Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy cancelled the Delta-Plains National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor. DOE said it was due to overwhelming opposition, but let's be real. The transmission companies who would benefit from it begged to have it cancelled because it was creating overwhelming opposition to one of their projects, the Cimarron Link merchant transmission project. And we all know who controls the DOE's NIETC designations, don't we? Its being run by the private interests that the DOE abdicated to when it set up the program. Our Department of Energy is being run by private companies with financial interest in building transmission.
While cancellation of the NIETC is good news for Oklahoma, it still doesn't do a thing about Cimarron Link. Project owner Invenergy put out a statement saying nothing has changed for its project. It still wants to build a transmission line from the panhandle to Jenks. Invenergy even went so far as to claim that it was advocating for landowners to have the NIETC cancelled. But Invenergy is still suing landowners in Oklahoma to gain access for surveys to build the project. If it is successful there, the eminent domain suits are not far behind.
And don't forget about NextEra's Heartland Spirit project, which was also sited in the cancelled NIETC. That project is also still moving forward.
In the wake of the cancellation, a whole bunch of Oklahoma politicians claimed credit and said they stood with landowners. This is not their victory... this is the people's victory! One politician even went to far as to claim that NIETCs were bad because they take property, but inexplicably Cimarron Link is good (because it takes property?).
There's a whole lot that Oklahoma politicians and the local media don't understand about NIETCs. The NIETC was never a transmission project, despite the many news stories saying a federal transmission project across Oklahoma was cancelled. The media's ignorance has done nothing but confuse people into thinking that all the transmission projects have been cancelled. That confusion is quickly being replaced by reality.
A NIETC is nothing more than a land use designation. Once designated, it makes land in the corridor the first place to site new transmission projects. If a state does not approve the transmission project, then the developer can petition the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to permit it. If FERC issues a permit, then the developer could use federal eminent domain. It's as simple as that. The NIETC is not and never was a transmission project. Therefore its cancellation simply means that Oklahoma law will be used to decide the issues, such as whether Cimarron Link is a utility furnishing power in Oklahoma. Without knowing who Cimarron's customers will be, it is impossible to say that it is delivering electricity to Oklahoma. Cimarron Link is what's known as a merchant transmission project. It is a speculative, supplemental transmission line that is proposed purely for profit. It is not needed by Oklahomans to keep the lights on. Cimarron Link wants to sell its capacity through private contracts with utilities that actually serve Oklahomans, or maybe even to utilities or buyers in other states. The electricity shipped on the line is not for Oklahoma, but to make a profit for Invenergy, who also owns the beginnings of the country's biggest wind farm under development in the panhandle. It's Invenergy's private driveway to get its generation to a strong point in the transmission system (Jenks) where it can sell it to companies in other states. Cimarron Link is a integral part of Invenergy's wind farm. It's a transmission line only made necessary by that wind farm. Without the wind farm, Cimarron Link wouldn't exist. Cimarron Link isn't to provide needed reliability to the transmission system and it's not even for use by Oklahomans.
The NIETC was only cancelled because it was mucking up Invenergy's clandestine approach to securing easements with landowners. Before the NIETC enraged the Oklahoma people, landowners may have felt isolated, ignored and vulnerable and therefore were easier to manipulate. However, once the NIETC created a firestorm of opposition, landowners began to fight back. The DOE and Invenergy hope that the huge opposition group will now disband and everything will go back to normal. But you can't put toothpaste back in the tube, and you can't put the opposition genie back in the bottle. The opposition Cimarron Link sees today is the opposition it's going to have to its project going forward. The same opposition will also coalesce around NextEra's Heartland Spirit (another merchant project seeking to take advantage of Oklahomans). And the opposition is also taking a hard look at Transource's Sooner-Wekiwa, a transmission project planned and ordered by regional grid operator Southwest Power Pool to provide needed reliability to Oklahoma's grid. Transmission is never going to be the same in Oklahoma! Power to the people!
Congratulations to the DOE for creating new and overwhelming opposition to new transmission lines! What sounded like a good idea to the politicians in Washington DC and the clean energy interests that run the DOE is a complete dud when put into practice. No, NIETCs won't help new transmission get built. NIETCs will actually make it impossible to build anything because they reached too far and the American people are having none of it! This week, DOE plans to roll out the other NIETCs it is still trying to plan and the same thing is going to happen on each and every one of them. NIETCs are going to create a huge firestorm of opposition to new transmission lines and make it impossible to build them. The sooner new leadership kills this stupid idea, the better off we'll all be.
