Just weeks after winning a key regulatory approval, one the nation’s largest wind energy projects is facing a new obstacle from Missouri legislation that could prevent the proposed high-voltage power line from being strung across the property of uncooperative landowners.
A Missouri House panel advanced legislation Wednesday that would prohibit the use of eminent domain to acquire easements for the Grain Belt Express project. The proposed 750-mile transmission line would carry wind power from Kansas across Missouri and Illinois into Indiana, where it would connect to a power grid that serves eastern states.
The $2.3 billion project has been repeatedly delayed by regulatory hurdles and court battles but won a significant victory in March, when Missouri’s utility regulatory commission reversed its previous denials and approved the project. Missouri’s “certificate of convenience and necessity” deems it a public utility, which allows it to pursue condemnation cases in local courts against landowners who refuse to sell easements.
The legislation is intended to block that – either forcing the power line to zig zag around unwilling sellers or zapping it altogether.
Clean Line Energy Partners, based in Houston, has been pursuing the project since 2010. Clean Line proposed a similar project to bring wind energy from Oklahoma and Texas into the Tennessee Valley, but TVA ultimately rejected the plan as too costly.
In November, Chicago-based Invenergy announced it was buying the Grain Belt Express project – a deal that would strengthen the project’s finances but still needs regulatory approval.
Unlike traditional power line projects, the Grain Belt Express is not part of an existing energy distribution system and would not carry power directly to residential customers. It instead would sell power to other utilities. A coalition of Missouri municipal utilities has agreed to purchase some of the energy, but the vast majority would go to eastern states.
That’s sparked opposition from some Missouri landowners and politicians.
“We’re asking our Missouri farmers and rural areas to give up their land and their rights so that people further east can save on their energy bills? I don’t think that’s good for Missourians,” said Republican Rep. Dean Plocher, the chairman of the committee that advanced the eminent domain legislation.