hassan.

In Wyoming, the industry was surprised when the governor came out and said this area of Wyoming is now off limits to wind energy and it's about 28% of the developable wind resources in Wyoming.  That's a non-trivial amount  This is one of the windiest states in the country, there's lots of projects planned in Wyoming, people are trying to develop transmission lines to Wyoming.  People wrote off millions of dollars of development expenditures when this happened, including my old shop [Horizon Wind Energy].  Now you can make lots of arguments about why the governor made the right decision here.  Some claim that there were more nefarious motives at work because the sage grouse, as many of you know, its a poster species for areas west of the Rockies. 

There's lots of concerns about sage grouse viability and so there are real issues here.  The question is we're going to have to make some tough choices here... and some of these tough choices... and think about why we're doing this renewables stuff.  We're worried about climate change.  And we're worried about climate change because it might cause a massive species die-off.  It's possible that along the way, we may have to make very tough decisions about which species are going to do well in this massive renewables build-out and which species aren't going to do well, and those are tough decisions that our current legislation... we don't really have a mechanism to sort of figure that out.  That is a real question.

"It is clear that the Alliance will seek to make this process unnecessarily burdensome and overly complicated before the board can even make its initial determination on whether the franchise should be granted," the company's lawyers conclude.

Clean Line does not object to the Alliance's limited intervention at this stage; however, Clean Line reserves the right to request specific limitations be placed on such participation depending upon the participation of other parties who may have the same interest as the Alliance. Such limitations may include but shall not be limited to prohibiting the Alliance from preparing direct testimony, submitting exhibits or other evidence, or conducting cross examination of witnesses. If the Alliance seeks to "advance the mutual arguments of all its members" as stated in its Petition to Intervene, limiting its participation to briefing legal arguments will satisfy the Alliance's goal.

...the motive of the Alliance is clear: to make sure Clean Line does not build this  transmission line. A recent statement
from the Alliance Board President Carolyn Sheridan to the Alliance members concisely details the strategy:
"From the Board President
Think about it: Imagine you're [Rock Island Clean Line ("RICL")] and you have to file all
this information about a parcel of land in a distant location: How much time would it take
you to learn the names and addresses of all persons with an ownership interest in the land?
How much work would it be for you to prepare a map showing the location of all electric
lines and supports within the proposed easement; and the location of and distance to any building w/in 1OOft. of the proposed line? A lot of work. Multiply that by hundreds; and
you have an idea of how important it is to the success of RICL's project that it obtains.
The more parcels upon which RICL has to do all this work, the less likely this project is to
succeed. Every parcel upon which it has to do all this work is one more shovel of dirt on
the grave of this RICL line. Join the opponents of the line. DO NOT sign an easemnts
[sic] with RICL.
Carolyn Sheridan
Board President"

Without bifurcation, it is clear that the Alliance will seek to make this process unnecessarily burdensome and overly complicated before the Board can even make its initial  determination on whether the Franchise should be granted.

The Alliance seeks to force Clean Line to waste time and resources, and consequently also the time and resources of the IUB, with the hope that Clean Line eventually gives
up on the project.