A series of long-simmering fights over a proposed 800-mile-long, 5,000-megawatt energy transmission line designed to bring power from the wind-rich central plains to energy consumers in the east is moving into the spotlight this summer, as an Illinois court challenged a key part of the project and reversed its regulatory approvals on Aug. 8.
The Grain Belt Express is a proposed energy transmission line that would originate in Kansas just south of Dodge City and traverse four states. The project’s champions compare it to rural electrification in the 1930s, and they say it’s crucial for future energy needs. It’s been in development since 2010. Its current iteration goes back to Nov. 12, 2018, when Invenergy—the world’s leading privately-held developer and operator of sustainable energy solutions—acquired the assets and rights to the project from Clean Line Energy Partners.
Kansas is America’s No. 1 wind energy state. Invenergy quotes Gov. Laura Kelly as saying, “The Grain Belt Express will be instrumental in helping to power Kansas and other states and will have a significant economic impact here at home. My administration is committed to supporting investments that will continue to boost Kansas’ production and export of wind and other renewable energy.” But other Kansas politicians have taken up the cause of defending property owners against the project’s progress.
If all goes as planned for the company, construction could start in early 2025 and be completed in 2028. An October 2023 study by the U.S. Department of Energy found that the Midwest will need to double its energy transmission line capacity to keep up with energy needs.
Ever since it took over the project, Invenergy has been quietly amassing required permits and approvals from more than 20 state and federal agencies. In June 2023, the Kansas Corporation Commission approved a request from Invenergy to allow the transmission line to be built in two phases. The commission had already approved the siting permit for the transmission line in July 2013.
The federal government has made significant efforts to shorten the approval process and compress project timelines. In 2022, the Department of Energy established a Grid Deployment Office to help develop new high-capacity transmission lines and upgrade old ones. The Grain Belt Express project has earned FAST-41 designation, a program designed under the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act of 2015 to put permitting of large, complex projects under one roof and subject to one centralized timeline.
But it still faces opposition in several states. U.S. senators in Kansas and Missouri back reluctant property owners who don’t want to sell, and an Illinois appeals court reversed state regulators’ approval of a permit for the Illinois portion of the Grain Belt Express, setting up a possible fight at the state’s Supreme Court.
Benefits claimed
On its project website, Invenergy claims the line is expected to provide energy equal to roughly four new nuclear power plants. It will power 3.2 million homes and businesses, create 22,300 direct jobs and provide $11.3 billion in electricity cost savings along its route over a 15- year period. The current route map has the line originating south of Dodge City, Kansas, heading northeast before turning east to cross the states of Missouri and Illinois, terminating in Indiana.
Invenergy originally pitched the project as providing $7 billion in energy savings to consumers in Missouri and Kansas. Its corridor, designated as the Midwest-Plains Potential National Interest Electric Corridor, is part of 3,500 miles of designated NIETCs.
Eminent domain
Invenergy estimates it needs about 1,700 parcels of land in total to secure its route. It must either come to agreement with property owners or use its power of eminent domain if agreement can’t be reached. Either way, property owners get compensated, but the eminent domain process can be long and contentious.
The company got its initial approval from the Missouri Public Service Commission in 2019 by insisting it would always prefer negotiated agreements and use eminent domain only as a last resort. In 2021, Invenergy took its first resistant Missouri landowner, Bradley Horn, a Gower, Missouri, farmer.
Invenergy claims voluntary easement agreements are complete for “a substantial percentage” of the Phase 1 approved high-voltage direct current route. In October 2023, Invenergy said it had acquired 95% of the easements it needs in both states. But the company must still deal with concern along its proposed route among remaining rural landowners who have not yet agreed to sell their property. They are backed by politicians, including Hawley, who has vowed he will do everything in his power to stop the project.
According to the Missouri Independent, Invenergy offers landowners 110% of fair market value, plus extra payments for each transmission tower, with tower payments adjusted upward to account for changes in the farmland’s assessed value. Transmission towers have a 40-by-40-foot base and are between 130 and 160 feet tall.
Political opposition
Hawley has been a consistent critic and opponent of the Grain Belt Express, blasting it as an “unconstitutional land grab.” Republican legislators in Missouri tried for years to pass a bill that would strip Invenergy of its eminent domain power, which would have killed the project.
