The Midwest’s transmission backslide

The United States needs to build transmission, and fast. But constructing a transmission line, some of which span multiple states and hundreds of miles, can take over a decade. And even when a project has the approvals it needs, it became clear this month that there is no guarantee that they won’t be yanked back by the courts. 

The Grain Belt Express is a high-voltage power line designed to carry 5,000 megawatts of electricity from a planned wind farm in Kansas (and other potential renewables projects) to more populated pockets of the Midwest. The $7-billion project is planned to stretch nearly 800 miles across four states: Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, in addition to Kansas. 

The project got underway over a decade ago, though construction has yet to begin. (The plan is for construction to begin in 2025 and finish in 2028.) But earlier this month, an Illinois court dealt a blow that could derail at least half of the operation. 

On August 8, the state’s Republican-dominated Fifth District Appellate Court reversed the state regulator’s approval of the project. It found that its developer, Invenergy, one of the largest private developers in the country, did not adequately prove its ability to finance the projects. 

According to Dia Kuykendall, Invenergy director of public affairs for its transmission department, the developer plans to “immediately appeal the decision at the Illinois Supreme Court.” (Because Invenergy is engaged in ongoing litigation, the developer was limited to issuing a written statement.) 

“This ruling completely misinterprets law and threatens billions in energy cost savings for Grain Belt Express consumers,” she added. “The erroneous ruling has far-reaching implications beyond Grain Belt Express and contradicts Illinois’ efforts to secure a reliable and affordable clean energy future.”

Invenergy took on the project in 2020 from its original developer, Clean Line Energy Partners, after years of legal and regulatory wrangling, as well as skepticism from construction-resistant locals especially in Missouri. Invenergy clarified that work is continuing as planned in Kansas and Missouri. 

On the one hand, this is simply further evidence of the long-understood truism that building transmission is an immense, and at times Sisyphean, task. But on the other, in a moment when the chorus calling for permitting reform is growing both louder and more bipartisan, it’s a striking setback that underscores how far the country still has to go.

The state of transmission

One of the greatest barriers to reducing emissions and moving the country away from fossil fuels is getting renewable energy from remote locations like rural Kansas to the cities where demand is highest.

On a global scale, the International Energy Agency estimated in 2023 that meeting climate and energy targets will require adding or replacing 80 million kilometers of power lines by 2040. But in the U.S. at least, the legal and regulatory hurdles that developers must clear have snowballed, resulting in an intractable backlog where permitting alone takes an average of four years.

As a result, the federal government earlier this year moved to simplify and speed the process, including by imposing a two-year deadline for federal permitting. The Biden administration also created the new Coordinated Interagency Authorizations and Permits program, or CITAP, to streamline communication between the many agencies that are typically involved in approving a project of a multi-state magnitude. 

That said, the executive branch is limited in what it can do without Congress. After years of back-and-forth, though, Senator Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) released a long-awaited bipartisan permitting reform bill last month that is currently winding its way through the legislature. The bill would accelerate the permitting process for major energy and mineral projects of all types, including transmission.