Multibillion-Dollar Transmission Line Projects Making Progress

Image courtesy of Terry Kearney under CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.

The U.S. desperately needs to increase the ability to connect more and more renewable energy sources to the grid, and now, finally, the industry is seeing some progress on several multibillion-dollar transmission line projects that will help achieve this objective.  Let’s take a deeper look!

Existing Pipeline of Multibillion-Dollar Transmission Line Projects

There are 4 long-distance transmission projects, totaling about $13 billion, that have recently started to get some traction:

• SunZia (Pattern Energy) – Project consisting of 550 miles of lines that aims to deliver 3 gigawatts of clean power from New Mexico to Arizona.
• TransWest Express – Project consisting of 732 miles of infrastructure; encompasses a 3-gigawatt terminal in Wyoming and a 1.5-gigawatt terminal in Nevada.
• Grain Belt Express – Project consisting of 800 miles of infrastructure and 5 gigawatts connecting Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, and other parts of the Midwest.
• Champlain Hudson Power Express (Blackstone Group) – Project to deliver 1,250 MW of Canadian hydropower to New York City.

All 4 are in various stages of development, with SunZia and TransWest expected to begin construction this year.  There is no specific policy reason why these ‘years-in-the-making’ projects are just now starting to move, it’s basically a coincidence.  But in any case, it’s great news after years of delays due to opposition from communities and environmental groups.

The reason this is important is because there will be no way to achieve clean energy goals without additional transmission capacity.  In fact, some of the projects that are now progressing will support California and New York, not a coincidence given the influential nature of these states, as well as the fact that both have lofty clean energy goals that will require the importing of renewable energy.

In the final analysis, the deployment of these and other multibillion-dollar transmission line projects is not a luxury – it’s a necessity for a multitude of reasons, and so it’s nice to see a little progress at long last!