While cancellation of the NIETC is good news for Oklahoma, it still doesn't do a thing about Cimarron Link. Project owner Invenergy put out a statement saying nothing has changed for its project. It still wants to build a transmission line from the panhandle to Jenks. Invenergy even went so far as to claim that it was advocating for landowners to have the NIETC cancelled. But Invenergy is still suing landowners in Oklahoma to gain access for surveys to build the project. If it is successful there, the eminent domain suits are not far behind.
And don't forget about NextEra's Heartland Spirit project, which was also sited in the cancelled NIETC. That project is also still moving forward.
In the wake of the cancellation, a whole bunch of Oklahoma politicians claimed credit and said they stood with landowners. This is not their victory... this is the people's victory! One politician even went to far as to claim that NIETCs were bad because they take property, but inexplicably Cimarron Link is good (because it takes property?).
There's a whole lot that Oklahoma politicians and the local media don't understand about NIETCs. The NIETC was never a transmission project, despite the many news stories saying a federal transmission project across Oklahoma was cancelled. The media's ignorance has done nothing but confuse people into thinking that all the transmission projects have been cancelled. That confusion is quickly being replaced by reality.
A NIETC is nothing more than a land use designation. Once designated, it makes land in the corridor the first place to site new transmission projects. If a state does not approve the transmission project, then the developer can petition the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to permit it. If FERC issues a permit, then the developer could use federal eminent domain. It's as simple as that. The NIETC is not and never was a transmission project. Therefore its cancellation simply means that Oklahoma law will be used to decide the issues, such as whether Cimarron Link is a utility furnishing power in Oklahoma. Without knowing who Cimarron's customers will be, it is impossible to say that it is delivering electricity to Oklahoma. Cimarron Link is what's known as a merchant transmission project. It is a speculative, supplemental transmission line that is proposed purely for profit. It is not needed by Oklahomans to keep the lights on. Cimarron Link wants to sell its capacity through private contracts with utilities that actually serve Oklahomans, or maybe even to utilities or buyers in other states. The electricity shipped on the line is not for Oklahoma, but to make a profit for Invenergy, who also owns the beginnings of the country's biggest wind farm under development in the panhandle. It's Invenergy's private driveway to get its generation to a strong point in the transmission system (Jenks) where it can sell it to companies in other states. Cimarron Link is a integral part of Invenergy's wind farm. It's a transmission line only made necessary by that wind farm. Without the wind farm, Cimarron Link wouldn't exist. Cimarron Link isn't to provide needed reliability to the transmission system and it's not even for use by Oklahomans.
The NIETC was only cancelled because it was mucking up Invenergy's clandestine approach to securing easements with landowners. Before the NIETC enraged the Oklahoma people, landowners may have felt isolated, ignored and vulnerable and therefore were easier to manipulate. However, once the NIETC created a firestorm of opposition, landowners began to fight back. The DOE and Invenergy hope that the huge opposition group will now disband and everything will go back to normal. But you can't put toothpaste back in the tube, and you can't put the opposition genie back in the bottle. The opposition Cimarron Link sees today is the opposition it's going to have to its project going forward. The same opposition will also coalesce around NextEra's Heartland Spirit (another merchant project seeking to take advantage of Oklahomans). And the opposition is also taking a hard look at Transource's Sooner-Wekiwa, a transmission project planned and ordered by regional grid operator Southwest Power Pool to provide needed reliability to Oklahoma's grid. Transmission is never going to be the same in Oklahoma! Power to the people!
Congratulations to the DOE for creating new and overwhelming opposition to new transmission lines! What sounded like a good idea to the politicians in Washington DC and the clean energy interests that run the DOE is a complete dud when put into practice. No, NIETCs won't help new transmission get built. NIETCs will actually make it impossible to build anything because they reached too far and the American people are having none of it! This week, DOE plans to roll out the other NIETCs it is still trying to plan and the same thing is going to happen on each and every one of them. NIETCs are going to create a huge firestorm of opposition to new transmission lines and make it impossible to build them. The sooner new leadership kills this stupid idea, the better off we'll all be.
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