• Air Quality and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions
• Geology, Soils, and Paleontology
• Water Resources
• Noise

• Vegetation
• Wildlife
• Cultural Resources

• Transportation and Access
• Land Use
• Recreation

• Environmental Justice
• Public Health & Safety
• Visual Resources
• Social, Economic, and Community Resources

• Limitations on land uses that could potentially result from the Project’s construction and operation
• Consideration of alternatives to the Project as currently proposed
• History of the Project, including previous routing studies and past interaction with landowners
• Concerns about the Project’s proposed route and infrastructure placement
• Potential impacts on wildlife; social, economic, and community resources; geology and soils; health and safety; and vegetation

The determination of whether a project is ready-to-go relied on two criteria: 1) whether the project is at or near the finish line on the various federal and state permits they may need; and 2) whether the project is actively pursuing the cost recovery, allocation, and/ or subscriptions required for the developer to proceed. Inherently some judgment is re- quired. Based on these criteria we excluded over ten significant projects that are in earlier stages of development and not yet far enough along to be considered ready-to-go. 

Clean Line – Originally proposed in 2009 by Clean Line Energy Partners to deliver renew- able energy from the Oklahoma Panhandle to Southeast markets, the Oklahoma portion of this DC merchant line was purchased and is now being developed by NextEra Energy.

Lake Erie Connector – DC line under Lake Erie, connecting Ontario with PJM, the grid operator in the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes region. The project had been under devel- opment for approximately 10 years, but ITC Holdings, which purchased the rights to the project in 2014, placed the project on hold citing economic conditions.

“ITC made the decision to suspend the project after determining there is not a viable path to achieve successful negotiations and other requirements within the required project schedule. External conditions – including rising inflation, interest rates, and fluctuations in the U.S.-to-Canadian foreign exchange rate – would prevent the company from coming to a customer agreement that would sufficiently capture both the benefits and the costs of the project,” an ITC spokesperson said in a prepared media statement. “As a result, the company believes suspending the project is in the best interest of stakeholders.”

Not only has investment in regional transmission lines been decreasing, but at the same time the need for regional transmission has been increasing due to a variety of factors. These include increasing demand growth, electrification of transportation and other sectors, higher natural gas prices due to European demand, a changing resource mix due to the economics of new renewable generation, increased customer demand for renewable resources, significant utility commitments for renewable energy expansion and decarbonization, and new public policies from local, state, and federal governments promoting carbon-free generation. The aggregation of these trends suggests a shift in the generation mix and significant load growth over the next few decades, both of which will require new transmission capacity. 

Transmission capacity is also critical in helping shift national economic policy toward an increased focus on onshoring manufacturing to develop domestic supply chains. De- velopment of new domestic manufacturing along with growth in data centers, partially driven by AI, represents the potential for significant economic growth and job growth for the US.

These new manufacturing facilities, along with new data centers, often require additional transmission to ensure the grid has the capacity to reliably interconnect significant new industrial loads. However, delays are already beginning to occur. Interconnection requests for data centers have dropped across the country and in Northern Virginia – a national hub for data centers – there is a scramble to meet the soaring power demand as current grid capacity is limited. 

Some experts estimate that fully electrifying the US’s industrial load could more than double current US power demand. The current issues are arising even before manufacturing for microchips and additional electric vehicle production and battery manufacturing facilities fully ramp up, along with hydrogen production facilities. If sufficient transmission capacity is not available, these investments could be significantly delayed or even canceled. 

There are also additional policy levers that Congress and FERC could pull to help facilitate faster and more effective buildout of new transmission. Americans for a Clean Energy Grid’s Legislative Principles outlines a number of these potential approaches.

Bates said he didn’t realize running a power line to a data center was considered a transmission line. 

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If care is taken to make sure that host communities benefit in the short and long term from the energy projects in their backyards, they will be less inclined to oppose them, leading to faster timelines for clean energy and transmission projects. 

Community opposition to large-scale wind and solar projects is growing across the United States. There are many reasons for this trend, including misinformation about renewable energy, concerns about project impacts, and concern that most of the benefits flow outside of the community while the burdens fall within. Communities often see hosting renewable energy projects and transmission (which touches multiple communities) as an impediment to their goals, such as preserving community identity, land preservation, and in some cases ensuring ecosystem conservation. While some landowners see these projects as a potential source of revenue from leases, others worry that the projects will reduce the value of their land. Finally, in many communities, while there may be both supporters and opponents of clean energy projects, the opponents are often more vocal, better resourced, and more passionate than the supporters. Because of all these factors, an alarming number of communities are adopting restrictive zoning and land use ordinances that effectively ban the siting of clean energy projects.

