Student reporter Mary McCue Bell is studying Investigative Journalism. Stay in school, girl, you've got a lot more to learn! Now I'm not sure what they're teaching in school these days, but a real investigative reporter doesn't approach a story with a preconceived agenda. Bless her heart, she actually interviewed someone with a different point of view, but then curated the actual information she received to fit with her own opinion. That's not investigative journalism, that's propaganda.
A fight across Missouri over transmission towers for reliable energy, her headline blared.
Reliable energy? She forgot to "investigate" that word. Reliability is a function of regional grid planners. In Missouri, that's managed by MidContinent Independent System Operator, or MISO. If a transmission line is needed to provide reliable energy in Missouri, it is planned and ordered by MISO. Grain Belt Express is NOT a MISO project. Instead, it is a speculative investment venture, an unneeded addition to MISO's grid. GBE's owners are speculating that if they can build the project that voluntary customers will pay separate fees to use it to transmit energy across the state. However, GBE only has one customer in Missouri for less than 5% of its available capacity. GBE is not for "reliable energy."
Miss Mary was also completely bamboozled by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) designation process, which claims to be creating corridors for the transmission of reliable energy. However, DOE also has no authority to plan the transmission system, or order transmission projects. Its role is advisory only. It can produce mind numbing reports, and designate corridors for private transmission developers like Invenergy, but it has no authority or jurisdiction to plan or approve the transmission system. Only the regional grid operators like MISO can determine that a line is needed for reliability, and MISO relies on its own deep knowledge of the system to make plans. It doesn't take orders from a silly, political agency like DOE. The only thing reliable about GBE is the propaganda it produces.
Perhaps Mary should have pondered the significance of the passage of time before declaring that "a nationwide plan to increase the reliability of electricity and reduce consumer costs" is playing out in Missouri. The idea for Grain Belt Express was hatched more than a dozen years ago, long before the government's recent "plan" that started with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021. This battle started long before Mary recently discovered it.
Missouri citizens elected Senator Josh Hawley as their representative, no matter how disappointing that may be to Miss Mary. His job is to use his "bully pulpit" to protect their interests. Is the "bully pulpit" phrase just a sullen swipe at him because he refused to be interviewed by a student journalist with an agenda? She certainly loved the bully pulpits inhabited by clean energy pot stirrer James Owen and political gasbag Tyson Slocum.
James Owen is not insensitive to landowners? Ha ha ha. No landowner actually believes that. I don't either. I watched his arrogant dismissal of their concerns while testifying at the PSC. Maybe you ought to check his previous statements and videos.
Despite what the DOE told Miss Mary, the fact is that Grain Belt Express requested the Midwest-Plains transmission corridor to benefit its bogged down project with the ability to appeal state permitting denials, like the one recently ordered by an appeals court in Illinois. GBE also wants a corridor so it can score a federal taxpayer-backed loan guarantee to build its project that currently doesn't have enough customers to be economic. The Kansas Corporation Commission testified before a legislative committee just last week that GBE told them they requested the 5-mile wide corridor from DOE. Who's lying here? The DOE, or GBE, or the KCC? Why don't you investigate that?
And here's something else to investigate... transmission lines do not create electricity, so they alone cannot "keep up with the nation's increasing power demands." What we need is new baseload generation that can be depended upon to generate when needed, and it needs to be located near the increasing power demands, not imported hundreds of miles on unnecessary transmission lines.
What does Otto Lynch from Pennsylvania know about farming in Missouri, with his contention that farmers can easily farm around towers? Nothing at all! His views about farming are of no consequence and add absolutely nothing to this story.
Ditto on political gasbag Tyson Slocum, farming grant money in Washington DC for his half-assed attacks on the energy industry. His perception of the landowners within proposed National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors comes from the smug satisfaction of someone who isn't impacted in the least. The real jackbooted thugs pretend that "meaningful consultation" with landowners before carrying on to a pre-determined conclusion somehow makes the stealing of private property okay. It doesn't. Would it be okay if I allowed you to cry a little about losing your purse before I forcibly took it?
