Josh "Chariots Of Fire" Hawley Helped Cut DOE Loan For Transmission Line; Higher Rates Loom For Missouri
It’s only been a few weeks since the Trump administration and lawmakers like Missouri Senator Josh Hawley succeeded in derailing the Grain Belt Express, a high-voltage transmission line that would have brought clean energy to much of the upper Midwest. It’s not clear whether the project will go forward, but it’s already clear that people will pay more for electricity as a result — and nowhere is that more clear than in Missouri. The Grain Belt Express would have carried 5,000 megawatts of wind power from Kansas across Missouri and Illinois into Indiana. The 800-mile project, slated to cost $11 billion and scheduled to begin construction next year, has drawn fire from critics — whose opposition includes its use of eminent domain to cross private property — and has been the target of Republican opponents like Hawley for well over a decade.
After years of lawsuits, regulatory review, and political battles in the Show-Me State, Invenergy, the nation’s largest privately-held clean energy supplier, received state approval from Kansas and Missouri in 2019. It began acquiring access to land as similar work proceeded elsewhere along the route. In March, Andrew Bailey, who was until recently Missouri’s attorney general, urged Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to cancel the loan. He called the Grain Belt Express a project by “far-left deep staters” dedicated to undermining farmers.
Bailey opened an investigation into the project in July, alleging that Invenergy had overstated its economic benefits, and called on the state Public Service Commission to reconsider its approval. President Trump, with Hawley’s encouragement, reportedly called Energy Secretary Chris Wright and told him to cancel a $5 billion conditional loan the Department of Energy approved in November to underwrite construction. The agency did just that on July 23, a move Hawley called “a huge win” for Missouri.
However, it’s likely that Missourians will suffer if the line is not built: It was predicted to save state ratepayers almost $18 billion in utility bills in the coming years. (Bailey has called that figure an overstatement.) Jesse Jenkins, of Princeton’s REPEAT Project, which analyzes how federal climate and energy policies impact emissions and energy systems, said it’s useful to think of Grain Belt Express as “roughly five nuclear reactors’ worth of low-cost energy.” Thirty-nine municipal utilities across Missouri — including several in the same rural communities Hawley claims would be harmed by the transmission line — have already signed up to tap that supply. If the line is not built, “all the customers in all these cities are going to see higher prices than they normally would have,” said Andy Knott of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.
EDIT
https://grist.org/energy/josh-hawleys-huge-win-will-be-a-big-loss-for-clean-energy-and-ratepayers/
= new reply since forum marked as read
