I have asked legal experts and Congressional investigators to carefully review the Department’s decision. We are studying several related documents released by the Department, including the 22-page "Record of Decision" on the environmental review, a 73- page “Summary of Findings,” and a 210-page “Participation Agreement” between the Department of Energy and Clean Line. We will also require the Department to answer a series of questions related to its decision and provide all related documents and evidence.

Last year, in an effort to clarify the law and restore rights to Arkansans, I introduced the Assuring Private Property Rights Over Vast Access to Land (APPROVAL) Act. Congressman Steve Womack (AR-03) introduced the same bill in the House. The legislation is supported by the entire Arkansas delegation. In October, Congressman Womack and I highlighted the need for this legislation during a House Committee on Natural Resources hearing. Our bill would make it crystal clear that these kinds of projects must receive state approval.

Thankfully, the Obama Administration’s plan for this power line still faces hurdles. This is not a done deal. The Department must be able to legally defend its decision, and there are big gaps between what the law requires and the decision the Department reached. The plan also faces strong opposition by many in Congress.

Through its rigorous review and lengthy negotiations to build in protections for landowners and the local communities, the processes insisted upon by the Department go well beyond the provisions established by Congress in Section 1222.

Clean Line Energy executive vice president Mario Hurtado, said via email. “We have created a market-leading compensation package that allows landowners to share in the revenues earned by the project and an easement acquisition process that provides important protections so that landowners are treated fairly.”

No Clean Line Entity shall engage in any coercive action with respect to any Landowner, Curative Party or tenant in respect of the undertakings required hereby.

The practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats.

(i) a proposed form of easement and/or other applicable documentation relating to the conveyance of the proposed Project Real  Estate Right;
(ii) a payment calculation sheet or other documentation in respect of any compensation proposed to be paid to such Landowner in connection with the applicable Project Real Estate Right; provided, however, that with respect to any parcel that is not a Waiver Parcel, such payment calculation sheet or other documentation shall only be provided after the appraisal has been performed;
(iii) a sketch identifying the boundaries and the nature of the applicable Project Real Estate Right;
(iv) a construction questionnaire designed to gather necessary information in respect of conditions at the location of the applicable Project Real Estate Right;
(v) a copy of the Clean Line Entities’ Codes of Conduct for acquisitions of Project Real Estate Rights (which is attached as Schedule 12 to
this Agreement);
(vi) a request for permission to conduct a survey of the applicable Project Real Estate Right; and
(vii) in respect of any Project Real Estate Right located in Oklahoma, a copy of the Private Rights Settlement Agreement, dated January 14, 2011 (the “Private Rights Settlement Agreement”), and the Order from the OCC, dated October 28, 2011, approving the PECL OK’s application to conduct business as a
public utility in Oklahoma.

The Clean Line Entities shall develop a  standard script of talking points (subject to DOE’s approval) describing DOE’s participation in the Project and DOE’s obligations in connection with any acquisition of Project Real Estate Rights, which standard script shall be applied and followed by each Clean Line Entity and its contractors in material respects in all communications and correspondence with any Landowner, Curative Party or tenant.

 Participation Amount. Commencing on and after the Project Completion, Clean Line shall pay to the easement grantor (landowner) at the end of each fiscal quarter an amount equal to 2% of the gross revenues received by the Clean Line Parties from the Project during such fiscal quarter resulting from the sale of transmission service in connection with the Project (as such gross revenue amount is reflected in Clean Line's Financial Statements for such fiscal quarter, including, with respect to the first such fiscal quarter, sales of transmission service which occurred at any time prior to Project Completion) (the “Participation Amount”).
The Participation Amounts shall be paid to landowner to offset costs associated with having their property devalued and their quality of life disturbed in perpetuity, or for any other landowner authorized purpose.

Opponents used some of those arguments to successfully derail the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, a 290-mile line from Putnam County, W.Va., to Frederick County, Md., proposed by Allegheny Energy in 2008. The Greensburg company, acquired by FirstEnergy in 2011, suspended the project after it could not convince regulators the line was necessary.

PJM staff reviewed results of analyses showing reliability drivers no longer exist for the project throughout the 15-year planning cycle. The analyses incorporated the continued trends of decreasing customer load growth, increasing participation in demand response programs and the recent commitment of new generating capacity in eastern PJM.

While citizen groups have fought transmission projects — often successfully — by attacking the developer’s need to build them, the environmental regulations could usher in more projects and complicate opposition.

Changing drivers of transmission

Transmission companies see big potential for new projects, particularly from sparsely populated areas that generate wind energy to urban areas. “Just as trains carried cattle and other goods from the rural areas to urban centers, the Plains & Eastern Clean Line will carry renewable energy from the Plains of the Southwest,” states the website of one developer, Clean Line Energy of Houston, Texas.

Clean Line expects federal approval for its 700-mile Plains & Eastern Clean Line, designed to carry 4,000 megawatts of power from wind farms in the panhandle of Oklahoma. The line will terminate near Memphis, Tenn. Clean Line has four other projects in the pipeline.

“We anticipate a very busy 2016,” said company president Michael Skelly. 

...some wind mills and solar farms in areas with constant breeze and abundant sunshine

It appears that notices could be prepared based upon this language that would be sufficient to satisfy the applicable legal requirements and give all interested persons adequate notice of which issues would be considered at which time. Accordingly, the Board finds that setting a procedural schedule with two phases, divided as proposed by Clean Line, would not necessarily impair the constitutional rights of any party because adequate notice could be given.

As noted above, it appears that the issues for each hearing have been defined with sufficient specificity that clear notice could be given to all interested persons. This factor does not weigh against the use of separate phases in the manner proposed by Clean Line.

The Board finds that the considerations of administrative efficiency and convenience do not support establishment of a procedural schedule with two separate phases in the manner proposed by Clean Line. The efficiencies and benefits accrue primarily to Clean Line and its supporters, which the inefficiencies and inconveniences fall to the affected landowners. There is no basis in this record to justify such an inequitable result.

The Board would first determine whether to approve the proposed line, then determine whether to grant the power of eminent domain, and then Clean Line would be permitted to proceed to condemnation. The situations are not parallel; Clean Line proposes to add an additional step to the process.

The Board’s concern is with following and implementing Iowa law.

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.

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.