Feds Gang Up to Get ‘Green’ Transmission Built

Lost amidst all the excitement over President Barack Obama's announcement of $3.4 billion in Department of Energy smart grid grants on Tuesday, the federal government took a small step toward getting the nation's transmission grid up to speed.

That step was a memorandum of understanding between nine federal agencies to expedite the siting and building of transmission lines – mainly, the new lines that will be needed to bring renewable power from remote wind farms and solar plants to cities where it's needed - across federal lands.

The agencies – the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy and the Interior – said they'll establish a one-track system for handling environmental and administrative review of transmission proposals.

They also plan to help coordinate the same process at other federal, state and tribal agencies involved, according to a Wednesday announcement from FERC, which has called for more federal authority over transmission projects (see Green Light post).

Considering the tangle of overlapping jurisdictions that proposed trans-state transmission projects have to navigate, making it simpler is no small task.

Even building new transmission lines within a state's borders can be difficult, as some proposed projects in California have found out (see California 'Green' Transmission Lines Could Cost $15.7B).

But the country is expected to need hundreds of billions of dollars of new transmission capacity if it wants to meet its renewable and clean energy goals (see Wind Growth Could Cost Eastern U.S. $80B in Transmission Lines).

New high-voltage power lines aren't the same stuff of dreams as smart meters, solar-powered cities and electric cars plugged into every garage. President Barack Obama gave the topic only two sentences in his Tuesday speech in Florida to announce the smart grid grants (see the Washington Post's transcript).

But for would-be transmission developers like ITC Holdings or Tres Amigas LLC, any steps, even on paper, to simplify their jobs would likely be welcomed (see Tres Amigas: Triple-Linking Transmission Grids).