The Trump administration is abandoning controversial Biden-era plans to help developers build power lines in areas that badly need increased transmission infrastructure.
Under the Biden administration, the Department of Energy identified three corridors in the country that were facing higher prices or more frequent outages because of a lack of transmission infrastructure. Companies with interest in developing transmission infrastructure in those areas would be able to build more easily on both private and public land.
Those designated transmission corridors, known as National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors, proved politically radioactive with local communities that didn’t want more federal control over development on their lands. Republican politicians balked at the designations.
Now, the Trump administration has abandoned the three projects altogether. The Department of Energy said public feedback showed they shouldn’t continue, and criticized them for being part of the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change.
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“Transmission policy must serve the American people — not special interests or a climate-alarmist agenda that drives up costs, worsens reliability and disregards the concerns of local communities,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.
The partisan fighting around the Biden energy infrastructure plans has for years dissuaded companies from planning to rely on the future corridors to help with infrastructure investments. The Trump administration’s plans for energy infrastructure largely shied away from discussing these transmission corridors.
“I think it reinforces how dysfunctional the whole NIETC construct is. There’s no reason to have DOE in the middle of the process making designations that get reversed with each new administration,” said Rob Gramlich, founder and president of Grid Strategies LLC, a transmission consulting firm.
Still, there’s widespread agreement that the U.S. will need to build out the transmission system, as demand for energy increases.
And the DOE has not abandoned transmission investments altogether. The agency has announced billions of dollars of loans for other transmission projects in parts of the Midwest and the South, and it has worked to quickly speed along plans for a transmission line that will connect the eastern and western parts of the US electric grid.
“The Department of Energy has been a fantastic lead agency for coordinating the federal permitting process for our North Plains Connector,” said Ashley Kang, communications director for Grid United, the company working to build the North Plains Connector.
That project will likely receive its completed environmental impact statement from the DOE later this year, cutting years off the average timeline for this phase in the federal permitting process, she said.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) celebrated the cancellation of the transmission corridors, saying the projects had created confusion and concern in local communities.
“American families and businesses need a strong, reliable electric grid — not federal processes that create more uncertainty than progress,” she said.
The National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor program isn’t ending, but will “recalibrate” to align more with local priorities, Boebert said.
Boebert’s district was part of the proposed Southwestern Grid Connector, which would have included parts of Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. The two other abandoned plans were the Lake Erie-Canada Corridor, which focused on connecting Canada with Pennsylvania and the rest of the PJM interconnection and the Tribal Energy Access Corridor, which included parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and five tribal reservations.
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