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Clean Line: “Oh, won’t somebody think of the farmers!  No, wait… not those farmers… these farmers.”

Sigh… I have so much to say. I started this post about three weeks ago in response to Diana Rivera’s Department of Energy Draft Congestion Study comment on behalf of Clean Line . But since that time we’ve had an opposition meeting, Mr. Hurtado’s response, the IRP update, the TRA hearing on Clean Line’s petition for utility status, and the interim study meeting in AR… There’s no really good way to hit everything except by topic, so that’s where we’ll start.

Is it 7000MW, 3500MW, or 4000MW? And why won’t Clean Line commit to not adding a second line… in writing?

So the best thing I can say for Rivera’s comment is that it was nice of her to ask the Department of Energy to “update the project description” for P&E and GBE “to reflect changes implemented since 2012”:

“Namely, Plains & Eastern Clean Line is no longer under development as the two-phase

7,000 MW project originally envisioned, and Grain Belt Express Clean Line was extended 200 miles to reach a stronger point of interconnection in Indiana also while maintaining an interconnection in Missouri.”

Good for us, bad for our friends to the north, whose correction officially included an extra 200 miles for a total length of 750 miles. 

Good for us except that Clean Line has never said, in writing, that they won’t come back later to revive the 2^nd phase of P&E. Something tells me that a successful petition for 1222 might mean a lot more of this kind of development in general. Handily, they’d have plans…well…handy.

Also of note was Rivera’s description of P&E:

“The line will originate in the Oklahoma Panhandle and will be capable of delivering 3,500 MW of wind power to an interconnection point in Tennessee and 500 MW to an interconnection point in Arkansas.”

                        

So now we’re at 4000MW. This was confirmed by Clean Line testimony at the TRA hearing. Interesting, as for some reason, the majority of us were under the impression the line topped out at 3500MW. Maybe we misunderstood all along?

The angry cynic in me wonders if this has anything to do with their proposed converter station (supposedly, they’re eyeing land north of Russellville for it. Have they contacted landowners yet?) which Clean Line is actually under no obligation to build. Will they actually go through with the expense of building one if money comes up short on the way to Tenn? Is Arkansas' 500MW promise nothing but a feel-good gesture? And who’s going to buy the 500MW anyway?

Which brings us to…

No, not those customers… These customers

For a while we’ve been speculating that the  “Fifteen potential customers” who “submitted requests for transmission service totaling over 17,000 megawatts” Clean Line touted in their press release after the FERC granted them conditional approval to sell capacity came from generators and not end users. We got confirmation of that both at the TRA hearing and in Rivera’s DoE comment:

“Consistent with its negotiated rate authority granted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”), Plains & Eastern Clean Line conducted an open solicitation and received transmission service requests from developers of wind projects with total capacity far exceeding the capacity of the transmission line. In advance of the solicitation, developers of over 16,000 MW of wind projects in the Oklahoma Panhandle region responded to a request for information (“RFI”) regarding the need for transmission service.”

Unfortunately, we don’t know what “over” means numerically. Assuming that if they had over 17,500 MW we’d be talking about “nearly” 18,000MW… This means that of all their P&E solicitation, only 1,000 to maybe 1,500MW came from actual end users customers… or utilities (which Clean Line is not in AR nor yet in TN). The rest came from, you guessed it, the generators. If you build it, they will come?

1,000 to 1,500 MW… So the interest from utilities wanting to buy power was less than one third to less than one half of the total capacity of the line? Ouch.

Why? Maybe because the project is so uncertain.

But what’s more important here is that, yet again, Clean Line is attempting to justify the line based on generation rather than end use. Why is that important? Because we shouldn’t take people’s land forcibly based on potential generation and without a clearly defined and expressed user need. A vague “large and growing demand for renewable energy” doesn’t count. We just shouldn’t. It’s unethical and it opens up a huge can of worms. Try as Clean Line and the DoE might to call constraint a “need”, it isn’t. Especially when said "constrained" wind farms haven’t been developed.