​This rise in opposition highlights the importance of ensuring that developers and local officials disseminate accurate information about potential projects and that the permitting process allows engagement from a broad range of voices so that decision-makers can accurately assess the environmental impacts as well as benefits of projects. Furthermore, it is important to ensure that host communities share in the benefits of projects in their own backyards.

Several states, including New York, California, Illinois, and Washington, have enacted laws that improve the siting process for large-scale renewable projects and provide potentially powerful models for similar legislation in other states. Among other things, these laws modernize the permitting process and explicitly provide benefits to host communities via mechanisms like utility bill discounts. States should be encouraged to adopt model siting and permitting laws that expand community engagement while limiting the ability of localities to unreasonably ban all wind and solar projects.

​Bringing communities from opposition to support—or at least to open-mindedness—is a major challenge to renewable energy growth that needs sustained effort, engagement, and thought. Our recommendations provide a starting point.

Coalitions should work together to build support for well-sited projects that benefit the host community. In cases where developers have done their due diligence as outlined in the preceding recommendations, environmental and conservation groups, labor groups, local landowners and businesses, and other stakeholders—including, where relevant, environmental justice and tribal groups—should form coalitions and work together to support the project. A key part of this support should be highlighting the community benefit agreements, payments in lieu of taxes or other mechanisms for benefit sharing, the creation of local jobs, and addressing other ways to compensate local landowners for any perceived or actual diminution in property values.

Grain Belt Express LLC engaged Contract Land Staff LLC (“CLS”) to assist with negotiating voluntary easement agreements with landowners on the approved route. 

CLS remains engaged. Pursuant to the terms of the engagement, Grain Belt Express LLC is paying CLS approximately $50,000 per week and must continue to pay that amount for the duration of the stay. Grain Belt Express LLC is receiving no services due to the stay Order. Grain Belt Express LLC must, and intends to, keep CLS engaged or it will not have staffing available for land acquisition services when the stay is lifted.

“The landowner will not need to pay for an ‘updated title search, appraisal and ALTA survey’ to evaluate GBE’s offer during voluntary easement negotiation . . . because GBE will provide those or comparable materials in support of its easement offer.” 

GBE seeks the following relief:
1. That this Court reconsider the Order, as the requested stay is not supported by any evidence of great or irreparable damage to the Landowner Alliance. To the contrary, the only verified evidence in the record is that GBE will suffer damage as a consequence of the injunction.
2. Moreover, that this Court reconsider the Order because the stay violates GBE’s constitutional rights and is not supported by any applicable legal principle.
3. That this Court failed to address the requirement for a bond, and, if this Court determines that any portion of its Order should remain in place, that this Court require the Landowner Alliance to post a bond in an amount adequate to secure the damages to be incurred by GBE.
4. In the alternative, if this Court elects to not reconsider its Order, that it clarify that the Order does not (and legally cannot) enjoin GBE from engaging in voluntary land acquisition or easement negotiations with landowners along the approved route for the transmission line project, as such an injunction would exceed this Court’s jurisdiction and violate GBE’s constitutional rights. 
5. That this Court clarify the “specific finding[s] based upon evidence submitted to the court, and identified by reference thereto, that great or irreparable damage would otherwise result to the [Landowner Alliance], and specifying the nature of the damages,” as required by the Illinois Public Utilities Act, 220 ILCS 5/10-204(b). 

A grass fire near 199th and Lone Elm Olathe was likely caused by a downed power line. 
An Evergy representative reports the "excessive heat was likely a contributing factor" to a crossarm breaking, falling and igniting the grass fire.
About 1,900 customers were affected. Their power was restored within an hour of the incident.

“I think that sort of input that we got from the community and then also doing that modeling to show folks what it was going to look like when it’s constructed both helped along the project,” he said.

The commission observed that while many residents were still opposed to both the Garage Site and the Post Office Site, which is adjacent to the Victor Post Office on Route 60, they seemed more accepting of the Garage Site over the Post Office location.