Slocum's comments demonstrate a profound lack of knowledge about NIETCs. I honestly can't remember him ever once commenting or being involved in this process. He is inconsequential and his comments add nothing to this story. He's a non-entity who never misses a chance to display his ignorance to anyone who will listen.
Key word here -- "investigate." I give this project an F.
A fight across Missouri over transmission towers for reliable energy, her headline blared.
Reliable energy? She forgot to "investigate" that word. Reliability is a function of regional grid planners. In Missouri, that's managed by MidContinent Independent System Operator, or MISO. If a transmission line is needed to provide reliable energy in Missouri, it is planned and ordered by MISO. Grain Belt Express is NOT a MISO project. Instead, it is a speculative investment venture, an unneeded addition to MISO's grid. GBE's owners are speculating that if they can build the project that voluntary customers will pay separate fees to use it to transmit energy across the state. However, GBE only has one customer in Missouri for less than 5% of its available capacity. GBE is not for "reliable energy."
Miss Mary was also completely bamboozled by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) designation process, which claims to be creating corridors for the transmission of reliable energy. However, DOE also has no authority to plan the transmission system, or order transmission projects. Its role is advisory only. It can produce mind numbing reports, and designate corridors for private transmission developers like Invenergy, but it has no authority or jurisdiction to plan or approve the transmission system. Only the regional grid operators like MISO can determine that a line is needed for reliability, and MISO relies on its own deep knowledge of the system to make plans. It doesn't take orders from a silly, political agency like DOE. The only thing reliable about GBE is the propaganda it produces.
Perhaps Mary should have pondered the significance of the passage of time before declaring that "a nationwide plan to increase the reliability of electricity and reduce consumer costs" is playing out in Missouri. The idea for Grain Belt Express was hatched more than a dozen years ago, long before the government's recent "plan" that started with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021. This battle started long before Mary recently discovered it.
Missouri citizens elected Senator Josh Hawley as their representative, no matter how disappointing that may be to Miss Mary. His job is to use his "bully pulpit" to protect their interests. Is the "bully pulpit" phrase just a sullen swipe at him because he refused to be interviewed by a student journalist with an agenda? She certainly loved the bully pulpits inhabited by clean energy pot stirrer James Owen and political gasbag Tyson Slocum.
James Owen is not insensitive to landowners? Ha ha ha. No landowner actually believes that. I don't either. I watched his arrogant dismissal of their concerns while testifying at the PSC. Maybe you ought to check his previous statements and videos.
Despite what the DOE told Miss Mary, the fact is that Grain Belt Express requested the Midwest-Plains transmission corridor to benefit its bogged down project with the ability to appeal state permitting denials, like the one recently ordered by an appeals court in Illinois. GBE also wants a corridor so it can score a federal taxpayer-backed loan guarantee to build its project that currently doesn't have enough customers to be economic. The Kansas Corporation Commission testified before a legislative committee just last week that GBE told them they requested the 5-mile wide corridor from DOE. Who's lying here? The DOE, or GBE, or the KCC? Why don't you investigate that?
And here's something else to investigate... transmission lines do not create electricity, so they alone cannot "keep up with the nation's increasing power demands." What we need is new baseload generation that can be depended upon to generate when needed, and it needs to be located near the increasing power demands, not imported hundreds of miles on unnecessary transmission lines.
What does Otto Lynch from Pennsylvania know about farming in Missouri, with his contention that farmers can easily farm around towers? Nothing at all! His views about farming are of no consequence and add absolutely nothing to this story.
Ditto on political gasbag Tyson Slocum, farming grant money in Washington DC for his half-assed attacks on the energy industry. His perception of the landowners within proposed National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors comes from the smug satisfaction of someone who isn't impacted in the least. The real jackbooted thugs pretend that "meaningful consultation" with landowners before carrying on to a pre-determined conclusion somehow makes the stealing of private property okay. It doesn't. Would it be okay if I allowed you to cry a little about losing your purse before I forcibly took it?
Slocum's comments demonstrate a profound lack of knowledge about NIETCs. I honestly can't remember him ever once commenting or being involved in this process. He is inconsequential and his comments add nothing to this story. He's a non-entity who never misses a chance to display his ignorance to anyone who will listen.
Key word here -- "investigate." I give this project an F.
RSS Feed