identify transmission that will provide broad-scale benefits to electric customers; inform regional and interregional transmission planning processes; and identify interregional and national strategies to accelerate decarbonization while maintaining system reliability.

Also need to ensure that this program engages and educates the NIMBY/BANANA/CAVE stakeholders.

Education & outreach is cross-cutting across all the scenarios and is a great idea.

The "WHO" needs to be able to bind people to building the lines.

And to bind parties away from blocking the lines.

Public Comment from Keryn Newman: 

I do not see anyone on the EAC that is representing the interests of the communities and landowners who will be affected by new transmission and electric infrastructure.  During yesterday’s webinar, I noted that several speakers expressed concern that new transmission could not be built in a timely fashion due to siting and permitting issues.  Community and landowner opposition is perhaps the largest impediment to getting new infrastructure built in a timely fashion.  I urge DOE and/or this committee to consider that burial of new transmission on existing rail or road rights of way may be an appropriate path forward.  Building new transmission that does not take new land, or visit lasting visual impacts upon host communities, does not foment community and landowner opposition.  Without opposition, siting and permitting can happen much faster.  It’s the sensible solution.

Public Comment from Martha Peine (that's pronounced "pine-e", not "peen", BTW):

Communities and landowners affected by new transmission and electric infrastructure are not represented on the EAC. It may be that when the committee was formed, no one considered affected communities and landowners would have the expertise required to help guide the DOE’s involvement in transmission planning. However, many do become true experts on issues of necessity and environmental impacts when their way of life is threatened. That opposition is then successful because the evidence is on their side.

I believe the burial of new transmission on existing rights of way would meet with less resistance provided it is necessary. The IIJA provision that allows, and the committee’s consideration of, making the DOE an anchor tenant on merchant projects does raise a red flag as to necessity. Are these merchant projects roads to nowhere built to deliver electricity that no one wants? This could end up being a bill taxpayers get stuck with for up to 40 years in exchange for nothing.

Again, the burial of new transmission on existing rights of way will meet with less resistance provided it is truly necessary. Siting and permitting could then happen much faster.   

Comment of Mary Mauch:

I would like to address the following comment Tom Bialek made in the chat comments of today's session.  Tom wrote:

 "Also need to ensure that the program engages and educates the NIMBY/BANANA/CAVE stakeholders."

Does this disparaging of concerned and educated  taxpayer/ratepayer  stakeholders reflect this committee's attitude?   Who is really responsible for creating "equity" in this "deploy, deploy, deploy" energy transition? Respecting, including, and listening to the voices of educated citizen stakeholders might actually yield far better results than disrespecting and marginalizing them. After all, they're most likely the ones living in the "remote" industrial wind/solar plants and being forced to "host" private, speculative transmission lines and have researched and observed some of the TRUE costs to "remote" communities, non-renewable prime farmland, and the "remote" wildlife and environment.

 "Equity must be at the forefront of energy transition across all domains."

"In partnership with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, DOE will collaborate with industry stakeholders, communities, and regional and local governments to help identify pathways for necessary large-scale transmission system buildouts that meet regional and national interests."

What do the structures look like? The structures will be lattice steel designs. The structure base will have four legs approximately 40 feet by 40 feet wide. The structures will be between 130 to 160 feet tall.

What is the footprint of the structures?
The footprint of each structure is less than 1% of the easement area. Each of the structure’s four legs will have a cylindrical cement foundation that is around 4 to 6 feet wide and about 15 feet deep. These dimensions will vary somewhat based on localized soil conditions.

...providing new opportunities to local communities along the route

Structure Payments In addition to easement payments, you will be compensated for any structures on your property. You can elect an upfront, lump sum payment of $18,000 per structure, or receive annual payments starting at $1,500 per-structure in Year 1 and escalating at 2% each year as long as the structures are on your property.

“The Maine Power Link team recognizes that its success or failure hinges on a robust, open and transparent siting process, engaging with stakeholders from Day 1, before any land is purchased or applications filed,” it said. “We view this as an essential step in our process to protect the environment and meet our energy goals.”

Nachmias declined to discuss the specific routes the company is considering or where it would enter the regional grid.

Brown said the roads would not take the wear and tear that building a wind farm would entail, as they aren’t traveling in with heavy loads such as big wind turbines. He said the transmission stations will be brought in pieces and put together on site.

Brown also assured commissioners that the easement talks were peaceful and so far only a handful of requests have gone to court.
“We don’t want to use imminent domain,” he said. “We don’t want to use attorneys, we would rather have a conversation with landowners.”

... only a handful of requests have gone to court.

“Eminent Domain is something of a last resort used here,” Pnazek said. “In Kansas and Missouri to date, Invenergy has signed up about 65% of the affected parcels on a voluntary basis, and those are the approach that we’d be taking here as well as we progress the project through Illinois.”

Brown also told commissioners that there need not be concern over pushy land agents, stating that Invenergy hires reputable and credible agents but told the commissioners to contact him with any concerns.

"We didn't file bankruptcy sooner as we still wanted to fight the case, and prove our innocence. As a matter of fact, we were exploring options for additional funding for the company and pro bono litigation services.  But, when the rubber hit the road, we couldn't make it work.  The best case scenario was that we'd win with a damning opinion from the court. So what? I'd never receive any consideration/reimbursement, and FERC would ignore the precedent in the future enforcement efforts anyway," said Gates.

"It's a negative feedback loop -- this type of outcome just emboldens the FERC and encourages them to file more frivolous/bogus lawsuits which will further weigh on the courts.  The only way to stop this to have someone go the distance and have someone from the FERC lose their law license, or something, to discourage abusive prosecution. Or structural changes within the courts (loser pays victors legal fees?), and certainly overhauling and perhaps eliminating the administrative state could help.  Until then, the government does whatever the government wants to do, and can do so with impunity."

"We got the sense that our judge didn't really want to try the case. She took two years to rule on de novo review several years ago (which could have been a ruling she could have made from the bench) and we felt pressure to make "business decisions".  As a citizen of the country, this makes me sad -- you expect to go into the courts and have a judge who wants to dole out justice.  But, in reality, I guess the system is overloaded and would simply crash if most actions didn't get settled. I heard that COVID exacerbated the problems -- apparently, the judges are up to their eyeballs in work and are just overwhelmed.  So, the courts are really set-up to at least encourage, if not directly push, people to settle," said Gates.

"...and just in case some people want them underground your government and transmission companies will have a full array of irrational arguments and inflated costs to make sure nothing gets buried."

Environmentalists are associated with compensation packages; marginalized groups are associated with undergrounding and combined remediation; and environmentalists, the federal government, and the breadth of coalition actors is associated with the combined remediation outcome.

However, opponents often have differentiated goals, and a just outcome for one member of a coalition may be unjust for another.

Developers often determine the dimensions of the project, such as route options, during the upstream phase of the decision-making process (Cotton and Devine-Wright 2013). Public consultation can occur later, and community meetings can have the goals of limiting engagement to final route selection and of selling the project.