Hawley claimed that Missouri customers were originally to get no energy at all from the line. A compromise bill signed in 2022 by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson set a seven-year window for payments and required farmers to be paid more for the compensation—a bill that Hawley now claims is upended by federal eminent domain rights.
To get the Missouri Public Service Commission’s final approval, the Grain Belt Express—originally envisioned as a 4,000-megawatt line that would drop off a small portion of its power in Missouri—was reconfigured to make it a 5,000-megawatt line and drop half of its power in the state. It got final approval in October 2023. The project added the Grain Belt Express Tiger Connector, a 36-mile-long transmission line that will connect existing power infrastructure located in Callaway County, Missouri, to the Grain Belt Express transmission line in northern Missouri.
On June 24, Hawley complained in a letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm that the department has still not provided enough information for citizens to be properly informed for comment periods.
“In 2022, Missouri passed legislation requiring a proportional amount of energy be dropped in the state (by any transmission line) and that adequate compensation be granted for eminent domain. Now, a NIETC designation opens the door for the federal government to exercise federal eminent domain for new transmission lines in Missouri without consent of landowners in its path. With the stroke of the pen, your department has jeopardized all of the progress made by farmers in my state,” Hawley’s letter said.
Hawley told the Heartlander, “I will not vote for any person, any nominee who supports it. I won’t vote for any law that makes it easier, and I’m going to do everything in my power to try to reverse it.”
A timeline for Phase II has not yet been announced. Communities in Kansas have been holding hearings on the line. On July 17, the Kansas Farm Bureau held a hearing with a presentation by Wendee Grady, KFB legal counsel. Grady recommended that property owners come to an agreement with Invenergy, if possible, because if it goes to an eminent domain proceeding, they lose leverage. In an agreement, property owners can impose conditions, such as having Invenergy leave pasture gates open at certain times, or requiring setbacks for towers.
She suggested the property valuations not be contested “unless they are absurdly low and you have evidence.” The Kansas Farm Bureau’s policy is for Invenergy and its subcontractors to adopt a code of conduct toward property owners so that clauses don’t have to be negotiated individually. But she said Invenergy has been “pretty responsive.”
However, Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran said he and his staff have heard from “hundreds of Kansans” opposed to any sale of their property. “When the Senate returns to Washington, I will introduce legislation to help protect Kansans’ private property. This legislation will ban federal funds from being used to condemn private property to be used in a NIETC designation and prohibit the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from using its authority to overrule a state’s rejection of an electric transmission project,” Moran said in a recent newsletter.
U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, of Kansas, is also working to halt the use of eminent domain. “Federalizing the approval process for future transmission lines is wrong, and so is the use of eminent domain to complete these projects,” he said in an email to constituents. “Since the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) failed to seek Kansans’ input, we are doing their job for them: we listened to Kansans’ concerns at a recent Barton County town hall and are scheduled for additional town halls in the communities impacted by this proposal. We will continue to fight against supercharged federal bureaucrats who think they can overrule our state on local projects. We must let Kansans be the ones to approve new projects for their communities. “
Illinois court ruling
At the project’s other end, in Illinois, a three-judge panel in the state court of appeals questioned Aug. 8 whether the project’s backer can pay for it. Invenergy got approval for a key permit from the Illinois Commerce Commission in March 2023, but the Fifth District Appellate Court overruled that decision in early August this year.
Justice James Moore, writing the unanimous opinion for the three-judge panel, said the issue with the ICC’s permit is primarily a lack of evidence that its owners can actually pay for the development.
“Ultimately, there was not substantial evidence put forth to support the commission’s finding that GBX is capable of financing the project,” Moore wrote. “The evidence put forward demonstrated that GBX lacked the funding at the time of the hearing, had no customers, contracts, government or bank commitments.”
An authorizing law was approved by the Illinois General Assembly in 2021 as part of the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, a legislative package meant to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation by 2045. The Illinois Farm Bureau has been opposing the Grain Belt Express project since 2015.
After the Illinois court’s ruling, Invenergy Director of Public Affairs Dia Kuykendall said the company would immediately appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. He said the ruling misinterprets the law and contradicts the state’s efforts to secure a reliable and affordable clean energy future.
David Murray can be reached at [email protected].
