States that have adopted “clean-energy” mandates are accustomed to having ratepayers in other states help them pick up the tab for their headlong march to a green utopia. This is especially true when this involves stringing high-voltage transmission lines across vast expanses to conduct intermittent wind and solar power generated in remote locations.
But no longer willing to serve as innocent bystanders in the schemes of others, a growing number of voices are calling for a halt in the practice. “States must pay the costs of their own goals. That’s a basic principle of cost allocation – and it’s being ignored across the country right now,” notes Rep. Julie Fedorchak (R-ND). “Families and businesses in states like North Dakota shouldn’t be paying higher electricity bills because other states choose unrealistic, expensive mandates.”
Fedorchak has recently introduced a bill, the “Fair Allocation of Interstate Rates (FAIR) Act,” that targets the current practice of having regional authorities spread the cost of long interstate transmission lines across all consumers in the region regardless of who benefits. This cost-shifting serves the interests of states aggressively pursuing renewable-energy mandates. But it is a “bad-neighbor” policy that drives up electricity costs for everyone and encourages the use of eminent domain on private land to make way for the unwanted transmission lines.
Growing ire among farmers and ranchers who see valuable acreage sacrificed on the alter of somebody else’s green agenda prompted Fedorchak in September to pen a letter in to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in support of her state’s formal complaint challenging the regional cost-allocation formula used by the Midcontinent Systems Operator (MISO) to charge customers for new transmission lines. MISO is the electric grid operator for 15 states in the central U.S. and the Canadian province of Manitoba. North Dakota was joined I its complaint by Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Montana.
Calling the current cost-allocation arrangement a “subsidy scheme,” Fedorchak wrote that,” The massive build out in the MISO region is driven by the aggressive decarbonization goals of several MISO states, but North Dakota is not one of them. States must pay the costs of their own goals.” In her letter, Fedorchak was joined by North Dakota Senators John Hoeven (R) and Kevin Crammer (R), who have introduced companion legislation to the FAIR Act in the Senate.
Hundreds of miles south of North Dakota, the Mississippi Public Service Commission endorsed Fedorchak’s bill, saying, “Policies that promote these unequitable transmission expenditures and promote cross subsidization should be stopped.”
Fedorchak’s bill to put an end to the socialization of the costs of transmitting green energy would:
- “Prohibit cost allocation of policy-driven transmission to consumers in states that did not approve or benefit from the underlying policy.
- Restore state authority and protect ratepayers and landowners from subsidizing projects they do not need.
- Require FERC to issue implementing regulations within six months.”
“Our legislation protects the principle of “user pay” by ensuring that if activists in Los Angeles, Chicago, or Minneapolis mandate expensive, unreliable energy, they foot the bill for their decisions,” Crammer said.
Efforts to spare ratepayers and landowners the cost of other states’ renewable-energy mandates are now caught up in a larger congressional initiative aimed at speeding up the notoriously slow federal permitting process for infrastructure projects. While the bipartisan “Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act,” as currently written, does much to trim red tape and curtail litigation challenging infrastructure projects, it runs the risk of being hijacked to serve the interests of wind and solar power developers. Specifically, the bill could end up containing language facilitating the installation of transmission lines connecting remote wind and solar farms to the electric grid – all in the name of “permitting reform.”
If developers of wind and solar farms want to see their remote facilities connected to population centers where demand for electricity is high, they should pay for the transmission lines themselves. This, of course, would be prohibitively expensive to an industry already reeling from the phase-out of its federal subsidies. Lawmakers eager to upgrade the nation’s grid to accommodate soaring, AI-driven demand for electricity, should think twice before throwing a life-line to an industry incapable of surviving without some form of taxpayer handout.
The vaunted energy transition in whose name green mandates were imposed is being rapidly superseded by the realities of 21st century technology. Offloading the costs of those mandates to consumers in states that never adopted them is an extraterritorial abuse of power.
This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy
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