Washington DC — The administration’s high-profile infrastructure package will reset the strategy to expand the nation’s electric transmission capacity.

Over 15 years ago the federal government played a far more definitive role in the approval of new power lines. President Biden’s administration seeks to return to those times with a new plan that gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) a more decisive level of clout in the siting of transmission projects. The agency was granted this authority when Congress passed the Energy Policy Act in 2005 and created the concept of National Interest Transmission Corridors (NITC). The Biden plan will restore a lot of this authority which has been gradually eroded over the years, which should in turn presumably make transmission projects more attractive to private investors.

“It has a lot of potential to make a real impact,” said Liza Reed, research manager for low carbon technology policy at the Niskanen Center in Washington. “The scope (of the transmission corridor regulation) was narrowed down and this will broaden the scope back to the original congressional intent.”

It is hoped that clearer lines of approval ending with a friendlier FERC will attract more investors so that more transmission can be brought online, expanding the grid’s capacity and its ability to serve a growing number of wind farms and solar arrays, and also increase the ability to move supplies of electricity from one area of the country to another.

“I think the transmission siting provision could be very helpful,” said Rob Gramlich, founder and president of the consulting firm Grid Strategies LLC. “It is important to note that the provision simply restores it to what a bipartisan Congress and Senate Energy Committee intended in 2005.”

The transmission corridor redux in Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) allows transmission projects to be designated as being in the national interest – part of the war effort against climate change. The idea is that renewable energy projects are often located in fairly remote areas and won’t be built unless transmission capacity is in place, or at least has the funding and necessary permits in hand.

The NITC was based on relieving grid congestion and allowing additional power to be brought into a specific area and to keep consumer electric bills at a reasonable level. The Biden proposal allows the Department of Energy to also consider a project’s contribution to overall energy reliability and to give new generators the ability to connect to the grid as being in the “national interest.” Analysts have interpreted that interest as increasing the country’s overall larger supply of emissions-free renewable electricity.

Source: Daily Energy Insider