Information protection of Tuesday’s elections was dominated by Glenn Youngkin’s victory over incumbent Democrat Terry McAuliffe within the Virginia gubernatorial race. However in terms of vitality coverage and local weather motion, the lopsided results of a referendum in Maine over a high-voltage transmission mission proved but once more that land-use conflicts are the binding constraint on the enlargement of renewables in the USA. The rejection of the 145-mile, $1 billion mission additionally confirmed that the myriad claims being made by politicians and local weather activists that we will run our financial system solely on renewables are little greater than wishful pondering.
On Tuesday, Mainers voted – by a margin of 59% to 41% — to reject the New England Clear Power Join mission which goals to maneuver Canadian hydropower to clients in Massachusetts. The referendum was a stinging rebuke for the builders of the mission. Nevertheless it’s not but clear if the vote will kill the road. On Wednesday, Avangrid Inc., the mother or father firm of Central Maine Energy and NECEC Transmission LLC, filed a lawsuit in Maine state court docket difficult the referendum, alleging it violates “each state and federal legislation.” Avangrid is a subsidiary of the Spanish utility Iberdrola.
Whereas the result of the authorized battle is unsure, there isn’t a doubt that high-voltage transmission tasks just like the one in Maine are deeply unpopular all throughout the nation. Because the Portland Press Herald put it, the battle over the NECEC has been “one of the divisive and costly environmental battles in Maine historical past.”
Moreover, the rejection of the mission by Maine voters reveals that the all-renewable eventualities which were revealed over the previous few years by teachers from elite universities like Princeton, Stanford, and Cal-Berkeley – all of which rely on huge buildouts of high-voltage transmission capability – are merely not possible. The most effective wind, photo voltaic, and hydropower sources are in rural areas the place electrical energy use is low. Shifting energy from these distant websites to cities requires lengthy transmission traces. The extra renewable-energy capability will get added to the grid, the extra transmission capability have to be constructed. And the extra transmission traces get constructed, the extra rural Individuals will stand opposed.
As I famous in a report I wrote earlier this yr for the Heart of the American Experiment, changing the home electrical grid to run totally on renewables would require mind-boggling quantities of latest transmission capability. In 2012, the Nationwide Renewable Power Laboratory estimated that if the U.S. have been to try to derive 90% of its electrical energy from renewable sources, it must roughly double its high-voltage transmission capability. The US now has about 240,000 miles of high-voltage transmission traces.
Put one other manner, to transform the electrical grid to 90% renewables would require sufficient high-voltage transmission to circle the Earth about 10 occasions. That’s plenty of wire. Moreover, trying to construct that a lot transmission can be staggeringly costly. The price of the NECEC in Maine is about $6.5 million per mile. Even when we assume a decrease quantity, say $4 million per mile, constructing the 240,000 miles of high-voltage transmission that NREL suggests shall be wanted will price roughly $1 trillion.
However the price figures are irrelevant if the states received’t permit new transmission to be constructed. And up to date historical past reveals that states all throughout the nation are rejecting massive interstate transmission tasks.
Certainly, Tuesday’s rejection of the transmission mission by Maine voters marks the second time that utilities in Massachusetts have been defeated in making an attempt to get hydropower from Canada to their clients. In 2018, New Hampshire regulators rejected a high-voltage electrical energy transmission mission referred to as Northern Go Transmission that was to hold energy from Quebec hydroelectric amenities to Massachusetts. The 192-mile, $1.6 billion mission – which was to undergo New Hampshire’s White Mountains – was vetoed in a unanimous vote by the New Hampshire Website Analysis Committee.
In 2017, Iowa enacted a legislation prohibiting using eminent area for transmission traces. The transfer doomed the Rock Island Clear Line, a 500-mile, $2 billion, high-voltage direct-current transmission line that was going to hold electrical energy from Iowa to Illinois. The opposition pressured the mission’s developer, Houston-based Clear Line Power Companions, to withdraw its software for the mission in Iowa.
In 2018, Clear Line Power Companions additionally introduced it was suspending its years-long effort to construct a 720-mile, $2.5 billion transmission line throughout the state of Arkansas. The Plains & Japanese Clear Line aimed to hold wind vitality from Oklahoma to clients within the southern and southeastern US. However the mission confronted fierce opposition in Arkansas the place the state’s whole Congressional delegation opposed the deal.
An identical high-voltage mission, the $2.3 billion, 780-mile Grain Belt Specific, has been delayed for years by opposition from rural residents in Missouri. First proposed in 2010, the 4,000-megawatt mission is designed to maneuver electrical energy from Kansas to Indiana and different states. However in 2015, the Missouri Public Service Fee blocked the mission after concluding the price to the state’s landowners exceeded its advantages. That mission nonetheless hasn’t been constructed.
The punchline right here is apparent. Tuesday’s vote in Maine, together with the opposition to comparable transmission tasks in Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and different locations, reveals that constructing large quantities of latest high-voltage transmission received’t occur as a result of rural Individuals don’t need dozens of 120-foot-high pylons of their neighborhoods. Put one other manner, on account of land-use conflicts, the electrical grid of tomorrow will doubtless look rather a lot just like the grid now we have right this moment.