You can think of this project as a three-legged stool: producers, end users, and regulators/permitting. If any one of those breaks, down we go. And worse, none of those legs are even screwed in yet. We’ve got wind farms that haven’t been built because they’re waiting for transmission (and, I’d guess, the future of the PTC), end users waiting for producers and permitting, and permitting that’s going to take another year at best and uses an untested section of law ripe for litigation. That’s a hell of a risk for anyone to get on board with, especially landowners being asked to sign perpetual easements. Especially considering the company doing the asking actually advocated for a less transparent process for a governmental study that essentially belongs to the taxpayers:

“Clean Line acknowledges the difficulty or impossibility of accessing uniform data across the country and supports efforts to improve data quality and availability in the future. The issue of data access requires serious examination, and DOE may wish to consider using data that is not publicly available. Making data publicly available may discourage sharing of competitively sensitive information that could prove helpful in thoroughly studying congestion on the bulk electric system.”

But what about the farmers?

So what really set me off about Rivera’s comment was this section:

“These are real projects, many of which have land leased for wind turbines from

farmers seeking new sources of income, as drought has made traditional farming livelihoods uncertain. Wind power represents new hope for drought-resistant income and economic development in regions of the country otherwise struggling with diminishing populations.”

Why? Because it’s a cheap ploy to garner an emotional response. Of course everyone is worried about the sustainability of farming in the Midwest given the changing climate and increasing prevalence of drought. But to use that as a mechanism to justify the forced condemnation of land belonging to farmers in other states, affecting their financial security and independence, doesn’t make any sense at all. Maybe these developers should have had a plan to sell energy to more local markets BEFORE signing lease agreements with farmers. Maybe they shouldn’t have made promises to people that they couldn’t keep.

And what Rivera fails to acknowledge here is the very simple fact that the farmers she’s referring to in her comment had a choice. They were able to choose whether or not to participate in development projects. Clean Line, for all their “we are committed to negotiating easements” talk is still pursuing the right to eminent domain as a means to complete this transmission project. And, yes, they will cut through farms in Arkansas. And, no, not everyone wants to participate.

Which brings me to a question we heard repeatedly from the TRA directors in reference to the opposition letters they received from landowners in Arkansas, including ours, which has about 350 signatures…

What went wrong in Arkansas?

The directors at the TRA heard from a landowner who talked about how wonderful her experience with Clean Line had been. Their question about why landowners in Arkansas seemed so unsupportive of the project was met with the assertion that it was simply because there was less certainty in the route in here and, therefore, less landowner contact.

Personally, I think it probably has more to do with the fact that Clean Line NEEDS the TRA on board. I think they were probably on their best behavior in Tennessee because they had to be, since SWPA doesn’t have jurisdiction for siting the line there. Not to mention that attempting to buy seventeen miles of easement is a lot easier than buying two-hundred and something. In fact, Clean Line bragged about being able to obtain 40 out of 50 easements in TN (the last 10 are apparently a little cautious of the three-legged stool and are waiting to see if Clean Line actually gets routing authority. We assume, anyway, since that’s what Clean Line said and none of those landowners were present to say differently)… And they did it without eminent domain, so it can be done. It would be very interesting to see the terms and conditions of those agreements.

They were right, though, about having less landowner contact in Arkansas. After our Dover meeting, which was attended by nearly 100 people (or a little less than 1/6^th of the total number of people who signed into all the DoE/CL scoping meetings combined...across three states), Mario Hurtado talked to our town newspaper about all the outreach they’ve done in Arkansas…

Um, maybe they need a new outreach coordinator. When Chris Hardy went to Arkansas Tech University in Russellville several weeks ago to pitch, excuse me, present the project to the students in the Chemistry Club, among other groups, did they take the time to hold “office hours” in the town a few miles up Highway 7 that would be directly impacted by the line? No.

It is amazing to me that Clean Line continues to talk about outreach as if they’re patting themselves on the back. Notice that “stakeholder” does not equal “landowner”. No, meetings with NGO’s, contractors, and the few landowners lucky enough to get “the unicorn” (Clean Line’s postcard) or read about “office hours” (advertised the same day as the event) in the local papers (which in very rural areas, often have to be mailed and don’t arrive until late in the day) does not count as informing the people whose land you want to use to construct a transmission line. There’s this thing called a registered letter. It’s awesome.

In an attempt to reach as many locals as possible, our group actually went door to door before our meeting. Since we were short on time and corporate sponsorship, we just hit one road on the route. We were able to speak with eleven people directly. Only a few knew anything about the line. One person knew they were in the proposed corridor. 

One. 

Nice job fellas.

If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it.